Pride Is Great, But Where's The Anger?

Eamonn Gilmore marked Dublin Pride with a pledge that he’ll back gay marriage. Even so, maybe he will. 
By all accounts, this year’s event was, again, giddy with joy and splashed in colour – a contrast with World Pride in London on July 7, expected to draw upwards of a million but severely curtailed on orders from the cops and the London Assembly.
Floats were banned, a party planned for Soho cancelled, the march brought forward from 1pm to 11am and the Trafalgar Square gig/rally so restricted that half the performers had to be pulled.
The stated reason for the restrictions was that the organisers couldn’t show they had the resources to deliver their programme – although it’s far from clear how changing the time of the parade or banning floats could impact on cost.
The London slogan, “Decriminalise homosexuality worldwide – Global equality for LGBT people,” thus appeared in a somewhat subdued setting. But here’s a question: might this have been a blessing in disguise?
There have always been two potentially contradictory aspects to Gay Pride – celebration of identity and all that’s been achieved, and acknowledgement of persisting oppression. A forest of hands happily waving is entirely appropriate. But so would be the occasional clenched fist.
There are still young gay, bisexual and transgendered people subjected to systematic bullying day in and day out to the extent that some despair in their isolation. The figures for suicide are chillingly clear.
In at least a score of countries, laws criminalising gay sex give the green light for assault and murder. Muslim clerics and Christian preachers denounce LGBT people as deviants doing the work of the devil and deny them the protections of citizenship.
Saudi Arabia has been forced for the first time to include a woman in its Olympic squad. But Saudi is also among a number of countries which bar gay people not only from national teams but from national life generally.
Here, the issue of gay marriage remains unresolved, and depending on the likes of Gilmore would be foolish. In the North, a political system pre-programmed to deadlock rules out serious challenges to the bigotry of the DUP.
Pride will always be a happy occasion. But a greater degree of defiant militancy wouldn’t be out of place either.
 
I’d never heard of Robb Murphy, much less known that he’s a band as well as a singer-songwriter, record producer and sound engineer, and wouldn’t have made it to his Derry gig had ex-Mantic congas and bongas man Ravi Sharma not screamed at me across the street that this one was not to be missed.
A signature song will feature a sweet-breathy vocal against acoustic guitar, alluring enough to close your eyes to before a thumping rhythm section roughs up the sound, then wrapped in synth for an epic crescendo. A trumpet tosses in brash blasts and supple phrases. Songs of sophisticated simplicity in a powerfully self-confident setting.
On stage, Rob has the stance of a serious wordsmith, crouched sometimes sideways to the mic, intense and deliberate in his enunciation. His lyrics are exact, scarcely a syllable that’s not needed for the shape of the line. And he writes about points on the emotional arc where few songwriters ever stop off.
“What I’m trying to say is easy/ ’Cos we’ve been hanging round for months/ And I feel us getting close… But I don’t want to take a chance.”
He’s originally from Comber in the Co. Down, one of the best places anywhere for a singer to come from, being the birthplace of the unique, wonderful and late jazz singer, Ottilie Patterson.
“What did you say that fellow’s name was?” asked the Cork blond as we ambled away. “He’s a bit of a star, isn’t he?”
 
If Sinn Féin thinks that the row over Conor Murphy’s discrimination against Protestants will eventually fade away, they have another think coming.
Murphy headed the Department for Regional Development from 2007 to 2011. Last month, he was found by an Industrial Tribunal to have appointed a Catholic, Sean Hogan, as head of NI Water not because he was the best candidate but because he was not a Protestant. The tribunal added that this seemed part of a pattern.
In Murphy’s final year as Minister, only three out of 57 Protestant applications to the DRD for public appointment were successful, compared with nine out of 31 Catholics: Catholics had a 29% chance of a job, Protestants 5%.
The tribunal found Murphy’s evidence “implausible and lacking credibility”. He claimed he hadn’t been aware of Newry man Hogan’s religion – even though he and SF colleagues Michelle Gildernew and Caitriona Ruane knew him personally. Ms. Gildernew and Ms. Ruane were the only Executive colleagues he had consulted before making the appointment.
The tribunal found that Murphy had changed the criteria for the position after all the applications were in, in a way that brought Hogan’s CV more neatly into line with requirements.
Republican spokespersons have angrily denied the charge, but have so far offered no alternative explanation of the figures. Some who have warmed to the party in the recent past may take the view that, the movement as a whole having abandoned efforts to bomb a million Protestants into a united Ireland and adopted a strategy of love-bombing instead, they’d do well to come up with a better yarn soon.