Public records and private papers reveal compassion and tacit acceptance before ‘moral panic’ took hold in the 1950s and 1960s
Northern Ireland carved a grim reputation for homophobia for over half a century, a record of intolerance and bigotry so baroque it was turned into an opera.
In the 1970s, Ian Paisley, the leader of the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) and Free Presbyterian church, led a “save Ulster from sodomy” crusade to resist the decriminalisation of homosexuality.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the Royal Ulster Constabulary used plainclothes officers to bait and catch gay men in parks and public toilets.
In 2008, Iris Robinson, an MP and wife of the then DUP leader, Peter Robinson, told an interviewer that homosexuality was an “abomination”, which later became the title of a satirical opera. In 2011, more than a quarter of gay people complained about homophobia in the workplace. Northern Ireland held out against marriage equality until 2019.
