➤ TARLACH MAC NIALLAIS, from p.10
an and Gay Conference decided to
hold its meeting the following October
at Queen’s University Belfast.
The 150 delegates from all over Ireland
and Britain were met by the
Save Ulster from Sodomy protest by
the pro-British Democratic Unionist
Party and the Free Presbyterian
Church led by the fi rebrand Reverend
Ian Paisley. With characteristic
humor and defi ance, Tarlach
led the students in responding
with their own Save Sodomy from
Ulster counter campaign. Tarlach
wore the message on his T- shirt —
the image appearing on the front
page of Belfast’s paper. He had become
a nationalist gay hero.
The passion for social justice
Tarlach learned early in life led him
to embrace a career of youth work,
fi rst in Belfast’s New Lodge district.
While many in that fi eld counseled
the closet for Tarlach, there was
no going back. He was “out of the
closet and into the street.”
Tarlach emigrated to New York
in 1985. I met Tarlach at one of
New York’s Pride Marches, and he
participated in our early organizing
efforts among Irish lesbian and
gay immigrants. Once, we dared
to waltz together céilí style at the
14th Street Eagle Tavern’s Monday
evening Irish music sessions.
When the Irish Lesbian and Gay
Organization (ILGO) formed in
1990, Tarlach became an uncompromising
spokesperson on both
sides of the Atlantic. He hugged
easily and was both principled
and fi erce when it came to human
rights. He — along with the Irish
writer Malachy McCourt — joined
the fi rst TV debate over including
LGBTQ folks in Manhattan’s
St. Patrick’s Day Parade, arguing
against anti-gay religious fanatics.
March 16, 1991 was a tense and
historic day when Tarlach and his
mother marched with ILGO members
and Mayor David Dinkins in
the Fifth Avenue parade. It was an
intimate, proud moment for a Belfast
mom and her fearless gay son.
For Pride in 1991, he and partner
Kevin Potter invited a group of us
to their Queens apartment to celebrate
their love with a union ceremony.
Their relationship lasted for
15 years, and they remained close
friends for life. The two spoke three
days before Tarlach’s death, when
Kevin urged him to seek medical
help for his fever and cough.
In early 1992, Tarlach was tireless
in gathering support for ILGO
from prominent civil rights leaders
in Ireland and Irish America,
including Eamonn McCann, Nell
McCafferty, Bernadette Devlin
McAliskey, Frank Durkan, Cody
McCone, Terry George, and the Jesuit
priest Father Daniel Berrigan.
In March 1993, when hundreds
of us were arrested at the St. Patrick’s
Parade, I was with Tarlach,
who couldn’t have better company.
As we were placed in the back of
the police van, we defi antly waved
to the arresting offi cers and the
gathered crowd. To pass the time,
we had songs and stories about
early Belfast republicans James
Connolly and Jim Larkin, of the
late hunger striker Bobby Sands,
and of all the men behind the wire
and the women of Armagh. We
also sang Robinson’s ‘70s anthem
“Glad to Be Gay.”
In 1995, our Irish LGBT group
Lavender and Green Alliance —
Muintir Aerach na hEireann began
a tradition of dinner dance celebrations
of Irish LGBTQ culture,
When Lavender and Green was
fi nally welcomed into the St. Patrick’s
Day Parade after a 25-year
struggle in March 2016, Tarlach
helped organize our contingent. In
his big-hearted way, he reached out
right, left, and center to friends in
ILGO, Irish Queers, and the wider
Irish community, bringing all of
us back together for the historic
march as we hit Fifth Avenue.
He also proudly became an offi
cial member of the New York City
St. Patrick’s Day Parade formation
committee, and parade leaders
Sean Lane, Hilary T. Beirne, and
Reilly J. Dundon wrote notes of
condolences on his passing.
As Tarlach explained to writer,
playwright, and Gay City News
contributor Kathleen Warnock,
“They reached out to me and asked
if would I be interested in volunteering
on the formation committee
to help organize the parade. I
think it says a lot about the spirit
of inclusiveness that exists now.
When you get to know people on a
personal level, it’s less about, as we
say in Belfast, ‘us’ns and them’ns.’
Getting to know each other on that
level creates a more profound type
of reconciliation.”
For more than three decades
in New York, Tarlach worked with
AHRC New York City, an agency
serving people with intellectual
and developmental disabilities, becoming
an outspoken advocate for
the equal rights and delivering on
the needs of one of society’s most
vulnerable and marginalized communities.
In turn, he successfully
pressed the agency for LGBTQ
equal rights and benefi ts. In recent
years, he organized AHRC’s participation
in both the New York City
LGBTQ Pride March and the St.
Pat’s For All Parade in Queens.
Tarlach met Juan Nepomuceno
in 2002 and they married in 2013.
Three years later, Tarlach was
proud to meet marriage equality
pioneer Edie Windsor and thank
her in person when she joined our
historic march up Fifth Avenue on
Saint Patrick’s Day.
We are inspired by the legacy of
Tarlach Mac Niallais and hope to
carry it on. Far gone from us, we
hold him close, remembering him
at the dawning of the day and by
the evening stars as we sing his
songs and tell his story of solidarity
and hope for a new generation.
Remembering Tarlach, I think of
the words of another Irish immigrant,
Mary Harris (1837- 1930),
better known as Mother Jones,
who lost her husband George and
their children to the terrible epidemic
of yellow fever in 1867 but
would fi nd strength to carry on
with a fearless passion for workers’
rights: “Pray for the dead and fi ght
like hell for the living”.
“Ni bheidh a leitheid ann aris”;
Tarlach’s likes will not be seen
again.
➤ NON-BINARY DEMS, from p.9
sent, assigning them false genders
based off of their names.
The agency declined to comment
on pending litigation.
The plaintiffs argue that the
Kings County Democratic County
Committee must strike down its
gender parity rules, based off of
state election law, which mandate
that each county election district
and state assembly district must
have a certain number of men and
women representing the areas. For
example, each assembly district
has to be represented by one male
and one female district leader.
While the rules were originally
intended to encourage more women
to join the state’s historically maledominated
political leadership they
further exclusion of non-binary
people, according to Gaskill.
“I think it’s important to discuss
and honor the progress that
was made with these rules, but
it’s equally important to remember
that a lot of women’s rights movements
have excluded trans people,”
he said.
The Brooklyn party recently
eliminated gender parity rules at
the highest levels when top brass
recently elected State Assemblymember
Rodneyse Bichotte
as the new party boss to succeed
Frank Seddio, making her the fi rst
woman to hold that position.
The rules had stated that the
party’s executive committee chair
(the title Bichotte now holds) and
vice chair also needed to be from
different genders, but the committee
struck down that provision,
allowing incumbent vice chair Annette
Robinson, a former assemblymember,
to remain in her position,
the court documents note.
The plaintiffs argue that the
party should not only drop these
gender parity rules at its highest
level but also for county committee
membership — its broadest base of
elected members at 1,881 female
and 1,550 male members.
“That the KCDCC would vote to
rescind a sex parity rule as it applies
to top leadership positions
while maintaining a similarly
inequitable rule for the lowest,
broadest, and most democratic level
of public engagement refl ects arbitrary
and capricious standards
of rulemaking that adversely and
disproportionately impact the nonbinary,
intersex, and transgender
county committee members at the
ground fl oor of the organization,”
the suit says.
The party also declined comment
on the lawsuit.
“We don’t comment on lawsuits
but we are aware of it and it raises
an important question,” said Bob
Liff of George Arzt Communications
in an email. “The same issue
has come up in the Democratic
state committee which is studying
it and we are monitoring that.”
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