I have good reason to appreciate the beauty of gay relationships

LAST Wednesday was probably the hardest day of my life. At the grand old age of 37, I thought I was too young to be carrying the coffin of my partner.

We always hope and imagine we’ll be too old instead. But there I was, five-and-a-half years

I had always said that if anything ever happened to either of us, we’d take each other home. I kept my promise. Somehow the fact that the sun was beaming over France and the flowers were in full blossom made matters worse. It should have been a perfect day together, wolfing down almond croissants and drinking pastis in the village square. Instead, it was a day for bitter au revoirs.

Not being able to think about much else these past days, the revelations about British cabinet minister David Laws, who has had to resign for cheating Westminster’s rules – and, in effect, handing wads of taxpayers’ cash to his gay lover – has caused me to reflect on many aspects of my own life.

I’ve been pretty upfront about my sexuality since I was 19 or so. Nevertheless, when Jean-Claude and I eloped to Niagara Falls to tie the knot, I had barely told a soul, not even my own mother. He was the same. For us, it was about a commitment to each other – not some big cake and hordes of in-laws.

The Sunday Independent was the first to get hold of the story weeks later. Their social diary got the facts a bit mangled but we just laughed. Much worse was to come. All that day, one of the English red-tops pursued me on the phone, promising to reveal all sorts of things about my life – they didn’t say what – unless I cooperated with their story. I told them impolitely again and again to go and have sex with each other. Unable to secure my collaboration in their seedy story, they went to Ian Paisley of the DUP who obliged with some quote about me needing to be sacked from my job as I was a threat to public morality.

The Guardian also informed me they would be running a story, albeit from a more sympathetic viewpoint. It was time to ring my mother.

She didn’t mind very much actually. “I don’t care what they write to be honest, Steven. I’ve never bought The Guardian in my life and, at my age, I’m not going to start now.”

Having conservative parents helps sometimes. She did confess later that she’d popped into the local library to read the article, thereby not breaking her rule about not actually handing money to that particular newspaper.

David Laws’ case is that he didn’t tell the Westminster authorities that the money they were paying for his room in London was actually going to his lover because he couldn’t bear to tell his mother he had spent the past nine years in a sexual relationship with another man. As if mothers don’t instinctively know this sort of thing.

I don’t know David Laws, but he gets rave reviews: a genuine liberal, not some middle-class do-gooder who can’t bring himself to mix it with the miners and the refuse collectors and the railwaymen who still make up a large part of the British labour movement.

He seemed to have a promising cabinet career ahead of him. He still might.

But I don’t really buy his story. Throwing his latent sexuality into the mix and seeking public sympathy is just a bit too convenient. He is, after all, a very rich man living in the gayest part of possibly the world’s most sexually liberated city. If his privacy counted for so much, why claim the money at all? No, David Laws is the victim of his own greed, not his spinelessness.

Things are rather different here, of course. There might be as many as 15 gay MPs on the government benches alone in Britain, but in Ireland not a single member of the Dáil or the Stormont Assembly is gay, we’re led to believe (David Norris and Dominic Hannigan are only elected to the Seanad on a very restricted franchise.)

Now some of those who are not being totally candid might argue it is none of the public’s business.

Yet the very same people press the Tá button or troop through the lobbies for all manner of sexually progressive legislation but don’t actually have the confidence to put their money where their mouths are. Passing reams of legislation doesn’t do much to change public attitudes; telling your mother and your brother and your sister and your friends and your constituents you’re both a decent person and a good public representative does.

It’s hypocrisy in other words: legislating to force others to treat equally those of a different sexuality while not being comfortable enough with that sexuality yourself to be open and honest. It’s do as I say, not do as I do.

The only alternative thesis, it seems to me, is that an unusually high proportion of politicians are straight. And if that is the case, why is it the case?

A few, such as Hannigan and Colm O’Gorman, who both ran for the Dáil last time, have plucked up the courage. They weren’t scarred by the experience – but nor were they elected either, some of their more timid counterparts might point out.

Unlike in the North where one party likes to harp on about sodomy, no party or interest group or section of the media here seeks to make an issue of these things.

But still no one has yet managed to get elected to the Dáil while being openly gay. Is Irish society more conservative than we pretend, therefore, or is it just a matter of time?

YES, even I am young enough to remember having fun in clubs in Dublin that technically could have put me behind bars (although I do remember thinking at the time I’d love to see an Irish court try). Or is it that the peculiarly parochial nature of Irish politics deters gays and lesbians from coming forward?

David Laws had to show his face in Somerset for three weeks every four or five years but, in the British system, MPs are otherwise pretty free to live the high life in London – and to do the job of legislating. In other European countries, such as Germany, political parties make sure to put talented gays and lesbians near the top of their party lists.

In Ireland, though, one of the side-effects of the single transferable vote and weak local government is that constituents need constant nannying.

And because being gay frequently isn’t about being the same but different and because many gay people have very complicated lives, nationally minded gays and lesbians just cannot face every aspect of their lives being pored over. Those of us who are straight, Catholic, happily married and clean living don’t mind so much.

Which is a pity. Because gay relationships, for all their complexities sometimes, can be full of joy and fun. It’s only from my vantage point now, looking back, that I can fully appreciate just how true that is.