We didn't break free of the shackles of the Catholic Church and from the dark days of systematic child abuse and the horrors of the Magdalene laundries to to go back to those dark days.
I was proud of my country when we voted for marriage equality, I was proud when we repealed the Eighth amendment. I was obviously less proud in 2004 during the citizenship referendum, but I thought we were going in the right direction. Now I'm not so sure.
I'm a white, heterosexual Irishman. Although openly atheist now, I was raised Catholic. I've very few barriers facing me. Yet all I know is I have no interest in living in an Ireland which goes back to oppressing women and telling them their place is in the home, that shoves gay people back into the closet, that tells ordinary decent migrants that the country is full when it isn't, that has communities like the Indian and Islamic communities living in fear. I don't want idiotic lowest common denominator politics imported from the UK.
I get it, Covid broke a lot of people psychologically and many working class people feel alienated. But that's capitalism, it's not the brown people giving you your kebab on a Friday night or the handful of Transgender or non binary people in your community who are harming no one.
These patriots can wave their cheap Poundshop flags, but they're not having this country.
I think James Connolly said it best:
Ireland without her people is nothing to me, and the man who is bubbling over with love and enthusiasm for ‘Ireland’, and can yet pass unmoved through our streets and witness all the wrong and the suffering, the shame and the degradation wrought upon the people of Ireland, aye, wrought by Irishmen upon Irishmen and women, without burning to end it, is, in my opinion, a fraud and a liar in his heart, no matter how he loves that combination of chemical elements which he is pleased to call ‘Ireland'
⏩Donal O'Driscoll is political activist from West Cork.
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