Leo and Matt At The NYC Paddy’s Day Parade
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Water Cooler Chatter
On March 17 we were all agog as pictures of An Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar marching in the New York City St Patrick’s Day Parade were broadcast across the world. Of course, that’s nothing new, many Irish leaders have strutted their stuff down Fifth Avenue in that über celebration of all things Oirish. However, Leo made history by marching alongside his boyfriend, Matt Barrett, thereby marking America’s cards in more ways than one, and sending a message about Ireland to the world, which at this particular time in history can’t be underestimated.
Before he went to the Whitehouse for the annual Taoiseach’s visit, Leo said he’d be bringing up LGBT+ issues with vice-president Mike Pence, who believes in reparative therapy for homosexuality. And while he was in NYC he elected to visit the Stonewall monument to the 1969 riots that sparked the modern gay rights movement.
As America and parts of Europe edge ever further to the right, and Donald Trump’s regime seeks to roll back on legislation designed to protect LGBTs, and introduce laws that would further marginalise transgender people, our gay Taoiseach’s decision to march in the Paddy’s Day Parade with his partner was a way of sending out the most diplomatic message possible to Trump and other populist right-wing leaders that Ireland, along with many other countries, do not swing their way.
It was a powerful display of self-confidence in diversity from Ireland’s leader on the one day in the year when all eyes rest fondly on our country, with celebrations of Irishness taking place from Beijing to Moscow. It shows the organisers of the remaining Paddy’s Day Parades that continue to exclude LGBTs that their values couldn’t be further from those of the real homeland, that Ireland holds no truck with such marginalisation.
Meanwhile back on the Emerald Isle, we took the parading of our gay Taoiseach and his fella in our stride. Sure, it was as if we’d always had a queer Taoiseach leading our fair country. It seemed as if the media had been on board with the gays since time immemorial too. The lead news story that morning on RTÉ Radio was that Leo would march in the NYC parade, which had “banned LGBT marchers until 2014”. The newsreader pronounced “LGBT” with the greatest of ease, as if she’d been saying it into a microphone all her life and the nation’s listeners had known that acronym since de Valera was a boy. Sure, it was hard to imagine that Ireland’s second largest annual parade, Dublin Pride had been totally ignored by RTÉ broadcasting until very, very recently.
Things change, and sometimes they change quickly. On the day Barack Obama was elected, who could have imagined the likes of Donald Trump would eventually succeed him? So, there’s no sense in being complacent about currently having a gay Taoiseach displaying Ireland as a beacon of liberalism in a narrowing world. Ireland could change quickly too. We might not imagine it’s possible, but as the world swings towards right-wing populism, our own country might not be immune from following suit.