LEST WE FORGET

David Norris became a Senator while the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg gave the new Senator one point against the Government... the Irish Congress of Trade Unions published historic guidelines on the protection of lesbian and gay workers and Fr. Michael Cleary stood up and said yes to the criminal law being repealed… Brendan McGahon, Fine Gael TD for Louth said no; “They're unnatural, same as a fella chasin' sheep" …which didn't stop 4,500 "sheep shaggers" from phoning Tel-A-Friend the Gay Switchboard in the year end to June… Larry Kramer's justly famous play about AIDS, The Normal Heart, opened in the Project Arts Centre in Dublin and NGF dispensed politics and condoms outside the Papal Nuncio's. …Viola Wills took several hundred people over the rainbow and Odyssey brought us back to our roots in more ways than one… the NGF Youth Group launched its Youth Line and collection of hairy and beautiful legs… which even Fr. Bernard Lynch displayed in the Strongbow/Green Apple production AIDS - A Priest's Testament, a rare insight into the life and work of a very courageous person ministering to PWAs in New York… New York was very popular with Vincent Hanley who introduced us to the best of its music while disc jockeying occasionally at Flikkers Dance Club. He’ll be missed as will Catherine Glendon. Two fine, young people… we’ll also miss the great outsider, James Baldwin who had as much to say about his gayness as his colour… Simon Nikoli was eventually released from Prison and Lesbians & Gay Men Against Apartheid organised a benefit concert for him in Dublin… which was also the venue for the historic AID to Fight AIDS reunion of the Radiators organised by Gay Health Action… Robert Armstrong was jailed for 10 years after raping a woman which contrasts nicely with the suspended manslaughter sentence he got in 1983 for murdering Declan Flynn, which only goes to prove for some that gay people's lives are cheap… cheap thrills and plenty sleaze were in abundance at the Flikkers Hallowe'en Ball where 400 faggots and dykes saw out the Hirschfeld Centre's eight year history… three days before the institution was destroyed by fire…