Panti, Iona, the Queen, and blatant homophobia

AS an Irish citizen, I would have waded into this whole Panti / Iona thing earlier but I live in Brighton where everyone is busy bringing up their ordinary children in ordinary same sex households and getting married to whoever they ordinarily love without further ado, and to be honest it passed me by.

I was too busy reading dispatches from human rights’ activist Peter Tatchell and looking at uploads of Vladimir Putin done up as a drag queen accompanied by the sarcastic words ‘gay icon’, just in time for the very extraordinary Sochi games. Extraordinary in how they violate the Olympic Charter’s Principle 6: “Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement.” Unless you’re gay obviously. Still, at least that wouldn’t happen anywhere in this end of the world.

Then I saw the ten-minute speech given by Panti Bliss at the Abbey Theatre on February 1st, and like that Kylie song, I just can’t get it out of my head.