Not All Gays Fabricate History.
This week, members @scolaidhdays and @evilgay420 reflect on Dublin Pride’s recent historical revisionism.
Last weekend, one of the members of Not All Gays made a shocking discovery. An Irish LGBTQ+ organisation, Dublin Pride, had photoshopped a historical photograph from the first large-scale Irish Pride protest in 1983. The sign that originally said “The Police Are Not On Your Side Either” had been digitally altered to say “Trans Rights Are Human Rights.”This sparked outrage online, with the Not All Gays thread racking up over 330k views on Twitter.
To understand why this has sparked outrage within the Irish LGB community, we need to look at the history of the 1983 protest.
The 1983 march was organised after the brutal homophobic murder of Declan Flynn, who was beaten to death by 5 men in Fairview Park in September 1982. After their arrest the murderers admitted they “were part of the team to get rid of queers from Fairview Park” and that they “had been queer-bashing for about six weeks before and battered about 20 steamers.” They said, “We used to grab them. If they hit back we gave it to them.” Each of the killers received suspended sentences which caused further outrage in the LGB community. Mr. Justice Seán Gannon, the judge who decided to suspend their sentences, said, “This could never be regarded as murder” and that “there is no element of correction that is required.” This blatant homophobia and support for the vigilante murder of gay men from the Irish judiciary led to the 1983 protest where over 400 gathered and marched from Liberty Hall to Fairview Park to protest violence against homosexuals and women.
This was a courageous moment in Irish LGB history, as being a homosexual male was considered a criminal offence until a decade later in 1993 when the Dáil passed legislation to decriminalise sexual activity between men.
This courageous act by Irish LGB people and women, however, continues to be bastardized to this day. While trans right activists and organisations like Dublin Pride continue to solely centre transwomen and non-binaries in their parade and campaigns, they egregiously exclude gays, lesbians and bisexuals and ignore the prejudice and violence we face in Ireland. In 2022 Aidan Moffitt (42) and Michael Snee (58) were found brutally murdered and mutilated in Sligo. These men, both of whom were gay, were targeted for their sexuality and then tortured, beaten and gruesomely murdered. As far as we are aware, these poor men’s plight was not highlighted or mentioned by Dublin Pride at all this year. While gay men are still literally being mutilated and tortured in their own homes by vile homophobes, Dublin Pride only thinks it necessary to centre the non-existent role of trans people in the early iterations of Dublin Pride.
Michael Snee (L) and Aidan Moffitt (R)
This, however, isn’t the first time we’ve seen our history being altered to serve political aims. By now we are all aware of the myth surrounding the Stonewall Riots and how Malcolm Michaels Jr., AKA Marsha P. Johnson, and Sylvia Rivera apparently sparked the LGB revolution in the USA. This myth arose in the early 21st century and tells a contradicting story of how Malcolm Michaels Jr. or Sylvia Rivera (both apparently transwomen according to contemporary ahistorical narratives) had “thrown the first brick” at the Stonewall Inn which ultimately led to the first Pride protest in American history. In reality, however, Malcolm was a drag queen who even stated in an interview from the 1990s that he was just a man in drag, and in the same interview confessed that he was not at the riot when it started. In a 2001 interview with the Latino Gay Men of New York, Sylvia also admitted no involvement in starting the riots.
These myths overshadow the true heroes of the movement such as Stormé DeLarverie, a black lesbian who is widely accepted as starting the riots at the Stonewall Inn. And Fred Sergeant and Craig Rodwell who were members of the Homophile Youth Movement and co-founders of the first gay Pride march in June 1970 in New York City, alongside Ellen Broidy and Linda Rhodes. Fred Sargeant, who was also an eye-witness and present at the Stonewall Riots, stated, “It was Stormé DeLarverie, who electrified the crowd and inspired that first night’s rioting.”
Stormé DeLarverie
So, Malcolm and Sylvia had no involvement in instigating the Stonewall Riots, nor the first Pride protest in 1970. Both were co-founders of the group Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) which was ostensibly a group for “supporting” and “taking in” the LGBT homeless. According to Fred Sargeant, however, the group kept itself running by encouraging its members (often very young) into prostitution. In a recent article, Sargeant wrote that “STAR primarily functioned as a drop-in crime school,” with no toilet, drinking water, heat or electricity, but where drugs and alcohol were ever-present.
Throughout history there have been numerous examples of nefarious people or groups changing historical events to suit their own political narratives and egos. Stalin famously doctored images to remove his enemies and rewrote history to make it seem like he was more involved in the 1917 Revolution than he really was. And now there is clear evidence that Dublin Pride is intentionally doctoring photos to push the same propaganda. This is historical revisionism.
History is the written record of human society. It’s not a tool to be manipulated for your own ends. It’s not a narrative to twist because you think highlighting certain groups is for the “greater good.” Rewriting history is evil and should never be tolerated in a sane society. If we choose to contemporaneously re-write our community’s history then we will have no realstory, nothing to bring us together and no reliable record of how we won our rights. Whether it is a retelling of events or a doctored photograph, it is vital that we tell and be told the truth about these events that are so central to our history.
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