Tonie Walsh (born 25 December 1960 in Dublin, Ireland) is an LGBT rights activist, journalist, disc jockey, founding editor of Gay Community News (Dublin) and founder of the Irish Queer Archive. [1]
Tonie Walsh (born 25 December 1960 in Dublin, Ireland) is an LGBT rights activist, journalist, disc jockey, founding editor of Gay Community News (Dublin) and founder of the Irish Queer Archive. [1]
Walsh spent most of his childhood in Clonmel, County Tipperary. His twenties were spent mainly in the gay civil rights movement in Dublin, during which time he was one of the prime movers behind Dublin's LGBT community space, the Hirschfeld Centre. [2]
Walsh was president of the National LGBT Federation (NXF) from 1984 to 1988, at a time when it was co-litigant with Senator David Norris in his constitutional action (Norris v. Attorney General). During this period Walsh worked as a staff reporter with Ireland's first commercial gay magazine, OUT, which folded in 1988. Walsh along with gay activist Catherine Glendon founded Gay Community News , [3] an A3 newspaper which he also edited during its first two years. GCN is Ireland's longest-running gay publication.
He ran for election in the 1989 Irish general election in the Dublin South-East constituency as an independent but supported by the Gay and Lesbian Equality Campaign. [4]
After ten years of activism, Walsh followed his boyfriend to London where he remained for a time, before returning to his native town and launching himself as a DJ and club promoter. Throughout the 1990s, Walsh played at well known club nights among them Horny Organ Tribe, Elevator, the fetish club GAG, Powderbubble, H.A.M., Cork's club Telefunkin and the HIV/AIDS fund-raising alternative beauty pageant Alternative Miss Ireland . [5]
In 1997, he reorganised the National LGBT Federation archive holdings into what would later become the Irish Queer Archive (IQA). Drawing on materials from IQA's collection, Walsh curated both "Pride and Protest" at Belfast's Central Library (2005) and "Revolting Homosexuals" (Outhouse and GUBU, Dublin 2004). "A Liberating Party", a site-specific exhibition on the history of LGBT Pride in Ireland commissioned by Thisispopbaby, was created for Dublin's Project Arts Centre in 2009. It has since gone on to tour art centres and libraries across Ireland. [6] On 16 June 2008, the Irish Queer Archive officially transferred its materials to the National Library of Ireland marking it as a significant and historical event. [7]
Walsh initiated the "Queer History Walking Tour of Dublin" in 2009 when he and longtime friend and political associate David Norris entertained over 100 people on a three-hour stroll across Dublin city. The tour became an instant success and has been a permanent feature of Dublin Pride ever since.
In 2006, Tonie Walsh retired as a professional DJ and club promoter to concentrate on a number of research and writing projects. He spent much of the following decade living at Clonmel, being a full-time carer to his mother, Sylvia, who had Parkinson's and dementia.[ citation needed ]
As an advocate for a more holistic and upfront sexual health education strategy in Ireland, Tonie Walsh publicly declared his HIV Poz status in a Facebook 'manifesto' marking World AIDS Day 2015. The following year, at a seminar in Maynooth University he launched a campaign to build an Irish AIDS Memorial. The campaign is currently at community consultation stage. [8]
In 2017, Dublin's celebrated theatre and performance group, thisispopbaby, signalled its plan to put Walsh on stage in a one-man show centred around his experience as a campaigner, as 'a witness to massive social upheaval in Ireland', entitled, "I Am Tonie Walsh". Presented in development at the Dublin Theatre Festival 2017, 'I Am Tonie Walsh' is listed as documentary theatre about "active citizenship, creativity over consumption, community; about standing up for what is right – and being fabulous while doing so". [9] Described by director, Tom Creed as a "meditation on grief", the show premiered at Dublin's Project Arts Centre in Winter 2018. Walsh has described the show as "part catharsis, part entertainment...a reassessment". [10]
He is the brother of Paul Walsh, one-time lead singer of Dublin indie band, Royseven. Walsh is a great-grandson of Hector Hughes, former Labour MP for Aberdeen (UK), and Isa Hughes (née Lawler), suffragist and founding secretary-manager of Dublin's Gate Theatre. His great-uncle, Liam Ó Briain was a noted civil rights activist and instigator of the Galway theatre Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe. [11]
Walsh continues to independently curate the Irish Queer Archive and hosts regular walking tours.
The Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform was an organisation set up to campaign for the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in the 1970s. Its most prominent leader was David Norris, an English studies lecturer in Trinity College Dublin, Joycean scholar and from the 1980s to the present a member of Seanad Éireann.
Rory O'Neill, also known by his stage names Panti, Panti Bliss and Pandora Panti Bliss, is a drag queen and gay rights activist from Ballinrobe, County Mayo, Ireland.
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Gay Community News (GCN) is Ireland's longest-running free LGBTQ+ publication and press; it is based in Dublin, and founded in 1988. It has been referred to as the "paper of record" for the Irish LGBTQ+ community.
A gay icon is a public figure who is regarded as a cultural icon by members of the LGBT community. Such figures usually have a devoted LGBT fanbase and act as allies to the LGBT community, often through their work, or they have been "openly appreciative of their gay fanbase". Many gay icons also have a camp aesthetic style, which is part of their appeal to LGBT individuals.
Gay Community News was an American weekly newspaper published in Boston, Massachusetts from 1973 to 1999. Designed as a resource for the LGBT community, the newspaper reported a wide variety of gay and lesbian-related news.
LGBTQ+ life on the island of Ireland is made up of persons who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or otherwise.
Irish Queer Archive (IQA) is a comprehensive collection of material in Ireland relating to homosexuality, LGBT literature and general queer studies.
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The National LGBT Federation (NXF) is a non-governmental organisation in Dublin, Ireland, which focuses on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights.
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Philip F. Tyler was an Irish actor and television presenter.
Outhouse LGBTQ+ Centre is a community centre and café for LGBTQ+ people on Capel Street in Dublin, Ireland. It was preceded by the Hirschfeld Centre, the first gay and lesbian community centre in Ireland. It provides a range of services and facilities including HIV testing, a theatre, cafe and Ireland's only queer library. Outhouse's advocacy priorities are poverty, homelessness, and the safety of the LGBTQ+ community, and aims to develop a new advocacy casework support service. In 2016, 35,000 people visited the centre.
Tonie Walsh, a long-time observer of the gay rights movement and founder of the Irish Queer Archive, says that in liberal Ireland, people tend to live in a cultural bubble.