*Bernárd Lynch and his husband Billy Desmond. Photograph: Eamon Ward
A STANDING OVATION greeted Bernárd Lynch’s address at the headquarters of Clare County Council on Friday afternoon.
Ennis native Lynch, a human rights champion was honoured with a civic reception by the local authority.
There was total silence in Áras Contae an Chláir as Bernárd delivered a powerful speech touching on acceptance, injustice, honour and gratitude, urging people to never be bullied into silence or to be made a victim. He began by quoting the final line from WB Yeats’ ‘Remorse For Intemperate Speech’, “I carry from my mother’s womb, A fanatic heart”.
He said, “This honour conferred on me is not simply about me, it is about all women and men, the great diaspora who had to leave this beautiful land of ours because we did not fit in, we were but thankfully no longer are sexual outlaws, having been forced out of the country we live not for education or employment like 1000s of my generation, simply and souly for being born gay or LGBT as God made us”.
When getting the highest honour that Clare County Council can bestow on a group or individual, Bernárd paid homage to the persons he assisted in New York City who were in their dying days and hours. “I want to particularly honour today those with AIDS who left Ireland and could never come home even to die, I’m convinced that home is not a place after all but an irrevocable condition of the heart. As young gay boys we were often called sissies or being like a girl, this is a badge I now wear with honour, I want to do this with all women of Ireland, especially unmarried mothers and their infant children, they too were sexual outlaws”.
Acts of the past have affected us all, he maintained. “Everyone from the highest to the lowest is wounded, everyone is hurting and imperfect, there are moments in life when we barely get enough light to take the next step but we are only expected to take the step for which life has been given, there are moments in life and there needn’t be many and may not at the time seem too important, it can redeem and justify the bewilderment, investing us with the courage not just to endure but to profit from it, such experiences teach us the price of human connection”.
Taking on the system can always offer glimmers of hope, Bernárd stressed. “Each time a person stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the life of others or strikes out against injustice, they send a tiny ripple of hope, this ripple can become a spring, a river, an ocean sweeping down centuries of ignorance, bigotry and injustice, fado fado when I started out seeking justice, it seemed to me that I would have to bear in mind two paradigms intrinsically marked, the first was acceptance, acceptable totally and without rancour, of life as it is and people as they are, in life it goes without saying injustice is everywhere and common place in our world. Even though injustice is common place we must never take it or accept it as common place, we must fight all injustices”.
“A lot of hurt in life is caused by people not knowing, if we bring so much courage to the world, the world must kill us in order to break us, the world breaks everybody, if we survive the brokenness we become strong in the broken places, we become compassionate, endlessly compassionate. In the war against AIDS, working with young men in New York City in their twenties, some younger, some older, many of them Irish, at least five from Ennis, not old enough to imagine their lives, never mind their thoughts, often abandoned by their own families, rejected by the church who blamed them for their own illnesses, I and advocates knew if we kept faith in each other we would not be useless, we could do for others what had not been done for us, ‘it is not everyday that we are needed, not indeed that we were personally needed, others would have met the challenge equally well if not better’,” he added while quoting Samuel Beckett.
He told the civic reception, he is still determined to fight injustices. “We have kept our appointment with time, we are not saints, not at all but we have kept our appointment in time, the war is still in me and will be in me for as long as I live, for soldiers who have been bloodied, we cannot fit in”.
Bernárd recounted, “In the AIDS pandemic, we wanted everything and we had nothing, a God not over us but a God with us, our prayers catching fire in the action of love, let my people free was our cry, it was an ancient cry of Moses to Faro, the cry of our mothers and fathers against the yolk of colonialism, of Daniel O’Connell and Charles Stewart Parnell who got up, stood up and stayed up against the might of the Empire given extension to the saying where Clare leads let Ireland follow, where Clare leads let the world follow”.
He continued, “The freedom I sought and I have now as a human being as a Clare man is in my blood, your blood, mental slavery ends where imagination begins, never ever be bullied into silence, never allow yourself to be made a victim, define yourself. As we know, every way holds the beauty of its curve to the retreat of the one that precedes it and so do I owe so much to so many who have gone before me, when we accept our limitations in ourselves and outside of ourselves we can do something to change those limitations, we will not live forever, in this time we are free to do whatever we can, in accepting he worse we can do our best. My honour and intelligence told me that freedom not happiness is the precious stone, one cannot cling to happiness, Saoirse and freedom, lasting freedom like lasting love, friendship and justice is only possible through forgiveness, the weak can never forgive”.
Ireland today has “changed beyond recognition, this land of ours is a light to the whole world for LGBTQIA+ and others,” he noted. “This is Pride month, a month where we as LGBTQIA+ celebrate our freedoms. Life is full of comings and goings, for everything we take with us, there is something we leave behind. I leave you with my profound gratitude,” Bernárd concluded.
