REMEMBRANCE
Tarlach Mac Niallais, 57, Dies from COVID-19
Son of Belfast became popular Queens LGBTQ activist, disability rights advocate
BY BRENDAN FAY
Tarlach Mac Niallais, a
57-year-old son of Belfast
and an LGBTQ activist
and disability rights advocate
in New York for more than
three decades, died April 1 from
complications of the coronavirus
at New York-Presbyterian/ Weill
Cornell Medical Center.
Deprived of the time to say goodbye,
we hold our memories of Tarlach
in heart and mind. There we
see him smiling, singing, hugging,
dancing, and advocating passionately.
We remember Tarlach’s
big-hearted and fearless personality
lighting up and warming every
room and every life he entered and
every street he walked, danced,
and rallied on.
It was Tarlach’s close friend and
the St. Pat’s For All Parade co-chair
Kathleen Walsh D’Arcy who told us
of a last text from the hospital on
March 30, when he wrote, “Here we
go! Wish me luck, I’m about to be
intubated.”
His brothers Brendan and Tony
said the family spoke with Tarlach
while he was in the hospital. His
other siblings included Sean, Patsy,
Gerry, Liam, Christine, Una,
Marie, and the late Geraldine. He
was the 10th of the 11 children.
A nurse urged Tarlach’s spouse
Juan Nepomuceno and the Mac
Niallais family to send messages
that she could whisper into his
ear; his last moments were hearing
those words of love.
The last images I have of Tarlach
are from the weekend of our St.
Pat’s For All Parade in Sunnyside/
Woodside on March 1. Only a mere
four weeks ago, it already feels like
another world.
At Manhattan’s Irish Arts Center
concert two evenings earlier, as
Mick Moloney, our grand marshal,
began singing the Tommy Sands
classic “Daughters and Sons,” Tarlach’s
voice soared above the audience
for the chorus.
On the way home to Queens that
night he sang the Tom Robinson’s
anthem “(Sing If You’re) Glad to Be
Gay.”
COURTESY OF BRENDAN FAY
Tarlach Mac Niallais and his husband Juan Nepomuceno.
Tarlach Mac Niallais became a gay nationalist hero in the north of Ireland when he wore a T-shirt
answering the bigoted unionists who rallied to Save Ulster from Sodomy.
Come March 1, with Lisa Fane,
Tarlach coordinated registration
for the St. Pat’s For All Parade. After
the parade as we all relaxed at
Saints and Sinners in Woodside,
I remember him, his arm around
Juan, the love of his life, singing
songs and telling parade stories.
He was especially proud to get a
picture of himself with his hero Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez.
Whether singing a song about
freedom, debating a point about
LGBTQ equality, dancing with
friends, or rallying for immigration
rights, Tarlach Mac Niallais, over
35 years, lived as a popular activist
in New York’s Irish, LGBTQ, and
COURTESY OF LISA GUIDO
disabilities communities.
In his large, tight-knit large family,
he grew up in a Belfast beset
by The Troubles, witnessing on a
daily basis sectarian violence, oppression,
and the denial of civil
rights. His early involvement in
community politics was with the
Belfast Youth against H-Block —
the infamous internment camps at
the Long Kesh Detention Centre.
All of that awakened in him a passion
for justice. Spending time in
London and Manchester, he also
saw the growing movement for gay
liberation, and returning to Belfast
from one trip to London he decided
to come out.
Many years later, at a meeting of
New York’s Irish LGBTQ Lavender
and Green Alliance, he recalled
marching in an anti-internment
protest on the Falls Road, saying,
“When I came back with a Troops
— Out delegation and walked up
the Falls behind a gay banner, it
was an amazing feeling. After it, I
went home to tell me Ma and Da.”
The two gay banners in that
march — Irish Gays in London and
Brixton Gays — Tarlach said, were
“the fi rst time that gay banners
had ever been carried on such a
demonstration in Belfast.”
Tarlach’s coming out was not
easy at fi rst for his parents, and
he would leave home at 18. But his
unrelenting honesty and openness
eventually won him the affection
and admiration of his family.
Tarlach recalled those early
years on a return trip home for
Belfast Pride in 2018. That visit
was a huge moment for him, with
more than 60 of his extended family
joining him at the parade with
the beautiful sight of Rainbow
Flags up and down the streets of
his Belfast childhood. The Newington
bar that had thrown him out
back in the day for kissing another
gay youth was now decorated with
a Rainbow Flag, and he was proud
of the struggle that brought equality
to the north of Ireland — as well
as his role in that story.
While the early 1980s was a
time when most young Irish gay
men and lesbians remained silent
and invisible Tarlach was an active
leader of Lesbians and Gays
against H -Block and Armagh as
well as Gays against Imperialism.
He was out, loud, and proud, making
the connections between movements
for LGBTQ equality and for
national liberation. He participated
in forums and marches, and wrote
op-eds challenging the all too common
prejudice, inequality, and violence
faced by gay youth.
After the British gay decriminalization
laws were fi nally extended
to the north of Ireland in 1982, the
National Union of Students Lesbi-
➤ TARLACH MAC NIALLAIS, continued on p.11
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