British electronic pop duo Pet Shop
Boys have turned an impassioned speech on homophobia into a dance
track.
The speech was a response by Miss Panti
Bliss, considered Ireland's top drag queen.
Panti, also known as 45-year-old Rory
O'Neill, delivered the speech on February 1 at Ireland's national
theater, the Abbey, following fallout from a television appearance on
RTE.
During the broadcast, O'Neill was asked
to weigh in on anti-gay attitudes in Ireland. He said a few
columnists were “horrible and mean about gays” and, when pressed
for names, he named two columnists and a small Catholic group opposed
to marriage equality.
Those mentioned threatened RTE and
O'Neill with legal action, arguing that they had been unfairly
labeled as homophobes.
Appearing as Panti, O'Neill delivered
his rebuttal in an eloquent 10-minute speech that has since gone
viral.
“Have any of you ever come home in
the evening and turned on the television and there is a panel of
people – nice people, respectable people, smart people, the kind of
people who make good neighborly neighbors and write for newspapers,”
Panti told the Abbey audience. “And they are having a reasoned
debate about you. About what kind of a person you are, about whether
you are capable of being a good parent, about whether you want to
destroy marriage, about whether you are safe around children, about
whether God herself thinks you are an abomination, about whether in
fact you are 'intrinsically disordered.' And even the nice TV
presenter lady who you feel like you know thinks it's perfectly okay
that they are all having this reasonable debate about who you are and
what rights you 'deserve.'”
“And that feels oppressive.”
“Three weeks ago I was on the
television and I said that I believed that people who actively
campaign for gay people to be treated less or differently are, in my
gay opinion, homophobic. Some people, people who actively campaign
for gay people to be treated less under the law took great exception
at this characterization and threatened legal action against me and
RTÉ. RTÉ, in its wisdom, decided incredibly quickly to hand over a
huge sum of money to make it go away. I haven't been so lucky.”
“And for the last three weeks I have
been lectured by heterosexual people about what homophobia is and who
should be allowed identify it. Straight people – ministers,
senators, lawyers, journalists – have lined up to tell me what
homophobia is and what I am allowed to feel oppressed by. People who
have never experienced homophobia in their lives, people who have
never checked themselves at a pedestrian crossing, have told me that
unless I am being thrown in prison or herded onto a cattle train,
then it is not homophobia.”
“And that feels oppressive.”
(Listen
to the dance track at Soundcloud.)