‘We are going to make history tomorrow’. That is what the woman said to me at the last house I canvassed 5 years ago. I hadn’t wanted to ring her doorbell. I could see the outline of the Virgin Mary holy water bottle through the frosted window. I was tired, tired #marrefmemories
of begging for our rights door to door, tired of the horrible things being said unchecked about me & every queer person in the name of media balance, tired of closeting myself as a bi person because it was an inconvenient narrative, tired of a campaign for a change that didn’t
require a constitutional vote and a humiliating debate about us, tired of being spat at, tired of being called a deviant, just so tired. My feet hurt, it was my last house & we had been campaigning for months. She opened the door & I offered her my last precious Gay Byrne leaflet
I had been rationing them, because Gay seemed to be the Trojan horse of human rights, once people saw him on the leaflet, they were a bit more open to having the chats but this was Last Chance Saloon. ‘Save your leaflet Love’ she said. Embarrassingly I thought I was going to cry
thinking she was going to rebuke me. ‘You have all yeses in this house... we are going to make history tomorrow’. I did cry then, embarrassing messy tears of relief. I will never forget her. I will never forget going home that night and allowing myself for the first time in
months to think that we might win it. That it could happen. It was the right result in the end but it was a hard won thing & it had a huge negative impact on so many. To say nothing of the many people who lived their whole lives in shame & who never got to celebrate the ‘historic
victory’. It was a yes. I am grateful for that. I am grateful for the lessons we learned about affecting political change, grass roots activism & the way we started to look at ourselves as a country. I am grateful to that woman & her words that last night. #MarRefMemories 🌈
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