Martin Wainwright: Peter Tatchell recruits unionist hero for gay rights cause
[Martin Wainwright is northern editor of the Guardian.]
King Billy, the potent hero of Northern Ireland's unionists, will be summoned tonight in aid of the province's embattled gay community.
Claims that the warrior monarch, portrayed in manly battle on wall paintings across Ulster, promoted handsome young retainers and chose lovers from among them, will be revived by the gay campaigner Peter Tatchell.
In the Amnesty International Pride lecture in Belfast tonight, Tatchell plans to rehearse 17th-century evidence that William III might have welcomed the city's week-long gay pride festival.
Backing for the theory includes the delicate comment by William's contemporary and strong supporter Gilbert Burnet, the Bishop of Salisbury, that the king had one flaw, which was "too tender to be put in writing". Tatchell has deliberately chosen the unionist icon to attack what he will call "a pattern of homophobia that seems to characterise sections of Northern Irish society".
He said yesterday: "It is disturbing that senior Northern Irish politicians seem to think the gay community is fair game."
The sallies follow anti-gay comments by two leading Democratic Unionists, Ian Paisley jr and the MP for Strangford, Iris Robinson, whose husband, Peter, is Northern Ireland's first minister. Paisley described homosexuality as repulsive to him, while Robinson said her Christian beliefs led her to see it as an abomination...
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King Billy, the potent hero of Northern Ireland's unionists, will be summoned tonight in aid of the province's embattled gay community.
Claims that the warrior monarch, portrayed in manly battle on wall paintings across Ulster, promoted handsome young retainers and chose lovers from among them, will be revived by the gay campaigner Peter Tatchell.
In the Amnesty International Pride lecture in Belfast tonight, Tatchell plans to rehearse 17th-century evidence that William III might have welcomed the city's week-long gay pride festival.
Backing for the theory includes the delicate comment by William's contemporary and strong supporter Gilbert Burnet, the Bishop of Salisbury, that the king had one flaw, which was "too tender to be put in writing". Tatchell has deliberately chosen the unionist icon to attack what he will call "a pattern of homophobia that seems to characterise sections of Northern Irish society".
He said yesterday: "It is disturbing that senior Northern Irish politicians seem to think the gay community is fair game."
The sallies follow anti-gay comments by two leading Democratic Unionists, Ian Paisley jr and the MP for Strangford, Iris Robinson, whose husband, Peter, is Northern Ireland's first minister. Paisley described homosexuality as repulsive to him, while Robinson said her Christian beliefs led her to see it as an abomination...