Dónal Óg Cusack, Star Irish Athlete Comes Out

Its like hockey only brutal! I have seen a few matches while visiting mates over there (mainly amateur) and its a fun sport akin to the scots shinty both of which should be better known than they are.

Good for him for feeling contented and comfortable enough to come out and I'm glad he has got the support of his team mates, hopefully this might encourage more people to take the leap.

Found a clip which says hes playing in it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMhiLF5B8WM

but I long for the day when stories like this have an addendum to the headline that says, 'Yes, I'm gay -- so what?' or more for the day when these stories don't even make news anymore.  Seems like a stand-up guy to me, like most of the Irish.  

We need more athletes to come out while they're still playing. And this is such heartwarming news, I'm not even going to touch that "he's a top man" line. ;)

Is it bad that when I read the line "he’s a great man and has so much for all of us. " I immediately thought dirty hurling related thoughts?

I've just joined hurling at my uni, and no one on the team seems to care that I like men, too, I just think it's not as homophobic as, say, football. It's when football players come out that I think things will really change. 

If you follow Irish news this isn't getting a lot of coverage because most people in the Republic don't care he's gay. Even after reading some of the articles they mention the fact then they go on to talk about other stuff mentioned in his biography. Pity current Irish legislation isn't at the same level as public opinion.

 

football players come out?(is because they have a lot  of fans around the world?.) 

 

"He’s a top man," said Ben O’Connor, Cork All-Ireland winning captain in 2004.

that's all. :-P

...and yet they're "all fully behind him."  So at the very least, he's versatile.

But seriously, this is good news for gays in sports.  Here's hoping it becomes a trend (and involves athletes from more mainstream sports, as well).

But I don't follow Hurling :(

 But whatever: this is very nice news :) 

"In spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition andsympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody"-AldousHuxley

can look it up on youtube. There is loads of footage. Hurling is the fastest field sport in the world (apparently but dont quote me).

 

As for the media reaction....most people on radio and in newspapers are pretty much "Donal óg cusack is gay...okay. Anyway where were we." Nobody seems to give a damn. There is an Irishforums website and again most the comments were all positive or apathetic. Many people now don't give a damn who is gay and who is not (okay it is nice for a bit of idle gossip). The reaction to the funeral of Stephen Gately just proves it. Whether you are gay or not you are one of us. 

i just found on the ww.rte.ie website a video piece from the 6 o'clock news. If you go to the bottom of the page (Video Highlights) the 4th piece : Six One News: Cusack praised for autobiography declaration

A good barometer of the general response in Ireland can be found by reading the relevant thread on boards.ie, basically Ireland's biggest message board. Generally positive - a few suggestions that it's kinda cynical to use this to hawk his autobiography, but only a handful of actually negative comments and, most heartening of all, they got hopped on fairly quickly by the majority of people saying they'd have no problem with it and wishing him well. A big part of that comes from the fact that this isn't exactly a shock - Dónal Óg Cusack's sexuality has been an open secret for years, even among people like me who know almost nothing about GAA.

One thing I find particularly heartening, though, is that Cusack isn't a particularly popular player. It's too boring and complicated to go into (it's tied into the fact that some GAA players want the sport to turn professional while the GAA itself and many others don't), but the number of messages on the thread I linked saying "He's still a twonk, but fair play to him for his honesty - I'd never hold that against him" is nice. If he was someone generally popular and well-liked (one of the Ó hAilpíns for instance) it'd be easy to write off a positive response as being personally linked. A disliked figure getting support en masse is much cooler :)

Not the same impact as say a Roger Federer or Brent Favre coming out, but still a step in the right direction.  Although, the seriousness of his look in both the article and his book cover bring the mood down a little bit.

Donal Og's autobiography is serialised in the Irish edition of The Daily Mail.

This is the same paper that last week publish Jan Moir's column about Stephen Gately's un-natural death. Although only in its UK edition and not the Irish one.

It also is the paper that gives a regular column to well-known anti-gay rights columnist Brenda Power (who hides her homophobia behind 'think of the children' style bigotry)

In today's Irish Daily Mail that continues to call Andrew Cowles, Stephen Gately's partner.

But we should probably be thankful for the small mercy that they recognise the relationship, at all.

Not everyone has used the term "Husband" BBC and channel 4 both used "Partner" some gay people like that term others do not, As much as I hate the DM I do not think its a big deal to use the correct legal term.

Michael I give you a link of an irish paper where there are a lot of comments: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/irsquom-gay-reveals-gaa-star-in-new-autobiography-14535587.html