No: 5 Decriminilisation 1993 | Pocketmags.com

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No: 5 Decriminilisation 1993

The decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1993 was the end of a battle that began 16 years earlier in 1977, when David Norris introduced a case against the Irish government, saying his right to privacy was violated by the Offences against the Person Act 1861 (which criminalised “buggery”) and the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 (which criminalised “gross indecency”). Norris’s Senior Counsel was fellow member of the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform, Mary Robinson. The Irish courts ruled against Norris, and so he took his case to the European Court of Human Rights, charging that Ireland’s criminalisation of homosexual acts between consenting adult men was in breach of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The case was decided in 1988, the same year that GCN was first published, but the Irish government did not respond by changing the law for another five years.

The chief driver pushing the government towards law reform during those years was the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network. “I have often reflected on the lack of recognition Chris Robson and Kieran Rose – the real driving force behind law reform – received,” a former GLEN member told GCN in 2003. “When you look at the huge amounts of money spent on gay rights campaigns around the world and see what was achieved in Ireland with such little resources, we should be very grateful to the founders of GLEN and to those who kept going year after year to bring in the right law regarding gay sex.”

“It’s what I’ve done with my life, I reckon,” Chris Robson, who sadly passed away in 2013, said in the same issue. “After he won his case, David Norris gave us his backing, and with what I always thought was a lot of courage stood back and allowed GLEN to do a lot of the work.”

At the end of 1992 a new government was formed between Fianna Fáil and Labour, with Máire Geogeghan Quinn, who was committed to full law reform, appointed Minister for Justice. “We realised it was our chance,” said Robson.

A key moment came when Phil Moore, mother of a gay son, Dermod, met with Quinn and spoke to her mother-tomother. “The story goes that the two mothers got together and sorted it out,” Moore told GCN on the tenth anniversary of decriminalisation.

“It was a fantastically hectic time,” Kieran Rose of GLEN remembers. “I’d be at work and then we’d be running over to meet a minister to lobby them, and then I’d be back at work. When the Bill was introduced in the Dáil, there was a whole group of us up in the gallery.”

“When finally everything came through, it was like playing in the All Ireland final on the winning side,” said Robson.

“The day the legislation went through, I was very happy,” Senator David Norris told GCN back in 2003. “There’s a whole generation of adults who weren’t born when I got started on this campaign, and their psychology is very different. They have no recollection of a period when homosexuality was subject to criminal law, and I think that’s a great thing.

“I like to think that if things have changed that people enjoy it, and good for them. I hope they find love and affection and companionship, and that their lives are better off as a result of the work we did. We did it with great goodwill. It was exciting and stimulating and we were privileged to be a part of it.”

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