Sex, Love, and Everyday Life: A History of Northern Ireland before Gay Liberation

Ask the average person on the street what they know about Northern Ireland’s LGBTQ+ or ‘queer’ history, and they will likely mention the Reverend Ian Paisley’s notorious campaign to ‘Save Ulster from Sodomy’ or recent lags in marriage equality. A few, perhaps, might more positively remember the gay rights movement that championed social and legal change from the 1970s, or the irrepressible rise of Belfast Pride. But the everyday loves and lives of the more distant past have been ignored, forgotten, or just erased. In this talk, Dr Tom Hulme (Queen’s University Belfast) brings to life a whole host of queer characters and events in Northern Ireland’s past, from the ‘female husband’ who worked in Belfast’s docks in the 1880s to the region’s first lesbian activist in the 1960s; the scandalous discovery of a Victorian male brothel to the homosexual circulation of infamous Jazz Age novels.