IT’S HARD TO believe it has been 10 years since Grá became the law. Many people I know have very fond memories of canvassing in the Marriage Equality Referendum. I had a chance to reflect upon this as my friend and now Senator Laura Harmon hosted a briefing in Leinster House to mark the 10th anniversary of the referendum which brought together many of the people who made up the backbone of the campaign.

This gave me reason to reflect because truth be told, I don’t have any memories of the Marriage Equality Referendum. I was not politically active and I did not canvass or campaign. I was struggling internally at the time with my own sense of self.

I didn’t really know any gay people growing up or certainly any people who were publicly out there as gay – other than David Norris. I didn’t have any role models because as far as I was aware they didn’t exist, other than in the shadows.

I suppose in reality, I probably always knew deep down that I was gay but spent my entire adolescence trying in vain to run away from myself. I thought that was what society expected of me.

I remember in primary and secondary school people using casual homophobia as part of the day-to-day banter that comes with school and no one batted an eyelid, certainly not me.

I also distinctly recall growing up being aware of a couple nearby who were clearly a lesbian couple and being told that they were “friends” because there were no openly LGBT couples in Limerick. None that we knew or talked about.

Growing up, I never felt that I fitted in anywhere. I didn’t really like girls other than to hang around with and gossip to, nor was I particularly sporty. But I felt the pressure of heteronormative conformity.

At one point, I even nearly, almost had a girlfriend. I had constructed a version of myself with such a web of deceit around it that I felt like I would never be able to wind my way out of it.

I had spent so long in denial that I felt like it would look worse to un-deny it.

As the referendum campaign wore on 10 years ago and more and more people told their stories, I felt something change both in the way Irish society perceived and interacted with LGBT people but also in the way I felt about myself. I no longer felt that sense of otherness that comes with not fitting in.

I heard and saw people who sounded like me, people telling their personal stories, every day on radio, television and on social media. I remember hearing Mary McAleese and her son Justin speak openly and bravely and thinking “yeah that sounds familiar”.

I knew once that day in May came and the Referendum passed, I had to do something. I couldn’t continue living in a web of lies. I have always been an extrovert, I rarely stop talking, ever, but there was this was one thing I could not ever say.

I knew I couldn’t continue to live with one part of myself, my identity buried deeply in the heart of my soul. It took me another nearly two years to get around to telling everyone in my life that I was gay – something that was probably not a surprise to anyone who knew me well enough.

I had finally come not just to accept who I really was but also to love and appreciate my true self. And with that sense of love and appreciation came a confidence – that I deserved and needed better; that I deserved the same rights as my peers to live and to love and to marry whomever, if the opportunity arose.

I became politically active in the years after the referendum. It was only really when I joined the Labour Party, a party that has spent most of its existence dragging Ireland feet first into the 21st century, that I found my voice and finally felt confident enough to be who I really am.

The Marriage Referendum was a seminal moment in Irish history. It finally brought LGBT people in out of the cold or at least that is what it felt like for a while.

But unfortunately, things have not continued to improve for LGBTQ+ people.

Transphobia is the new homophobia, and the world is without doubt more dangerous than it was a decade ago. We must redouble our efforts to stamp this and all forms of hatred and intolerance out entirely.

Less than 1% of Irish society identify as trans, a tiny group of marginalised people who are now bearing the brunt of a world of toxicity that is only growing.

The toxic discourse that has now become mainstream must not prevail. We must put ourselves back on the path to progress, on the path to tolerance and on the path to acceptance.

We must remember, why we voted to make Grá the law, why we stopped othering LGBT people and move to strengthen and not weaken the LGBTQ+ rights, invest in the proper compassionate healthcare for trans people and introduce fit for purpose legislation and a real plan to tackle hate speech.

These are not woke issues, at least not for those of us who identify as LGBTQ+, this about safeguarding our future, our health and our very existence.

Things may be getting worse, but we proved 10 years ago that it doesn’t have to be like that and there is always hope for us as a society to use that Irish spirit of meitheal to turn things around and put the country back on the path of progress.

Conor Sheehan is a Labour Party TD