Sex in Ireland: Fifty shades of hypocrisy

THERE was no sex in Ireland before television — this famous political quote from the 1960s sums up the mismatch between public debates and people’s private behaviour.

Sex is just one of the subjects I address in my new book Your Place or Mine? Community and Belonging in 21st Century Ireland. Along with other aspects of our identities, like ethnicity and nationality, it forms part of the tapestry of ourselves, constantly changing throughout our lives.

Throughout the 20th century, the Catholic Church dominated Irish cultural life. It was obsessed with controlling sexual behaviour. Sex was for procreation only, to produce the next generation of believers. The idea that it could be a source of pleasure or fun was repressed and condemned. Sex was equated with sin and sin equated with sex. Morality related solely to the region below the belt.