Conversations on the issues you raise MP are held all over the country but we don’t have access to the money nor do we have the time to spend bullshitting to politicians and others whilst dealing with the reality that is running a lesbian and gay group or event. Or if we do lobby on stuff we’re talking in ordinary language without the buzzwords being created to keep some people in jobs.

Love your blog and keep it up!

I think there is a need for a rethink of how Irish GLBT sexual politics should be organised going forward. While I understand your point about having a charismatic character to lead the community, the key impediment we seem to have in Ireland is the reluctance of GLEN to understand that the organisation does not meet current/ future needs of sexual citizens. More often than not, people just do their own thing, and this is mistakenly regarded as not political. GLEN was framed, understandably, in terms of an emancipatory politics (decriminalisation), but now, the impending political issue (civil partnership), is about how we, as citizens, want to live. GLEN’s approach tends to favour letting ‘experts’ sort out laws and policies, but it does not engage with or help people with being LGBT in everyday life.
A politics that tends to favour experts too can lead to people thinking they are indispensible. So when you report as to how a GLEN member can make a solo run as a non-executive board member for the Equality Authority, become accountable to nobody and unashamedly bed down with the current attack on human rights in Ireland, etc., we can hardly be surprised at this development (however concerned we are). While GLEN, as an organisation, has done some excellent work in terms of decriminalisation and developing a degree of expertise in terms of the turn to policy-led citizenship on Ireland (post-1997), the organisation has remained undemocratic. Paradoxically to what GLEN might have hoped for, adopting the view that GLEN needs to ‘do it’ has ensured that sexual democracy has remained weak, that the LGBT ‘children’ have continually been viewed as unable, in some way, to become full citizens themselves. GLEN seems to think it ‘needs’ to speak for us, because we can’t do it ourselves, but the children have grown up and it is now time to move on, we don’t need other Milks per se, we need democratic ways of organising, to afford support and resources to people who want to organise and plan their lives as sexual citizens.