Irish gay man shares the joys of growing old as a queer person
Reflecting on his personal experience, GCN contributor Colin Daly explores the joys of ageing as a gay man.I remember talking to a chap in the Hirschfeld Centre one evening in 1981, who was telling me that life effectively ended for gay men once they reached 30.
That was his opinion anyway, having the patrons of the centre in mind. He was quite downbeat about it and probably even bitter because he himself had turned 30.
I didn’t have to worry about it at the time because I was years away from being that old and decrepit. But it undoubtedly made me think.We all think about our age eventually, but in the gay world, there seems to be a premium placed on youth and beauty that goes beyond that which applies in the straight world.
It used to be the case that LGBTQ+ people were perceived as being lonely. Indeed, in the RTÉ piece on the Hirschfeld Centre, made in 1981, the interviewer directly asked Pat, a volunteer, if gay people were lonely.
