Majella Moynihan: Why were we so very hateful?

When Majella Moynihan bravely told her story, of how she, as a guard, was mistreated and bullied shamelessly by An Garda Síochána just half a lifetime ago because she became pregnant while single, she reopened the Pandora’s box where so many of the secret histories of how Irish life was so very dark, so very cruel, are hidden away.

Since she told her story other voices have shared theirs. One, described as an exemplary recruit, told of how he was summarily dismissed without explanation when his sexuality was discovered.

Another told of how Garda authorities made his life a misery because he was gay. A semi-state employee recorded that he was warned that his sexuality meant he would never be promoted.

Tempting as it is to focus on State agencies and institutionalised homophobia, a more honest appraisal would confirm these were the widely-held beliefs just decades ago and that, unfortunately, they endure in some quarters.

After all, any Irish person now older than 30 once lived in a country where same-sex sexual activity was treated as a crime.

Last evening in Dublin a memorial was unveiled at the Temple Bar site of the Hirschfeld Centre, this republic’s first lesbian and gay community centre. That story and Ms Moynihan’s overlap as some of the gardaí who so mistreated her may have kept that centre under surveillance.

That it was the only community project in the area denied public funding adds a layer to our dark history. We have a sorry litany of these scandals to consider, to help us to try to become more tolerant, more loving.

Maybe once we get beyond the sorry detail of the latest exposé we should ask the hardest questions: Why were we so very hateful? Why we we so easily influenced to be less than we should have been, and are we as susceptible, as easily led today?