Gay Guide to Dublin
On 22 May 2015 Ireland became the first country in the world to introduce same-sex marriage by popular vote, with just over 62 percent voting yes and more than 1.2 million people turning out. What makes that remarkable is how recent the starting line was. Ireland did not decriminalize homosexuality until 1993, after a long campaign by the Trinity College senator David Norris, who lost in the Irish courts and then won in Strasbourg. Twenty-two years separated decriminalization from marriage, which is about as fast as a country has ever moved on this.
The George, on South Great George's Street, is the oldest gay bar in the country and still the default first stop, running drag and bingo most nights of the week. PantiBar belongs to Panti Bliss, whose 2014 Noble Call speech from the stage of the Abbey Theatre traveled around the world in the run-up to the referendum and is generally reckoned to have shifted the conversation. Street 66 and The Pennylane fill in the rest.
Mother is the Saturday night institution, with Euphoria and the Honey Pot covering the other ends of the week, and the Boilerhouse handles the sauna side. The Outhouse LGBTQ+ Centre on Capel Street is the community anchor and runs a café worth using in daylight.
Dublin Pride takes the last weekend of June and GAZE programs the film festival. The Oscar Wilde sculpture reclines in Merrion Square, opposite the house he grew up in.
The scene here is small, concentrated and unusually sociable: Dublin is expensive and the bars are few, so everyone ends up in the same three rooms, which is either the charm or the problem depending on the night.