'I was a criminal until the age of 37': Gay activists on quashing of convictions for homosexual sex

For a generation of Irish gay men, the government announcement that legislation to disregard historic convictions for homosexual sex is on the way is an emotional moment, and a practical acknowledgement that the pre-1993 laws which made sex between gay men a criminal offence were a human rights violation, writes Ellie O’Byrne

Kieran Rose, right, and fellow activist Laurie Steele, left, lead an LGBT rights march in Cork in 1984.

The end of an arc of history 

For Kieran Rose, the coming legislation that will allow the government to disregard old convictions is “like the end of an arc of history,” even if it has taken 30 years since decriminalisation for it to happen.

Mr Rose, born in 1953 in Cork, has been instrumental in many LGBT+ rights organisations, co-founding the Quay Co-op health food shop and restaurant in Cork with fellow gay rights activist Arthur Leahy in 1981. In Dublin, where he now lives, he co-founded GLEN (the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network) in the 80s and has been deeply involved in campaigning for legal reform ever since.

He also served on the Working Group that advised the Department of Justice on the potential disregard laws last year.

When legislation is passed, men with historic convictions under laws that date to the 1800s will be able to apply for a formal disregard from the State, wiping the slate of their convictions. Families and partners will also be able to apply posthumously to clear the names of loved ones who died with a conviction on their record.

Shame and trauma 

Mr Rose says that for men who have carried the secret of a criminal conviction for decades, it’s going to take time to be ready to share their stories: they live, he says, with “a huge amount of shame and trauma” as a result of their treatment as criminals.

And he warns that the disregard process that the government plans to use must be trauma-informed from the outset.

Gay rights activist Kieran Rose says many gay men have been left with “a huge amount of shame and trauma” as a result of their treatment as criminals.

“There are men who were convicted of consensual sexual relationships, and then there are the men who were prosecuted but not convicted, but the prosecution was as damaging as a conviction,” he says. “Then there are those that were arrested, but not prosecuted, which was equally traumatic .” 

'About bloody time'

“About bloody time!” is the first response of LGBT+ rights activist and retired dancer Roy Galvin. “This is long, long overdue. Many men’s lives were utterly destroyed during that period. There was all sorts of involuntary exposure: there was entrapment that led to convictions.” 

Roy Galvin was Ireland’s first ever male ballet star. Here seen with dancer Joanne Banks at the launch of his Pas De Deux Dance Company in 1984.

Mr Galvin, Ireland’s first male ballet dancer, grew up in Limerick and now lives near Mitchelstown with his husband Tom Lysaght. He was an active marriage referendum campaigner in his area and his life story featured on TG4’s Finné series last year.

Now 66, his memories of being a young gay man in the seventies and eighties are of “a society telling me that I shouldn’t exist. I was a criminal up until the age of 37, until Máire Geoghegan-Quinn changed the legislation in 1993.” 

He came out in 1976, but was never arrested or charged himself under the archaic laws that saw almost 1,000 men prosecuted for consensual sex acts from 1940 onwards.

Driven underground and subject to surveillance 

Living in fear of criminal prosecution, and with no openly LGBT+ venues until after Flikkers nightclub opened in Dublin in 1979, Roy says the atmosphere was one of threat, even of surveillance: this grew worse in the era of the infamous and still unsolved Charles Self murder in 1982, when Gardaí focused their investigations on finding—and frequently outing in the process—as many of Dublin’s gay community as possible.

“When I was a young man and I was trying to meet other gay men, I was aware I was being observed,” he says. 

Roy Galvin in 1984

“I’m pretty sure that if I could search, there would be a file on me somewhere. I used to go to the Forty Foot, or to Rice’s pub, which was gay-friendly even though it wasn’t spoken about.” 

Moral panic in mainstream society of the time about seedy hook-ups in public places like parks and toilets, and resulting prosecutions, were the direct result of gay men being driven underground by criminalisation, Mr Galvin believes. From 1940 until 1978, an average of 13 men were being prosecuted each year for consensual sex with other men.

“They used to call it cottaging,” he says. “People would meet for sex in public toilets. But my question is, where the hell else could they meet anybody? The amount of options was zero. So this shaming of people who had toilet sex or sex in public places? Get over it.” 

For Mr Galvin and men of his generation, who came out before 1993, memories of being regarded as criminal have often remained as a shadow in their lives. But for young people, who have come out into the era of legal same-sex marriage, there are no such memories.

Roy Galvin, right, and his husband Tom Lysaght, left.

And this is how it should be, he believes: “I just love that they have no idea what we went through. They have an inkling, but they don’t really know. And that is how it ought to be. Because none of us who struggled did it just for ourselves. We did it for those who come after us.”

Homosexuality’s criminalised past 

1861: The Offences Against the Person Act 1861 was introduced to consolidate Irish law with that of England. Amongst a litany of other crimes, articles 61-63, under the heading of “Unnatural Offences,” detailed that anyone convicted of “the abominable crime of buggery” would be liable for a life sentence, while anyone convicted of an “attempt to commit the said abominable crime” could be sentenced to 10 years.

1885: Article 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 created the crime of “gross indecency” between two men, with a potential sentence of up to two years, “with or without hard labour.” 

1922: After Irish independence, the majority of the Book of Statute shared between Ireland and Britain before independence remained in place where it was not considered to contradict the new Irish Constitution, despite a right to privacy being enshrined in the Constitution.

1974: Now-Senator David Norris founded the Sexual Liberation Movement at Trinity College, which gave rise to the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform. Mary McAleese and Mary Robinson were both legal advisors to the group.

1980: David Norris took a High Court case to prove that the 1861 and 1885 laws were not compatible with the Irish Constitution: he lost in 1983 on appeal to the Supreme Court.

1988: David Norris successfully took a case to the European Court of Human Rights: article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights is a guarantee to privacy, which Irish law was found to be breaching. LGBT+ rights group GLEN was founded in Dublin. Kieran Rose was one of the founders.

1993: Justice Minister Máire Geoghegan-Quinn brought in the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1993 which meant consensual homosexual sex was no longer a crime.

2015: The Thirty-fourth Amendment of the Constitution was voted on in May 2015, with over 62% of voters voting “yes” to changing the Constitution to facilitate same-sex marriage. The Marriage Act was signed in by the government in October 2015 and same-sex couples could marry from November of that year.

2018: Taoiseach Leo Varadkar issued an official apology for the “wrongs” suffered under pre-1993 laws, marking the 25th anniversary of decriminalisation with an acknowledgment that the State had not protected its LGBT+ citizens’ rights to privacy.

2023: The government announced that legislation to officially disregard the historic convictions of men convicted for consensual sex acts before 1993 is on its way. No timeline for the introduction of such legislation has been given.