Tee hee! 14.

I’m deservedly gonna get redded for that. (and this)

I know him from yonks ago, can’t place where. Shocked to find out that he is Labour, never knew that he, you know, was that way inclined.

Does this mean that Ireland may finally be moving into the 21st century, where a person is not judged by their sexual tenancies, but actually on their ability to do the job?

Good for him, hope he works hard and enjoys his time as Mayor. There will always be many people who wish him and many gays well in their life as they deserve to be happy also. But, unfortunately, there will always be some with closed minds and bigots, no matter what amount of work they’ve done for many, it won’t make any difference. But, it’s important that Cian knows that the majority of people are with him and hope he does well.

Congratulations.

Sheesh, who gives a sh1t what his orientation is. Pathetic. Headlines because of it. Embarrassing. Who cares if he’s gay. That’s his personal business, nothing to do with his role.

Hardly comparable to Apartheid, and Robbie you’d do well to better research the subject before making flippant remarks. As a South African I can tell you that to the best of my knowledge, no LBGT person has ever been made subject to a curfew, made to live within tin shack settlements with their “own kind” with no services, electricity or running water, separated from family members if one was unfortunate enough to have a lighter or darker skin tone, or different coloured eyes, made to carry passbooks that would identify them and go to prison for not carrying their passbook, nor subject to “Bantu” education which only saw black South Africans educated in menial and manual tasks, with no rights to higher education. To my knowledge none of them has been shot under military orders for protests. The struggle for rights within the LBGT community has been a long and hard one, and continues to this day, and I will welcome the day when same sex marriage is globally accepted and legalised, but I’ll thank you not to draw unbalanced parallels between this struggle, and Apartheid, singularly the greatest human rights abuses and blight on what is otherwise a beautiful nation’s history.

I said similarities exist and not that they are the same. Please don’t take opinions from my post which clearly aren’t there. Thanks.

Comment of the year Nicolle.

Haha Nicole sure whipped Robbies ass there…!!!

Yeah I totally agree with Nicole, but there’s another reason why this; “The discrimination and denial of rights to group of people because of circumstances they can’t change about themselves” is wrong

It’s not just ‘The Gays’ that are being denied rights. They aren’t being singled out at all, in fact. We all have the same marriage rights. I can no more marry a man than my gay neighbour can. Similarly, he can marry a woman if he chooses and so can I.

Of course, he’s more likely to want to marry a man at some point in the future, but who’s to say I won’t wake up gay? Or decide I’d be happy in a sexless marriage with a man? Why don’t I have that choice? The principle is what’s important. We are all being denied a choice that won’t harm anyone else and we should all feel affronted by it. Gay marriage isn’t a gay rights issue. It’s a civil rights issue, and if they can deny my gay neighbour & me the right to marry then they can deny us some other right too.

If it doesn’t harm anyone else, then you can do it – that should be rule #1 (in my opinion)

Frankly, I think we’d be fabulous together

Robbie stated that parallels can be drawn, not that they’re the same although Nicole’s paragraph is good too. a little misinterpretation here, nothing more so relax folks…

Deb, I think Nicole was responding to Tommy Burke rather than Robbie Doyle. Tommy made a direct comparison to apartheid and was eloquently shot-down.

there is no such a thing as “gay marriage”, a marriage is between man and the woman

p.s. stop abusing apartheid victims by equaling them to some bigot Irish gays

I am sure those who have been killed because they were identified as gay would have gladly agreed to carry a passbook in return for a life . No comparison is right.

I disagree – seeing stories like this is very helpful to closeted homosexuals and could help inspire them to come out. In the future hopefully well see none of these headlines, but for now they do serve a valuable purpose.

It’s true that it’s a pity we’re all so obsessed about sexual orientation – personally I hate when people bring it up. But at the moment it’s important to highlight when it’s something like this because it’s exactly BECAUSE of sexual orientation that people get discriminated against. It’s only now that Cian felt he could step up and admit he’s gay without being persecuted for it and it’s still a brave decision to do so.

If no one cared about sexual identity or orientation then it’d be stupid and offensive to bring it up all the time. But since lgbtq people have had to hide and stay silent about their orientation for so long, it’s very important that people speak out about it.