Abstract
Homophobia is rampant in Northern Ireland, and it is ably encouraged by a culture of sectarianism and religious fundamentalism. According to sociologist Richard O’Leary, it is ‘both one of the most religious and the most homophobic countries in Western Europe.’1 These embedded prejudices were dramatically thrown into relief in 2008 when Iris Robinson – then Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) Member of Parliament (MP), and Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Strangford – responded to the homophobia-motivated assault of local man, Stephen Scott.2 On 6 June, the day after her husband Peter Robinson was elected First Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly, Iris spoke on BBC Radio Ulster’s The Stephen Nolan Show. She claimed she believed homosexuality was an ‘abomination,’ and that it made her feel ‘sick’ and ‘nauseous.’3 She offered to refer homosexuals to a ‘lovely psychiatrist’ colleague (Dr Paul Miller) who was practising a form of reparative therapy that was gaining popularity at the time. While condemning the assault, Iris drew no connection between her rhetoric and that which propels or enacts violence. Shortly after making the assertion, the politician addressed a House of Commons debate on the management of sex offenders, conflating homosexuality with child abuse: ‘There can be no viler act, apart from homosexuality and sodomy, than sexually abusing innocent children,’4 she said.
‘Just as a murderer can be redeemed by the blood of Christ, so can a homosexual.’
Iris Robinson, The Stephen Nolan Show
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Notes
Kathryn Conrad, ‘The Politics of Camp: Queering Parades, Performance, and the Public in Belfast,’ in Deviant Acts: Essays on Queer Performance, ed. David Cregan (Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2009), pp. 25–35; 26.
See, for example, Louis Crompton’s Homosexuality and Civilization (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003), pp. 402–11.
Brian Singleton, Masculinities and the Contemporary Irish Theatre (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p.165.
Richard Kirkland, Identity Parades: Northern Irish Culture and Dissident Subjects (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002), pp. 127–8.
See Slavoj Žižek’s discussion of hysteria, perversion and sexuality in The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology (London and New York: Verso, 1999), pp. 248–50; 250.
John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images (London: Blackwell, 1995), p. 92.
Rachel Ward, Women, Unionism and Loyalism in Northern Ireland: From ‘Tea-Makers’ to Political Actors (Dublin and Portland: Irish Academic Press, 2006), p. 1.
Mary K. Meyer, ‘Ulster’s Red Hand: gender, identity and sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland,’ in Women, States, and Nationalism: At home in the nation?, eds. Sita Ranchod-Nilsson and Mary Ann Tétreault (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 123–46; 124.
McKenzie A. Livingston, ‘Out of the “Troubles” and into Rights: Protection for Gays, Lesbians, and Bisexuals in Northern Ireland Through Equality Legislation in the Belfast Agreement,’ Fordham International Law Journal, 27.3 (2004): 1207–64, p. 1213.
For a comprehensive overview of some of these activities see Bill McDonnell, ‘A Good Night Out on the Falls Road: Liberation Theatre and the Nationalist Struggle in Belfast 1984–1990,’ in Radical Initiatives in Interventionist and Community Drama, ed. Peter Billingham (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2005), pp. 25–54.
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© 2016 Fintan Walsh
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Walsh, F. (2016). Reparative Therapies and Political Performers. In: Queer Performance and Contemporary Ireland. Contemporary Performance InterActions. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137534507_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137534507_3
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