Coming Out: Irish Gay Experiences »

"Coming Out: Gay Experiences is a testament to the lives of gay women and men, their families and friends in Ireland over the past few decades. It is a testament, some of the time, that contains fear and pain, lives maimed, decisions postponed, secrecy and shame. Equally, it is a testament to joy, acceptance and fulfillment. It is a tribute too, to those organisations and individuals who offered help with such selfless ease and care when help was desperately needed by gay people and by those close to them. These stories are useful now, not only as history - what the search for love and sexual self-realisation was like in a dark time - but part of what is happening all around us still, as, in the silence of the self, and in the society we have built, young people come to terms with who they really are and who they might become." This book is offered as a resource not just for the gay community, but also for their family, friends, work colleagues, indeed anyone who wishes to understand what being gay means. Ultimately this book asks the question: 'Is it better to be hated for what we are than loved for what we are not?'.