The candidacy of David Norris for the Irish presidency seems to be dead. This is kind of a bummer, for reasons I suppose I should explain.
Norris is the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in Ireland. He's also a big fan of Joyce -- I met him at a conference once, and he knows me as someone in the audience of an anecdote he was telling. Just ask him, I'm sure he remembers.
Anyway, Norris has genuinely done a lot for civil rights in the Republic; I suppose some are turned off by his bombast, but then again, accusing an Irish politician of bombast is, er, like accusing a bombastic person of being bombastic. A friend of mine from Dublin -- a GAY friend -- told me once that "Norris, say what you like, is there." And then this friend told me that every other gay person in the gay scene in Dublin was an insufferable shit. (My friend was in theater.) And then we got drunk. But the wider point is true -- say what you like, Norris has for over three decades now been there. Being unapologetically gay in Ireland for most of your adult life since the 1970s is balls, my friend. Balls.
So he was running for the Irish presidency -- an office that has no meaning in terms of immediate political power, but has all kinds of symbolic valences, which can sometimes have powerful international repercussions, especially after the tenure of Mary Robinson.
But to cut to the chase. Norris was very close to becoming an openly gay head of state in a Western democracy.
Probably won't happen now, though.
David Norris's presidential campaign suffered a serious blow last night when three Independent TDs withdrew their pledge to support the Trinity Senator’s nomination.
Dublin TD Finian McGrath said he could no longer support the nomination. Expressing deep regret for his decision, he said “children and the presidency have to come first”. Mr McGrath was the co-ordinator of the campaign to get the backing of 20 Oireachtas members for Mr Norris’s nomination.
Waterford TD John Halligan also announced he was withdrawing his support, as did Donegal South West TD Thomas Pringle. “I believe Senator Norris is a decent man and I acknowledge the great work he has done for the less well-off in our society, particularly on civil rights issues,” said Mr Halligan. “However, I feel it was a great error of judgment on his part to write the letter to the Israeli authorities appealing for leniency for Ezra Yitzhak Nawi,” said Mr Halligan.
What is this all about...? Well, Norris used to be in a relationship with Nawi, who was prosecuted by the Israeli government for having sex with a 15 year old Palestinian boy. Norris was not in the relationship with Nawi at the time of the incident, but he sent a character reference to the Israeli court, and a rather longer memo to Nawi's defense.
It's all kind of complicated and weird and moralistic in the best Irish committee-room tradition. Norris as far as I can tell gives his best side here -- but this is probably right.
It's fucked up for a bunch of reasons; that this all dates from 1997 is only one of them. Others... well, we'll leave them there.
Ireland was damn close to being the first nation to have elected an openly gay head of state, and I would have met the guy. FUCK.