Festival Lá Mór na Gaeilge to host panel on LGBTQ+ community and Irish language

This was before Section 28, which would have been pointless anyway - there was no need to ban ‘promotion of homosexuality to children’ because literally nobody promoted it, or at least nobody round my way.  There were no role models.  No lesbians in public life.  No mention of lesbians in school, in books, on TV.   Not a single lesbian in the family, and certainly no talking about lesbians in the family.  Nothing.  The knowledge that lesbians even existed sneaked up on me slowly in middle school, made up of a patchwork of stereotypes – pitiable spinsters, tomboys, predatory dykes.   Although I didn’t come out until my mid 20s, people were calling me a ‘f***ing lezzer’ on the playground at 11.  So I grew up fighting, mostly with words, sometimes with fists, because I instinctively knew the word ‘lesbian’ was so dangerous you couldn’t let it get attached to you.     Things have changed since then, of course. When I was younger, Lesbian Visibility Week – a whole week that celebrates my community – would have been unthinkable.   And there is a way of telling this story that can make it feel and sound like everything has improved.   Section 28 has come and gone: right now in schools across the UK children are being taught about LGBTQ+ lives, families and relationships.  There are lesbians in books, in TV, in music – in popular culture, the media and politics. We have rights our lesbian elders never had.