LGBTQs, Media and Culture in Europe

Alexander Dhoest, Lukasz Szulc, Bart Eeckhout

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138649477
• eBook ISBN: 9781317233121
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Aspects in Computer Science
• Index: Social Sciences

Media matter, particularly to social minorities like lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. Rather than one homogenised idea of the 'global gay', what we find today is a range of historically and culturally specific expressions of gender and sexuality, which are reflected and explored across an ever increasing range of media outlets. This collection zooms in on a number of facets of this kaleidoscope, each chapter discussing the intersection of a particular European context and a particular medium with its affordances and limitations. While traditional mass media form the starting point of this book, the primary focus is on digital media such as blogs, social media and online dating sites. All contributions are based on recent, original empirical research, using a plethora of qualitative methods to offer a holistic view on the ways media matter to particular LGBTQ individuals and communities. Together the chapters cover the diversity of European countries and regions, of LGBTQ communities, and of the contemporary media ecology. Resisting the urge to extrapolate, they argue for specificity, contextualisation and a provincialized understanding of the connections between media, culture, gender and sexuality.

Part I
Histories of Representation in Mass Media and Beyond

1 Respectably Gay

Homodomesticity in Ireland’s First Public Broadcast of a Homosexual Couple

Páraic Kerrigan

On New Year’s Eve 1961, President Éamon de Valera launched Raidió Telefís Éireann (RTÉ), stating that ‘never before was there in the hands of men an instrument so powerful to influence the thoughts and actions of the multitude’ (RTÉ, 1961). As broadcast history would now suggest, de Valera’s foreboding was not unfounded. With this new medium of television came radical change, bringing ‘a new symbolic structure, habitus and practice nightly into people’s homes’ (Inglis, 1998, p. 138). As alternative conceptions of Irish life were broadcast into people’s living rooms, television also served to question the very definition of the Irish home.

This gradual process continued for the following fifty-five years, as was evident with the 27 July 2013 edition of the RTÉ Guide. The cover of this edition featured prominent Irish newsreader Aengus MacGrianna with his partner Terry Gill. It marked the first occasion that a gay couple featured as the cover story for the public service broadcaster’s publication and was widely welcomed by gay groups in Ireland as ‘a symbol of acceptance’ (O’Carroll, 2012). The cover story provided an in-depth interview with the couple in their home and included pictures of the two on their alpaca farm, along with questions and answers about Aengus and Terry’s engagement. With its focus on the home and wedding plans, the article overtly demonstrated a form of gay domesticity. This moment marked a huge social transformation from the conservative, heteronormative Ireland previously envisaged by de Valera and the Catholic Church. It was not until a television broadcast on 11 February 1980 that Ireland first witnessed an open and self-identifying homosexual couple: on the current affairs programme Week In, Laurie Steele and Arthur Leahy discussed their return from London to live as a couple in Ireland. The episode served as one of the first overt challenges to heteronormativity through the deployment of homodomesticity.

By means of an analysis of primary sources drawn from the Irish film and television archives, as well as print media, letters and telephone complaints lodged by RTÉ into the Irish Queer Archives, this chapter illustrates the representation of homodomesticity and reactions to it by the Irish public.¹ Textual analysis is employed to evaluate the programme as it allows us to question and assess ideological and cultural assumptions encoded within it. Additionally, analytical categories of domesticity, heteronormativity and homodomesticity are employed to extract and identify recurring themes.

This chapter argues that the episode of Week In signalled a shift in the configuration of gay subjectivity. Many of the early representations on RTÉ were confined to current affairs programming and tended to focus on gay individuals and politics. This predominantly featured the chairman of the Irish Gay Rights Movement, David Norris (Last House, 1975; Tuesday Report, 1977; Challenge, 1977). In contrast to previous discussions of gay liberation politics, the episode with Laurie and Arthur was the first time a programme broadcast a gay couple within the domestic space of their home and provided an alternative to the heterosexual structure of the home dominant within Irish culture. More importantly, the representation of gay and lesbian people tended to have an explicit political valence as they appeared in debates over sexual liberation or acceptance. While gay individuals, presented as eccentric one-offs, were prevalent across the Irish mediascape, gay couples were glaringly absent. Somewhat ironically, during the same-sex marriage referendum 35 years later, in 2015, the couple became the dominant mode of representation, in ways that some argue were too assimilationist.

The early examples of gay visibility in Irish media pertained almost exclusively to gay men, with the exception of RTÉ’s Tuesday Report, which featured one lesbian with limited screen time. It wasn’t until 1980 again, when Joni Crone came out on The Late Late Show, that lesbianism in Ireland became visible to the general public. Crone was a lesbian activist and a founding member of the Dublin Lesbian Line and Liberation for Irish Lesbians. Coincidentally, her appearance took place the same week as Laurie and Arthur’s on Week In.

Irish migration is a recurring theme on television and in the primary sources, in particular the phenomenon of migrating to London. Accordingly, due consideration will be given to such migration as a result of the oppressive social conditions and criminal laws that were in place during the 1970s and 1980s. RTÉ’s 1977 documentary Tuesday Report highlighted this issue; it followed Irish migrants to London who had emigrated as a result of their homosexuality. I will examine how the episode of Week In describes the unsustainability of living a gay life in Ireland and the need to emigrate to form a gay subjectivity. Following this, I will indicate how a return from the diaspora to form a gay domestic or, as I refer to it, homodomestic space challenges perceived notions of heteronormativity in Ireland in 1980 (this would later become an important part of the rhetoric of the same-sex marriage referendum in 2015). While many gay people emigrated (see Ferriter, 2012, p. 393; Robinson, 1998, p. 18), it is important to note that those who stayed behind in Ireland managed to form a subculture, although an ‘out’ gay lifestyle as such was not possible for a number of years. The foundation of the Irish Gay Rights Movement in 1974, which found a site on Parnell Square in Dublin to host meetings and discos, helped to establish a gay social consciousness. It enabled gay people to socialise in a public space for the first time in Ireland. With the founding of the Hirschfeld Centre in 1979, the Irish gay community began to develop social cohesion and embolden a cohesive identity, which perhaps was a contributing factor to Laurie and Arthur’s return.²

Gay in Ireland

Contemporary Ireland is among the more progressive countries in Europe regarding LGBT rights. On 22 May 2015, a referendum was put to the people of Ireland regarding the Thirty-fourth Amendment of the Constitution which would permit marriage to be contracted by two persons without distinction as to their sex. Subsequently, Ireland became the first country in the world to introduce same-sex marriage by popular vote, with 62.07% of the electorate voting yes to the constitutional amendment (Referendum Ireland, 2015). However, this liberal attitude towards the gay community is of relatively recent origin in Ireland: for much of its history gay sex acts were illegal. For a long time, Ireland’s gay history remained invisible, ‘simply recorded in police records, prosecutions of men for same-sex activities or medical records of institutional committals of men and women for the mental illness of inversion’ (Walshe, 2006, p. 39). In his autobiography, David Norris, Irish gay rights pioneer and Senator, notes this historic culture of invisibility, and explains that gay people in Ireland ‘were almost all in hiding […] There was a hugely active sexual life in Dublin in the 1950s and 60s, but it was concentrated in public lavatories […] no one could afford to sustain a relationship’ (2012, pp. 79–80).

As a result, having a gay relationship was difficult. Being gay in Ireland was recognised in private spaces through sexual acts, which were inadvertently criminal offences under sections of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 (Ryan, 2014, p. 101). These oppressive laws remained until Norris took a case to the High Court and the Supreme Court to change them. When his attempts failed, Norris was forced to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights in 1988, where he eventually won. Even then, decriminalisation was not enacted until 1993 (Robinson, 2013, p. 122).

Thus the cultural climate of 1980 in which Week In was broadcast was a generally oppressive one. Although the Irish Gay Rights Movement had been founded in 1974 and morphed into the National Gay Federation in 1979, there was still a culture of anxiety and a lot of hostility towards gay people. The pressures of being gay have been recounted by Norris (2012), who recalls collapsing in a Dublin restaurant with a suspected heart attack; it was actually a panic attack brought on by his fear of criminal prosecution. After counselling,

I was referred to a psychiatrist whose advice to me was to leave this country forever and find refuge in a jurisdiction where a more tolerant attitude towards homosexual men prevailed, specifically, the South of France. This well meant advice I found deeply offensive. (p. 113)

The fact that a Catholic ethos was so firmly rooted in Irish culture contributed to this repressive society for gay individuals. The origins of Catholic influence in the legal system of post-independence Ireland lie in the Constitution of 1937, the drafting of which was personally supervised by Éamon de Valera.³ Article 41.1 ‘acknowledges that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God. It shall hold his name in reverence and shall respect and honour religion’.⁴ The special position given to the Catholic Church in Irish society by the Constitution reflects the dominance and moral monopoly held by the Church long before 1937, particularly regarding the health and education systems. As Paul Ryan (2012, p. 180) explains, ‘the development of the medical profession as a powerful interest group in society was bolstered by close links with the Catholic Church’ to such an extent that ‘early Free State governments were reluctant to accept venereal diseases as a real public health issue’ (Ferriter, 2004, p. 321).

However, during the 1970s this ‘moral monopoly’ was under threat from groups such as the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement, which formed in 1970 (Inglis, 1998). This was closely followed by the Sexual Liberation Movement in 1973, the Irish Gay Rights Movement in 1974 and the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform in 1975. The pressure from these dissenting groups challenged the hegemonic ethos of the Catholic Church. The visit of Pope John Paul II in 1979 can be read as a necessary move by the Catholic Church in defending its moral monopoly against the threat of the new social movements. The Pope’s visit was the biggest national religious event to have occurred since the Eucharistic Congress of Dublin in 1932. At the opening mass in Dublin’s Phoenix Park on 29 September 1979, 1,250,000 people ‒ one quarter of the population of Ireland and one third of that of the Republic of Ireland ‒ attended (The Irish Times, 2015). The turnout at these events indicates how much of a Catholic ethos still remained in the country.

The devotional practice of Irish Catholics during this period is evident from the National Survey 1973–74. The findings indicate that 90.9% of Irish people attended mass once a week, with 65.6% attending confession once a month (Research and Development Commission, 1985). The mass attendance of Irish Catholics was almost twice the European average (Inglis, 1998, p. 33). These statistics suggest the degree to which Catholic dogma influenced public and private life – including the expression of homosexuality – well into the 1980s. Heather Ingman argues that the Papal visit was pivotal in the Catholic Church’s promotion of its traditional ethos, as it ‘strengthened conservative opinion, resulting in years of conservative backlash’ (Ingman, 2007, p. 21).

Between 1962 and 1972, the Gardaí (the Irish police) reported 455 convictions for crimes of ‘indecency with males’ or ‘gross indecency’ (Hug, 1999, p. 211). Against this backdrop, coming out as a gay couple on the public service broadcaster was a political act. The broadcast of two gay men in a domestic space stood in stark contradiction to the surrounding heteronormative society and served to challenge accepted notions of relationships and domesticity in Ireland. Week In was part of RTÉ’s News and Current Affairs department and the premise of the programme was to engage in a sociological examination of different aspects of Irish life. As a result, the programme took a documentary approach, presenting a wide variety of arguments through rhetorical devices that appealed to ‘logics, ethics and emotions’ while also ‘combining images with verbal testimony’ (Pramaggiore & Wallis, 2011, p. 282).

Locating the Homodomestic in Irish Broadcast History

Although the Catholic faith played a significant role in the marginalisation and oppression of gay people in Ireland, the country’s pervasive ideology of domesticity was equally influential on the alienating experiences that led many Irish gay people to consider emigrating. The concept of heteronormativity, as it is used in this chapter, refers to the term advanced by Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner (2002); it identifies the way social and political institutions assume the most desirable forms of kinship to be based on a monogamous intimacy between a man and a woman, who in turn reproduce the norm through the regulative institution of the heterosexual family (2002, p. 194).

In an Irish context, concepts of domesticity and heteronormativity are enshrined in the political structures of the State. Article 41.2.1 of the Constitution marks the home as a site of femininity and traditional domesticity: ‘as it recognises by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved’. The designation of the home as the site for Irish women to have and raise children is solidified further when the State ‘endeavours to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home’. Constitutionally therefore the Irish home is defined in terms of heteronormativity.

This heteronormative, nuclear family structure circulated massively in the cultural discourses of Irish media in the period prior to the 1980 broadcast of Week In, with popular drama series such as Tolka Row (1964–1968), The Riordans (1965–1979) and Bracken (1978–1982) reinforcing domesticity in terms of the heteronormative family unit. These television dramas did not deliberately omit gay domesticity. They did however fail to represent, in overt or open ways, different orientations or family structures. Consequently their silent exclusions reinforced the dominant normative heterosexual structure. Helena Sheehan (1987) argues that RTÉ drama series such as Tolka Row presented the heterosexual family as the centre of power relations in an Irish community. Such programmes not only reinforced the desirability of heterosexuality, but also implied that it was key to social organisation and status.

This domestic heteronormativity on national television went unchallenged until the surprising homodomesticity of the 1980 Week In episode featuring Laurie and Arthur. The concept of homodomesticity can be traced to photographer Chad Houle’s 2009 exhibition entitled Homodomestic. Houle’s photographs featured gay men situated in domestic spaces, inspired by the fact that:

I grew up without any real examples of love. I never was able to make the connection between being gay and the ability to be in a strong, lasting relationship […] I look back not knowing who I was or how there were so few images of that life I so greatly yearned for […] With this new ‘homo-domesticity’ the home plays an important element as a symbol for sta...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Part I Histories of Representation in Mass Media and Beyond
• Part II Media Consumption, Identification and Role Models
• Part III LGBTQs as Producers in the Digital Age: Blogging
• Part IV Discourses on and by LGBTQs on Social Media
• Part V Self-presentation and Intimacy on Online Dating Sites
• Afterword
• List of Contributors
• Index