Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

QUEER PATRIOTS

2010; Routledge; Volume: 24; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09502386.2010.502734

1466-4348

Susannah Bowyer,

Philippine History and Culture

Abstract There is nothing new about the use of sexuality as a metaphor in the place making of Ireland. This article considers how rhetorical strategies concerning homosexuality and the nation underwent distinct shifts in a period of intense economic growth and globalization in Ireland in the early years of the twenty-first century. The reading of media representations of homosexuality notes changes, both in what 'the homosexual' may come to represent in relation to Irish national identity, and in the connotations afforded to the idea of 'traditional Irish values' in relation to sexuality. The reading of the texts discussed makes evident how a 'local' version of cosmopolitan gay sexual identity was celebrated as an icon of a liberal and sexually liberated Ireland, while the figure of the Irish Roman Catholic priest, for so long an icon of the 'traditional values' at the heart of the Irish nationalist project, came to be characterised as 'the foreign at home' and as a 'moral contaminant' that Ireland has exported across the globe. Through these contrasting constructions a significant shift in public discourse on sexual morality is given a history. Keywords: culturenational identitygaycamphomosexualityclerical sexual abusetraditional values Notes 1. Throughout most of the twentieth century in Ireland, discourses of sexuality and the influence of the Irish Catholic Church were inextricable. Tom Inglis argues that 'the whole civilising process took place in and through the Catholic Church' (Inglis 1998 Inglis, T. 1998. Moral Monopoly: The Rise and Fall of the Catholic Church in Modern Ireland, Dublin: University College Dublin Press. [Google Scholar], p. 136), and that through Mass, Confession and the schooling of Irish children the Church promulgated a moral code of 'bodily discipline, shame, guilt and modesty' (Inglis 1998 Inglis, T. 1998. Moral Monopoly: The Rise and Fall of the Catholic Church in Modern Ireland, Dublin: University College Dublin Press. [Google Scholar], p. 157). The institutional reach of the Church grew in the early years of the Free State, and remains significant. In 1998 97 per cent of the National (primary) schools and 86 per cent of secondary schools in the Republic were under Catholic management. Until 1971 it was a mortal sin for Catholics not to send their children to Catholic schools (Inglis 1998 Inglis, T. 1998. Moral Monopoly: The Rise and Fall of the Catholic Church in Modern Ireland, Dublin: University College Dublin Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 58–59. See also Carlson 1990 Carlson, J. 1990. Banned in Ireland: Censorship and the Irish Writer, London: Routledge. [Google Scholar], Hanafin 1998 Hanafin, P. 1998. 'Rewriting desire: the construction of sexual identity in literacy and legal discourse in postcolonial Ireland'. Social and Legal Studies, 7(3): 409–429. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], Hug 1999 Hug, C. 1999. The Politics of Sexual Morality in Ireland, Basingstoke: Macmillan. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], Kelley 1982 Kelley, K. 1982. The Longest War: Northern Ireland and the IRA, London: Zed Books. [Google Scholar], Lee 1989 Lee, J. J. 1989. Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 2. See for instance Sharkey (1993 Sharkey, S. 1993. Ireland and the Iconography of Rape: Colonisation, Constraint and Gender, London: University of North London Press. [Google Scholar]) Ireland and the Iconography of Rape. Seamus Heaney's poem 'Ocean's love to Ireland' alludes to Sir Walter Raleigh's use of the rape metaphor in his poem 'Ocean's Love to Cynthia' (Heaney 1975 Heaney, S. 1975. North, London: Faber & Faber. [Google Scholar]). 3. A note on methods. This article draws on doctoral research in Dublin between 2000 and 2003. My fieldwork combined ethnographic and cultural studies textual analysis methods to examine the social and cultural effects of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Ireland. Irish laws criminalising homosexuality were abolished in 1993, and sexual identity was included as a ground for claims under the Employment Equality Act of 1998 and the Equal Status Act in 2000. Given that divorce was not made legal in Ireland until 1995, and that abortion remains illegal, law reform on homosexuality occurred 'out of sequence' with comparative examples (Robson 1995 Robson , C. 1995 ' Anatomy of a campaign ', in Lesbian and Gay Visions of Ireland , I. O'Carroll & E. Collins , London , Cassell , pp. 47 59 . [Google Scholar], p. 48) and put Ireland at the European vanguard on these issues. In the field, I investigated these changes, not in terms of their effects on a 'gay community', but how these shifts in legislative and public discourse were impacting on social relations more broadly. In theoretical terms, my thesis tested one of the central contentions of queer theory. If the 'insidious force of heteronormativity [is] a fundamental organising principle throughout the social order' (Green 2002 Green, A. 2002. 'Gay but not queer: toward a post-queer study of sexuality'. Theory and Society, 31: 521–545. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], p. 521, cited in Gamson & Moon 2004 Gamson, J. and Moon, D. 2004. 'The sociology of sexualities: queer and beyond'. Annual Review of Sociology, 30: 47–64. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], p. 48), how is the social order affected by discursive shifts towards the 'social inclusion' of gays and lesbians? In order to test the contention that every social institution relies on and enforces sexual boundaries and divisions, I turned an ethnographic lens on social settings such as 'neighbourhood' and 'family' to examine the way changing public discourse regarding homosexuality worked in those settings. The ethnographic fieldwork was centred in the Dublin suburb where I lived, and included the conversations with the local priest, Father Doherty that are discussed in this article. The insights of queer critical theory framed my approach to texts, media representations and legal documents. This tracking of public discourses informed my ethnographic observations of how norms and prohibitions are both inhabited and challenged in everyday social practice. 4. While the gay bars in Dublin participated in these celebrations, it is not my contention that Brian Dowling became an icon for Irish gay culture. My discussion focuses on the media representations of Brian's victory as presented by the mainstream press for mainstream consumption (which obviously includes a gay element within a broader readership). 5. My approach is framed by recent theorizing of sexuality as performative (e.g. Butler 1997 Butler, J. 1997. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar], 2000 Butler, J. 2000. "Critically queer". In Identity: A Reader, Edited by: Evans, J. and Redman, P. 108–118. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. [Google Scholar], Lloyd 1999 Lloyd, M. 1999. 'Performativity, parody, politics'. Theory, Culture and Society, 16(2): 195–213. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) 6. There are both continuities and disjuncture between the camp of classic British comedies and contemporary gay comedians' ironic and referential mobilization of camp, but the broad association is drawn by both journalists and academics (e.g. Hensher 2008 Hensher , P. 13 April 2008 'You and your friends can come out of the closet now, Mr Humphries' , Independent on Sunday [Google Scholar], Anderson 1998 Anderson , M. 1998 '"Stop messing about!" The gay fool of the Carry On films' , Journal of Popular British Cinema , 1 Spring pp. 37 47 [Google Scholar]). Brian Dowling was not, at this stage, a professional comedian, but he was performing a good-humoured, bitchy version of camp in the Big Brother house. Since then, Dowling has joined Clary and other gay grande dames (including Ian McKellen), on the Christmas pantomime circuit in the UK. 7. I had a number of conversations with Father Doherty in the course of my fieldwork and one, extended taped discussion centred on Roman Catholic attitudes and directives in relation to sexuality, and his opinions on the decriminalisation of homosexuality in particular. 8. Of this 23.6 per cent, 16.2 per cent of men surveyed reported experiencing 'contact sexual abuse' and a 7.4 per cent reported 'non-contact sexual abuse'. In one of every six cases of contact abuse (i.e. 2.7 per cent of all boys), the abuse involved penetrative sex — either anal or oral sex. 9. There were criminal convictions, public exposure and a good deal of media coverage of clerical sexual abuse in Ireland throughout the 1990s (see Breen 2000 Breen , M. J. 2000 'The good, the bad and the ugly: media coverage of scandals in the Catholic Church in Ireland' , An Irish Quarterly Review 89 , no. 356 , pp. 332 338 . [online]. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30095395 [Google Scholar], Conway 2005 Conway , E. 2005 Cultural and Structural Issues regarding Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church , unpublished article, [online]. Available at: http://www.cctv.mic.ul.ie/publications.html (accessed 17 May 2008) . [Google Scholar], Inglis 1998 Inglis, T. 1998. Moral Monopoly: The Rise and Fall of the Catholic Church in Modern Ireland, Dublin: University College Dublin Press. [Google Scholar]). The coverage exposed both sexual abuse itself, and Church's complicity in some of these cases (such as the moving of known abusers between diocese). In the following years many Catholics began to talk about their own experiences of clerical sexual abuse.