Years after legalizing gay marriage, Ireland finally removes homophobic and misogynistic teaching material

Irish education officials have removed teaching material that asked teenage students to discuss inflammatory, false statements such as “all gays molest children,” “girls who don’t wear make-up are lesbian” and “all gays are HIV positive.” The online teaching resources, developed after relationships and sexuality education became a compulsory part of the school curriculum in the 1990s, were used as recently as April, according to Pamela O’Leary, a guidance counselor from Cork who lobbied for their removal. “I was repeatedly told that despite the highly problematic content some schools still found these resources ‘useful,’ ” O’Leary tweeted Wednesday. “A useful way of minimizing the ugliness of homophobic and misogynistic elements of Irish society,” she added. She posted screenshots of some of the now-deleted materials on Wednesday. The pictures included statements such as “you can change from being a homosexual” and “homosexuals try to make others homosexual,” that the students were invited to debate. Similar rhetoric — which has been debunked by scientists and policymakers — was used for decades in anti-gay campaigns. Ireland, which legalized same-sex marriage in 2015, was one of the first countries to have a gay head of government. Leo Varadkar served as the country’s first openly gay taoiseach, or prime minister, from 2017 to 2020. Varadkar’s political success — he is set to become prime minister again in about a year — was viewed as emblematic of Ireland’s transition to a more socially liberal society as it increasingly leaves conservative Roman Catholic traditions out of public life.