 I have the distinct honor today of being able to introduce Ireland's own, Carl Hayden, who will be my guest, Carl. Glad to have you. I expect the formal interview to last about an hour. And then after that, we'll open up the floor for audience questions. So if you've got questions, that will be the great time to do it, OK? So I'm going to start right at the very beginning, Carl. Tell us a little bit about your early life and your family. I was particularly intrigued when you said that any time something came on television that your parents didn't approve, your father would change the channel. Tell us a bit about that. I suppose it's not an uncommon experience for people of a certain generation in Ireland that sex and sexuality and anything that dealt with that kind of thing when it came on television was kind of quite embarrassing and awkward for a lot of parents. And my parents were no different. And of course, this was in the days before you had remote controls. So if you weren't to change the station, it was literally the physical act of getting up from your seat going over and changing the station. So on occasion, when particularly my father had no sense of what was about to come up on the screen, he'd be sitting there quite countably. And then all of a sudden, it might start off a little bit of kissing or something like that between two people. And then start to build up and more and more and more. And of course, he was as quick as anything to jump up off the seats to go and change the station. So that experience of growing up and seeing how my parents reacted to anything that was kind of in the area of sex or sexuality was a great basis on which to start to feel comfortable about who you were sexually. Did you have any concept where babies came from at this point? No, I don't think so. I don't remember being conscious of it anyway. I think for, I was the youngest in my family. So maybe put it in context, I'm the youngest of seven children. And I shared that position with a twin sister. And we kind of came later in my parents' life. So I didn't have the experience until my nephews and nieces started being born to even think about the possibility of where people come from, how babies are born and all that kind of thing. And certainly where I was in school at that time, those kind of issues were not discussed at all. And in fact, I remember quite clearly our sex education experience in second level education. And I think I would have been in about the second year at that stage of second level education where the teacher sat at the top of the room behind his desk with the book up like this, reading it out, word for words. While on the other side of the book in the rest of the room, there was just total mayhem. Guys were throwing stuff around the room, making jokes about things and whatever. But the teacher was so embarrassed about talking about the issue openly that he couldn't even raise his head from behind the book to look at the students and talk about it. Incredible. So how were you introduced to homosexuality, to the very concept? And I suppose my awakening, if you like, the fact that I was gay, probably now I can look back and say, yeah, at an earlier stage and I would have been aware of before. There were signs there and I was beginning to kind of think about boys, but not understanding what that was all about. Probably from about the age of, I don't know, 13 or 14 kind of thing. Because my peers, my friends were at the stage where they were starting to kind of go chasing after girls and have girlfriends and I had no interest in getting a girlfriend. I was interested in the boys who were looking for the girlfriends, not the girlfriends themselves. But I still didn't understand why. I didn't understand what was going on. I didn't realize that it was a sexual thing. I just thought that I had a particular interest in certain boys and that was it. So I wasn't aware of it in terms of sexuality or homosexuality. I think when I was about 16, I had my first real experience of doing something with another guy who was 16 as well. And it kind of, as most of those encounters are at that age, it was awkward. It was uncountable to a degree. Didn't really know what we were doing. It was very kind of basic stuff, touching each other, kissing each other, that kind of thing. There was nothing more on than that. And for both of us, it was just the first experience of discovering our attractions and trying to work out what they wear kind of thing, what they meant. Coming away from it feeling good, but confused, I think was the thing because obviously everything that you're geared up for from a certain age is towards you're gonna meet a girl, you're gonna get married, you're gonna be doing this, you're gonna be doing that, you're gonna have a family, all this kind of thing. And so to feel this attraction to another guy and not necessarily understanding that that was something that most of society at that stage shunned. I didn't feel overly guilty about it or anything like that. I was just a more sense of confused and unsure. How did you meet someone at age 16? Okay, so the guy I met was in our local choir because I was involved in our local church. It's not such an uncommon thing in Ireland. My mother is very traditional Catholic and wants this all to be as involved in the local church as possible. So we got involved with the local, when I say choir actually, it's probably dressing it up a little bit too much. It was what was known as a folk group in the time. So this is in the 70s. And so everything was very happy, clappy in those days. And we were all finding Jesus in different places and all the rest and everything was wonderful. And we were all happy and very hippie-like in that regard. That was a lot of eventually closed down though by the Catholic church. But he was another member in the group. I think it was that we had been at one of the practices and where the church was to go where he lived was then the back way from the church instead of going out the front main gate, which is the way I would normally go. So we were walking down the back way and it was on the pretext that I was just making sure he got down to the end of the road safe. I've been a gentleman all my life. Chivalry has not died with me, I can assure you. So we were walking down the back road and we just stopped. There was nothing, there was no prompting. There was no nothing. We just stopped in a particular isolated little area and we were chatting away and that. And I think it was I made the first move. I think I reached out and I put my hand on him on his crotch. I was actually quite forward, quite surprising for me because I wouldn't have been like that normally but I was kind of overtaken by the moment. And that was it, yeah. So it was on a actually, it was like a mid-summer's night because I remember it was actually quite warm and it was bright, even though it was kind of quite an isolated area, it was quite bright. There was no street lights of the sun, the moon, sorry, the moon must have been out. And yeah, it was kind of a nice experience. I never turned back from it since. You were building on that a little bit. Tell us about the gay life you found once you moved out of your family home. Okay, my moving out of home was kind of a strange when I suppose. I had already come out. So by 1983, I was involved in a, what they call a personal development group for young people, again, in our parish. Parish plays a big role in a lot of people's lives back then. So I was in this youth development group and I was down in the center early this particular evening with the priest who was running it. And there was just the two of us there and while we were waiting for everybody else to arrive, we had the TV on. And a program came on, which is called Community Access Television. And this particular program was about the gay community center in Dublin called the Hirshfield Center. And they focused on a family support group called Parents Support. And also the lesbian and gay youth group that existed at the time. So the priest said, oh, it's an awful pity we didn't know that was on. Because if we did, we could have recorded it and used it as a piece to talk about at the development group. Excuse me, because obviously it was about sexuality and that kind of thing. So I started this as an opportunity and I took it upon myself to volunteer to go and get a copy of this program on video. So I remember going down and I knew that the location of the center was at the back of the central bank in one of the main streets in the city center called Dame Street. But at this particular time in the history of the city of Dublin, that whole area was basically derelict. It was one big open bus shelter basically. So at night time, all the buses that service the city center would park up there. And then, so that was, you only really were in that area if you were coming from one of the buses or if you're going to one of the early buses or something like that. Sorry, I had to keep drinking water because what people won't realize and watching this on video is that this room is very, very warm. Yeah. Anyway, sorry. So I went down on this particular Sunday afternoon to the play state because I contacted them and they told me that if I wanted the copy we'd have to bring a blank VHS videotape. And in the early 1980s blank videotape was, it wasn't the most expensive thing in the world but it was, you know, the organizations had a lot of requests. So for them to have to keep supplying blank tapes for people was costing them a lot of money. So they asked people to bring a blank tape. So I brought it down and I left it in and then they said, come back in a week's time. So I said, fine, came back the following week. And I was nervous as hell because, you know, even though the area is very isolated and not much chance of bumping into anybody, I was very nervous that somebody would see me because I hadn't come out of such and in your mind you're thinking because I'm going to a gay center everybody knows that that's where I'm going. If they see me in the area they're gonna assume that's what I'm doing. So I went back, knocked on the door they brought me in, waited, I got the tape and said, thank you very much. And as I stepped out the door I walked into two people I knew. Of all the places for this to happen, this is where it happened. So it was a guy and a girl and I knew them from the area where I grew up. And I very quickly explained to them my legitimate reason for being at this place in this area at this time, why I was there, what it was for and the whole thing just to make sure I was covered. Anyway, they invited me to go for a drink and we went for a drink to a pub up on Dame Street and it was known at the time as the Viking. It's now called Brogans I think. And we went to him and after maybe about a half hour of being there when I was sure I convinced them of my legitimate reasons for being down at the central bank and why I was in this gay center and all the rest I began to take in my surroundings. And I realized that actually there was guys sitting with guys and they weren't just sitting with each other and there was girls and they weren't just sitting with each other and I realized that they were all lesbian and gay. And so I was kind of like a bit nervous about this because I didn't understand what was going on and Susan and Brian were the two people and they never said anything to me about themselves but they just let a lie there that she was lesbian and he was gay and they obviously knew I was gay. They obviously knew but I wasn't admitting to it. I wasn't gonna say at that stage that I was gay. I did that thing of, oh, I'm kind of not sure and I'm kind of working on it and all this kind of thing. I wasn't prepared at that point. Anyway, I proceeded then for the next couple of years to go into town with them without ever telling anybody at home where I was going. Now by this stage, my parents had split up and there was just really myself and my mother, an occasional brother who'd come back to stay in the house from time to time who worked away. We were the only ones there and my mother being a good Irish Catholic mother was and where are you going? And who did you say you were going to be with? Where did you say you were going to be asked? All the questions and I got very tired after a while of trying to come up with stories and excuses and it's very true, you tell one lie and you end up over time having to tell 10 more just to cover the original lie and then you begin to really get confused as to what you've been saying. So I had a friend who worked in one of the nightclubs, Alfred and he just said to me one time, this is crazy because he could see this was stressing me out. And he said, this is crazy. You need to just get out of the house. You need to either just tell them that you're gay and see how they react or move out. And I said, well, where would I go? And he said, we can move in with me. And he lived in a house over on a place called North Great George, sorry, North Great Charles which was known in the area, it's a very working class area but it was known in the area as the gay house because it was five floors and every one of the flats that was in the house was a gay resident or two gay residents living in the house. So everybody knew in the area it was a gay place. So if they saw you coming and going depending on how people reacted you either got called a few names here and there along the way. We were never physically threatened or anything like that. We were relatively accepting, except you get some of the kids who would just say faggot or queer or whatever kind of thing. But that was the start of my gay life. And so then what happened was a couple of months went by and I made no contact with my family for this three, a couple of months. And then eventually somebody came and said, look, your family are really concerned. They don't know what's going on. There's, you know, you need to make contact with them. And so that's eventually when I went back and came out first to my mother. I had had the funny experience. I have to tell this because I think this is, I'm a twin and I have a twin sister. And when I was about 15 and I was still trying to figure all this out about who I was, what I was and everything like that. I was at home in the house and we, so we lived in an ordinary three bedroom house and there was seven children and two adults. So there was nine of us. So space was at a premium. But we had what most people would probably call the living room or front room, but we called it the parlor. And in those days, the parlor was like a place of reverence. It was only ever used on special occasions. We could crowd into this tiny little room that was next door to it, but the parlor was never touched. Christmas or the priest visit or if somebody visited that was important. That was when the parlor was opened. Did you keep plastic on the furniture? No, but every Saturday, so the door was locked so we couldn't go in as kids. But every Saturday, whether the room was used or not, it was cleaned. So whether it's somebody used it or not, it was still, everything was taken out, cleaned and put back into place. So anyway, this particular night, my sister and I were in there and she was doing something. I think she was doing something with our hair or something. And I remember trying to breach the subject with her and just kind of just go, what would you say if I told you I was gay or I thought I might be gay? I couldn't look at her when I was saying it to her. And there was this silence. And of course, it was probably only seconds, but it felt like it was for ages. And eventually I turned around and I looked at her and she was crying. And I panicked because out in the other room was my father and I was afraid that she was gonna react by running out and telling him that I said I was gay. And of course I was like, no, no, no, I'm not. I'm just saying if I was, if I was, I'm just saying if I was. And then eventually when I, so that was that my first experience of trying to tell somebody that I was gay. Later when I came out, I was talking to some of the other female members of my family and I said it to them about, you know, the fact that I was gay. And they said, but sure, we always knew. Or we always had the idea that you might be gay. And I was kind of thinking to myself, well, well, if you kind of knew or if you kind of thought, why didn't you say something earlier? Because I spent all these years trying to work this thing out and see whether people would accept it or not. And if somebody in the family had just said, in whatever subtle way that they possibly could, do you think you might be gay? It may have been actually the starting point for me to come out much earlier and have a much more positive experience of coming out in that regard. But I'm the subject of the generation I grew up in. There's no getting away from that. We live in an age now, I'm not saying things are perfect, but we live in an age now where at least awareness of sexuality and sexual orientation is much wider than it used to be. And probably families and friends are much more accepting than they would have been in the past. So like a lot of gay men of my age, that was the experience that was common to a lot of us. And there was nothing exceptional in that regard. But how did your family cope with this? What was their reaction? On the whole, because at this stage now, I'm kind of into my early 20s, it was a case of, well, you know, that's who you are, that's who you say you are. Most of them were accepting. I had some family members who were living abroad, so, you know, contact with them was infrequent, so it wouldn't have really come up as an issue as such. My mother, so my father was living away in the UK, so I didn't have much contact with him either. My mother, though, was the greatest surprise of all, because my mother, who was this very traditional Catholic Irish woman, loved her family, loved her children, but also devoted to the church. When I came out to her, you know, was confused and unsure, how do I do with this? What does this mean now? Am I supposed to accept this? Am I well, am I supposed to do? And the funny thing was, she went to a priest that she knew, and she told him what had happened, and his response was, well, so what? You know something new about them that you didn't know before. Does it mean that you love them any less? And she said, well, of course not. And he said, well, then what's the problem? And she said, well, what does the church say about it? And he said, well, look, that's not really what's at stake here. What's at stake is your relationship with him and how you're feeling, all the rest. So in that regard, it was really, really good. But the interesting thing was, my mother was involved with the local ladies club. And one night, by this stage, I wasn't just out, I was out, out. I was on appearing on national television, talking about gay issues, and also I'd become involved in the HIV AIDS area at this stage. So I was also talking about that quite often on television. I was interviewed in newspapers. I was involved in organizing the restart of Dublin Pride back in 1990. And then there was an article in one of the papers, who does this man think he is? Because I was one of the organizers of this gay march. It was a very conservative paper in Ireland. But anyway, so my mother was at this ladies club thing. And she walked by a group of women at one of the tables. I had obviously been on television or something like that. I one of them nudged the other and says, there's Carmel Hayden. That's her son who was on the telly. He's the gay one that was on the telly. He's the gay one. And so my mother being my mother, much to my surprise, walked up and asked, could she use the microphone? And they said, sure, yeah, go ahead. And she stood up and she said, just like to make it clear. Yes, it is my son, Carl, who's gay. And I have no issue with that whatsoever. And if anybody has a problem with that, come and talk to me about it. And that stunned me when I heard that. So she made that journey from that position to there. And it was based all on the fact that as a mother, she loved her child. And that's what it was based on. Wow, that took a lot of power and a lot of courage. Yeah, very much so. Particularly for some of her generation and that. So yeah, so it was a big deal, a really big deal. And actually, I think it had a knock on effect in that it helped other people who had children who were gay in the ladies club. Sure. But they felt that there was someone that they could also talk to and get support from if they had issues with it as well. But looping back a little bit, you felt you were drawn to the challenges and the difficulties of service work, rather than simply the fun gay scene that we all know. Why did you go that particular direction with your journey? Oh, when we talked about this earlier, you didn't put it that way. So that's an interesting way of putting it. Oh. I don't know. I suppose, look, I've always been interested in justice and equality. And so for me, in terms of getting involved, it started small as these things often do. And then it got out of hand. So at first it was I was working in sales and marketing. And a friend of mine, a priest, was involved with one of the HIV-AIDS organizations and said that they were trying to get a better profile and make issues more generally understood in the population around HIV and AIDS, how to prevent it and all this kind of thing. And they needed a bit of help in terms of sales and marketing. Would I help? And I said, sure, yeah, no problem. So the name of the organization at the time was Body Positive. And it was a bit unusual in the sense that Body Positive was an organization run by and for people living with HIV. So it wasn't like the other organizations where people were getting involved as volunteers to care for whatever. And I like that. I've always liked the idea of people in minority groups getting up and wanting to fight the struggles themselves and supporting that. I mean, they don't have to be left on their own. You can support them. But it's good to have them there in the forefront of it taking the lead on us. And so I got involved. And after a couple of months of being involved in the group and meeting people in the organization, hearing the situations that people were dealing with and all the rest, I kind of thought, just this part-time involvement thing is not going to cut it. I need to kind of get a little bit more involved. So I went to my boss and I said to my employer, I'd like a bit of time off. And he said, oh, you want to go on a holiday or something? I said, no, I'm looking for about a year off. And he looked at me and said, what for? And I explained to him what it was for. And he thought I was crazy. And he said he wouldn't be prepared to give me the time off. So I said, OK, then take it as here's my notice. I'm leaving. I just felt compelled to have to get involved in this organization and do more and just be more involved in it. So that was around 1989, I think that was, late 89. Because then the following year, then we started Dublin Pride back up again. So there had been one Pride march back in 1983. And there hadn't been anything since. And so there was a couple of individuals. Donald Trainor and Izzy Kamikaze decided to, yes, that is her real name, Izzy Kamikaze, decided to revive Dublin Pride. And they asked a few of us to get involved. And I was getting involved on a small basis. There wasn't supposed to be anything major. But I ended up getting very involved in it. And so you get involved in one thing. And then that leads to get involved in something else. And then you get involved in something else. And before you know it, it's a full-time career that you're involved in. But at that time in Ireland, the problem we had was that we didn't get statutory funding. So up until 1993, anything related to gay men could not receive statutory funding because we were still criminalized under the law. And the government could not get funding. So working in any of the organizations was done on a voluntary basis. Because there was no funding. There was no funding organizations you could go to. The government wouldn't give you funding. There wasn't enough cohesion, if you like, in the gay community to be able to organize fundraising there, to pay for people to do the work. So we were all working on that voluntary basis. We still got a lot done, even though it was on a voluntary basis. We still got a lot done. And then eventually in 1993, when decriminalization took place, that's when the funding stream started to open up. But it was still only on the basis of, and it'll be hard for a lot of people, younger generation gay men and women to hear this. But up until, say, the last 10 years or so, corporate sponsorship of gay events, particularly in Ireland, was zero. It didn't exist. And yet we kept hearing all the time about the power of the pink pound. And we were sitting around going, well, where the hell is the pink pound? Because we were not getting it anywhere to do the things that we need to do. And so, yeah, so we have moved a huge way. We're only 25 years from decriminalization in Ireland. And yet we've had the marriage referendum and we've passed it by popular vote, the first country in the world to do that. Sorry if I sound like I'm bragging to any of the visitors. Anybody who's watching this. But I think for a country of our size to come from where we come from, to be where we are today, that when I was involved in international work going around HIV and AIDS, and we'd go off to the Netherlands, we'd go off to the UK, we'd go off to Belgium, and we'd hear all the gay organizations talking about how they were getting funding, the projects that they were doing, the work that they were achieving, the goals that they were setting themselves. And we were sitting there kind of in awe of all this because we were still at that level, at ground floor and below even. And we were looking at all this fantastic work that was going on and thinking, Jesus, even if we could get 1% of what they're doing in the UK or what they're doing in the Belgium or what they're doing in the Netherlands or Germany or the states even. We used to look to the state and think, God, that's, you know, they're so free over there in the states. Look how that one's turned around. Yeah. I mean, I'm feeling at this stage, we should be putting care parcels together and sending them over to you guys. I would agree. But to go from where we've come, being and to where we are now, I think that we have this opportunity because I'm very conscious still of the international situation. I'm conscious of the situation in Russia. I'm conscious of the situation in Honduras. We didn't have the experience that a lot of countries have had where LGBT activists are literally being targeted for murder. In Honduras last year alone, 32 LGBT activists were killed, were murdered. We've seen what's happened in Russia. We see what's happening in a lot of the sort of African nations and places like that. We see how things are beginning to happen in Poland as well, where things are reversing back. And if we, from our experience here in Ireland, can reach out and do something for LGBT people internationally, then I think it's our obligation to do that. I know that one of the guys who was involved in GEARD was in Tanzania about two years ago. And while he was there on completely different work, his own professional work, he made sure to make time to meet with some of the LGBT organizations that were there to show support and solidarity with them, to bring them resources that he brought from Ireland in order for them to be able to make use of them as well. That kind of thing has an effect that people don't realize at the time the way it ripples out, because that's what we had. That's what happened to us back in the early 90s. We had people that we either met when we went abroad or who came here, shared their experiences, encouraged us, gave us ideas for things that helped us to get on the path to where we are today. So I have great faith in our ability to actually have an influence in a very positive way outside of Ireland and outside of Europe. Coming back to some of your earlier work, you told me that when the AIDS crisis hit, you responded dealing with hospices and funeral director problems. And you did all of this with no pay. Well, I wasn't the only one. So I don't want you to be hanging me up on the cross just yet, OK? I wasn't alone. At one stage in Ireland, actually up until about the mid 1990s, they estimated that about 42% of all social services were delivered on the voluntary basis in Ireland. So in terms of our economy, it's very small. Our GDP and all that stuff that they talk about was very, very small. So making money available for all the kind of social services that were out there was, the money wasn't available. But we have a tradition in Ireland, which I think is a fantastic one of people getting involved as volunteers. And actually, if I could just, because I don't want this all to be about me and that, but what I'd like to do is just point to even just in terms of Geert, who are hosting this event and are hosting this weekend, that's run on a totally voluntary basis. Those guys give up their time to organize the monthly events, this annual event with Leather Pride and that. Whether they run the cloakroom and keep in touch with people that way, whether they assist on the door, whether they're the organizing committee members, whether they're taking photographs to archive the events, which is a very, very important thing to do so that we have our history, we know our history, we know where we come from, we know who the people were that were involved at different stages. And that's how we operate. So in terms of the aid stuff, I wasn't alone. Obviously there was lots of people working in Ireland around the issue. But yes, you're right, we had issues. We had the situation where funeral directors wouldn't touch a body. And we have a tradition in Ireland of waking, which is where when somebody dies, that the very often what will happen is the coffin is returned to the family home. It's opened. And then family and friends and neighbors come to the house and they celebrate the life. And I'm sure you've seen it in the movies. There's lots of drinking. There's lots of talk and singing and all the rest. And it's a very traditional thing, particularly in some parts of Ireland. It's a very strong tradition. And not to be able to have a wake was really, really difficult. And not to be able to lay out the body was a very, very difficult thing. So there were individuals, and I mentioned one in particular, Rosemary Daly, who worked with the Irish Hemophilic Society. She had a kit in her car and a kit at her desk that if she got a phone call any time of the day or night, seven days a week, she would jump in her car, travel to whatever part of Ireland it was that she had to go to. And she would help the family wash the body and prepare the body. Where the funeral directors would not do it. And the policy in the hospitals at the time was that if somebody died in the hospital, they would within sort of like a half an hour. So if you were a family member and you went with your loved one or your partner when they died in the hospital, there was a half an hour before the body was then placed in a body bag, then removed some more. And once that had happened, you could not go to the morgue and then reopen the body bag in order to see your loved one. So it was a very, very hard thing. So we had to help with that. I helped out in a few occasions with helping to prepare people after they had passed away and that. And it's an honor to be asked to do it because it's a very intimate and personal thing. But if a family comes to you and says to you, would you mind helping us with this? It's a great honor to be asked. And so you don't refuse it. It's not something you relish doing, but it's a great honor kind of thing. So yeah, so it was those kind of practical things that we would have been involved in doing. And as I said, I wasn't the only one. There's plenty of people there who were doing it because the state was falling short in its obligations to provide the services it should have been provided. And like a lot of people, our government came late to the whole area of awareness and prevention work around HIV and AIDS, particularly for gay men. It was led by members of the gay community, ourselves who knew the need, back in the mid-80s, got it together themselves, tried to create awareness programs that didn't rely on having huge amounts of money, did amazing work, saved a lot of lives. But at this moment, you said that Ireland has the highest rate of new infections in Europe. What's going on with that? So we're not 100% clear. I mean, one of the things that people have looked at is the possibility that because it's relatively recently that we've had an influx of immigrants into Ireland. So we've always been the net exporter of people to live in America or to live in the UK or live in Australia or other places around the world. So in the last sort of 15, 20 years, a lot of people from Europe have moved to Ireland and from African countries to Ireland. And also a lot of Brazilians, much to the joy and happiness of a lot of gay men in Ireland, a lot of Brazilians have moved to live in Ireland. And so a lot of people have thought that maybe it's down to the fact that it's all this influx of immigrants into the country that have brought this increase in the number of HIV cases. The sad reality is it's not. It is still Irish born, white males. Frighteningly also actually my age group have shown a significant increase in new HIV cases in recent years. So 50 plus age group, I'm not gonna tell you exactly how old they are, but 50 plus. Unfortunately, so we're seeing that happen. So we're trying to get a handle on it. I'm involved in a project here in Dublin called No Now, which is where we go out to venues, bars, clubs, community center, whatever, and we provide HIV testing on the spot. And when the project was first being set up, the justification in terms of the funding from the Department of Health was that if we got one reactive result in a thousand tests, they would consider that to be worthwhile investment of the funding for it. Sadly, we've had 28 in a thousand. Actually, sorry, sorry, 28 in 1600 tests. So that's way above what they were expecting us to get. So yeah, it's a worry. It's a concern. We're not 100% clear why it's happening. We haven't had a very clear kind of anti, sorry, a prevention campaign targeting gay men in particular for a while. There's the hangover of ones that have existed for a while. So if you go out to the gay bars, you'll find condoms and lube and that. But in terms of really kind of backing up the message about either using them or now that prep has become available because it has only just in the last six months being made available by the Department of Health here. We're now fighting to try and get that it be paid for by the state because it will cost some, it'll cost about 100 euros a month to take it. But we know from other places like say in the States and San Francisco, the number of new HIV cases have literally fallen off the edge of the claim. It's just incredible the impact that prep has had. In the UK and London and in Scotland and places like that, they've seen significant drops of like 30, 40% of new cases coming along. So we know it's something that will be very useful in terms of preventing new cases. One of the problems that we have is that we're seeing now beginning to evolve a stigma around using prep. So if you tell people you use prep on gator or grinder or struff or whatever you happen to be on, some people will think, oh, he must be out there having sex all the time. And there's all this stigma that's been attached to using prep when prep is like using a condom. That's how we should see it. If it's right to use a condom when you're having sex with someone and you're unsure of their status and you wanna protect yourself, prep should be seen in exactly the same way and it should be available for people to use in exactly the same way. But speaking of condoms in the 1990s, Virgin Megastores was prosecuted under Irish laws. What went on with that? So up until 1992 in Ireland, you could only get condoms if you went to your GP. So you would go to your GP and you'd say, as a married man and a married woman, we don't want to have a child and we don't want to take the tablet, the pill because we consider it whatever. Some people tell it was a form of abortion so they wouldn't take it. So we want to use condoms because the church is teaching about the rhythm method doesn't work for us. We have two children to prove that it doesn't work. So we want to use condoms. So the GP would write out a prescription, they would take it off to the chemist and the chemist would give them a box of condoms. Wow. And obviously we knew by this stage, sorry, well we knew relatively early on in terms of the, sorry, after we figured out how HIV was transmitted sexually, we realized that condoms were a great way of preventing it. So from a relatively early stage, we had a number of years where to bring condoms into Ireland was a criminal offense. Wow. And you could be fined or imprisoned for having used them. So we then eventually got a minister for health who came along and says, this is crazy. And he changed a lot to make them available. But just before that, Virgin Megastores decided we need to make an issue of this. And so they started selling the condoms from the record shop. And then what happened was the police and customs came in and raided the shop to get the condoms and stop them from selling them. I mean, only in Ireland. In 1990, I think that was 1991 when that happened. Only in Ireland in 1991 with that kind of thing happened. Crazy. Well, you said that the movie Cruisin' with Al Pacino had a big impact upon you, please. Tell us about that. Okay, so we've all had the experience I think as gay men of watching something and seeing a movie and either a scene in a movie resonates with us. Either it's two people, two men cruising each other, but you don't see anything else happening. Well, my first and full on experience of a gay movie was to see Cruisin', which is a leather man on the one hand is very exciting. Sorry, does everybody know what Cruisin' to what the film is? Yeah, okay. So that was my first experience of a gay movie and of course it would be about a serial killer because you couldn't be gay in the movies unless you were either committing suicide, being murdered are very, very depressed in life. So yeah, so you didn't have positive imagery as such. But anyway, so somebody got the movie and I think they just thought it was a murder movie. They didn't realize what it was about. And so we watched it and I watched the thing and I watched it the second time. Because this was a whole world that I never knew anything about, but to me was that's where I wanna be. I wanna go to New York. I wanna live wherever this place is. I don't care if there's somebody going around murdering people. I wanna be in the middle of all that's going on there. I know that over the years you'll get the representation of gay men as being leather guys and all the rest. I've never had a problem with that because I think that it is sexy to see a good looking guy in leather is a sexy thing. And if people wanna portray that and if they wanna say that that represents gay, that's fine with me. I don't have an issue with it. But the cruising movie was a fun experience. Coming to events a little bit, you've mentioned that getting people's participation in leather events is relatively difficult. Why do you think so? Okay, well, I mean, obviously there's cultural elements that come into play. So I wouldn't want to be saying this on the basis that this is a universal experience for anybody in any country. But in our own particular case in Ireland, because we've had sex and sexuality kind of repressed in society for such a long time, having people feel comfortable to express themselves in terms of fetish where whether it be leather or rubber or whatever it happens to be, it's not comfortable for people to do. And there is still an element even within our own community as gay men where we're kind of at the butt of a joke. And so you imagine as somebody who's kind of like going to the process of coming out either as a gay man or coming out as a gay, because I always tell people I've had two comings coming out. The first time was as a gay man and the second time was as a leather man. And I was very lucky in that instance in how my process happened. First in the movie and then meeting some gay men, older gay men that I've come to cherish here who were kind of like my mentors in a sense who lit the whole thing up and made it much easier for me. So for somebody who didn't have that, I think it's a difficult one. Tell us a little bit about your mentors. Okay, well there's two of them in particular. And so the first one would be a guy called Don Wood. Don would be, he's in his late 80s at this stage, but it doesn't stop him being a leather man. So the day he dies, he will be a leather man. Don was one of those people of his generation that if he was coming into the bar in town and he was wearing his leather jacket, whether it be winter, spring, summer or fall, he would wear an overcoat or a coat of some kind over his leather jacket because in his mind, walking down the street wearing a leather jacket was the sign that you were some kind of a thug and that people would think badly of you. So he didn't mind, once you got inside the bar, thinking people thinking he was a thug, it was just on the street, he didn't want people thinking of him as a thug. But Don was one of these people who, he was into S&M, right across the range, but one of those very responsible individuals. So he made sure that all the young guys that crossed his path here in Dublin in particular, who showed an interest in the leather scene or anything like that, understood all the safety stuff, how to protect yourself, how to protect the person that you were playing with, how to make sure the person you were playing with protected you. He taught you all the basics, code words, the proper way to use a whip, the proper way to use a cane, how to tie somebody properly, so he didn't do damage, all this kind of, so he's very, very centered on the whole safety aspect of us in there. And very encouraging, he was the first one who got me to go off and buy a pair of leather jeans. He told me about a guy over in London, because everybody went to London to get their leather gear because you couldn't get it in Dublin. So went over to a guy called the London Leatherman and he made me my first pair of chaps on my first pair of leather jeans. And I still have the chaps and I had to give away the jeans because they didn't fit me anymore. But I gave them to a friend of mine who still has them and he knows the story behind them because unfortunately just soon after I got the jeans made, the London Leatherman passed away. And so they were one of the last sets of chaps or jeans that he made for anybody. And so they have a historical importance to them which one day I would be able to pass on to one of the leather archives somewhere. But yeah, so that was Don. And to this day, I go up to Don and he, you know, unfortunately he's almost blind at this stage. His sight has gone on him. I love him to bits, but he will drive you crazy because he'll tell the same story about every 10 minutes, comes back around kind of thing unfortunately. But he still cares about everybody. He still wants to make sure that everybody's safe. And then the other person was Quentin, Quentin Reynolds. And he was another great supporter and mentor as well. But we tried over the years to organize Leather Nights in Dublin. And it was, you would get, so you'd spend maybe a couple of months organizing with a small group of people to get to the event. Don, we'd find the venue, we'd put it out there and then we'd have this huge turnout. I remember one of the first ones that we did in the George pub in the old Laugh Bar. And I think we had something like 100, over the course of the night, we had something like about 160 guys turn up, 160 plus guys turn up, which is kind of incredible. And then we said, this is it. We know we've hit it. There, the guy's wanted. We start organizing them on a regular basis and it starts to go down. The numbers just go down and down and down and down. And it's just the difficulty of trying to maintain that level of support. And the one thing I keep saying to the guys, although I haven't been, I have to put my hand up and say, because of stuff that's happened work-wise and stuff like that, I haven't been great at attending all the geared events here in Dublin. But the one thing I've always tried to say to the guys is, look, if somebody's organizing the event, you want to have these events, you're a leather guy or you're a fetish guy of some kind. If somebody organized the event, attend. Because if you don't, you're gonna lose it. There will be nobody to organize the events eventually because people will just get tired of trying to organize events and then have nobody turn up for them. So it's up to us. But at the same time, I think the success of geared here in Ireland. And then I was over in the States there last September. I was in New York and I heard the Eagle Bar had reopened again, which used to be a leather bar way back. Way, way back. And then it closed down for a long time. But I was always surprised that, because I had this idea that in the States, the leather scene was huge and everywhere you went, it was there. And it's not as frequent as people might think it is. In Europe, we have a huge leather community that's well-serviced, I think, in terms of clubs and venues and things like that to go to. And Ireland is now too with the advent of geared. And the guys have traveled out to other leather organizations around Europe and the States and that learn, brought back stuff that they've learned from being away and brought some experiences away as well to give to other people. And I think what they've done in the last couple of years and bringing an event on a regular basis for the leather community, the gay leather community in Dublin is fantastic. And I think I applaud them for the work that they've done. And I'm looking at faces in front of me here and I know these are the guys who've made it happen. You know, stuff that I did in the past, well that was in the past. There was a different time. They've made sure that something's happened. Geared is four years? Five years, I beg your pardon, sorry. It's now in its fifth year and the success that they've had. Look at the guys who turned out for a leather event. I never thought that we would be able to attract over so many horny looking, no, so many guys. So many guys to double to an event for a weekend. I really didn't think it would happen. And I find it absolutely astonishing that all you guys think that Dublin's a place worthwhile coming to visit. And so thank you very much for coming here because actually by you coming here and doing this, you're also encouraging other Irish guys who are shy or scared or whatever about coming out. They meet guys like you when you come here and it helps them, it encourages them to want to come out and get involved and do things as well. So thank you very much to you guys as well. I want to loop again, I want to loop back slightly. Yeah, because I do have a tendency to wander. Because you mentioned a bit ago that you were part of bringing back the leather, rather the Dublin pride. Yes, the gay pride. Please tell us a bit about how you did that. What was going on there? Ah, well, okay, so as I mentioned, there was two people in particular. Okay, so two people, Donald trainer and Izzy Kamikaze or Izzy or work is their real name. They decided that because pride parades had been going on around Europe and were really good events in terms of creating visibility on the streets and being a way to encourage people to come out and either to be themselves or to get involved in the community or whatever. And they decided then to do this and they asked, they asked what in the community of people would come forward and help with it. And only a few of us came forward at the time. I think it ended up just being five of us. And we were full of energy for this. We wanted this to happen. We were all gung-ho, let's do this. And then of course you start getting close and closer to the day that it's happening. And then the nerves start to build up. Will people turn up first? Will they turn up in enough numbers to make a count? What will be the reaction on the streets? Because Ireland was still quite hostile towards gay people at that stage. You couldn't be guaranteed that if we organized a parade down the main street of Dublin city that we wouldn't be attacked. And we didn't know if our police force would actually be supportive to the point of if somebody did try to attack us that they would step in to prevent it from happening. So there was lots of things up in the air at the time. There was also all the other usual stuff, who's gonna pay for it, where's all this kind of thing. But again, we did our usual thing. We'll just do it and it'll happen and whatever way it works, it works. And I remember actually just a week before and I painted the banner because I worked previously years previously in a signage company and I learned how to do painting and painting signage and things like that. So I painted the banner that was used at the head of the parade and it was partly done so that if we were attacked we had something to hold up kind of thing. That was part of it. I remember also going to the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and asking if any of their members or volunteers would come along and be independent witnesses for us because again, we did know what way the police would be in terms of supporting us. As we did the parade, I think it was about 500 people thereabouts turned up for the very first one. Wow. That was 1990 and we walked from, so I'd say we probably did about a mile distance from Parnell Square down to Dame Street up onto the central bank steps there in Dame Street. And it was fraught with anxiety and worry and concern because we just didn't know at any time if something was going to happen or anything like that. We as organizers tried to hide that from the people because we didn't want to scare people. One of the things, Izzy was brilliant at setting up this whole face kind of, before face painting became a really popular thing. She was brilliant at saying, if you're worried about being seen, paint your face up. Nobody will know at you. Dress up in a costume, this kind of thing. So we had lots of, so our early prides where it looked like there was something out of carnival or something like that because it was people using that to hide themselves. So we've gone from about 500 people in 1992, last year on Pride, last June. We had, I think the number officially recorded was 52,000. Fantastic. So it's huge and people come from all around the country and we get people coming from other countries to come over for pride because it's the second largest street festival in Dublin annually. Wow. The biggest one of course would be a little event you may have heard of called St. Patrick's Day. I'm not sure anybody else celebrates St. Patrick's Day anywhere in the world. It's a very, it's an important festival about drinking. Just in case you didn't know what the cultural reference for St. Patrick's Day was about drinking. But anyway, so it's the second largest annual street event in Dublin. It's amazing, it's huge and it's supported by the City Council, they put a lot of money into it. Irish Tourism put money into it. We have corporate sponsors. We're lucky so far, we haven't gone down the same route as like in London where you have now two pride parades because one became two commercial and so people got together and organized a community festival as opposed to a corporate festival. So, we haven't hit that point just yet but it is a huge event and it helps to focus a lot of attention around LGBT issues. So every year there's an opportunity to bring in a new team and then that focuses attention on something. So trans people have had in the last year or two, I've had a bit of focus on them because we had, two years ago, back in 2015, we had the Gender Recognition Act came into existence and so for the first time, trans people had legal protections and had a path because up until then, there was no legal pathway for trans people to be able to get recognized in terms of their gender in that. So we now had a legal path and I was just at a conference yesterday because it's up for review that act and actually the act turns out has created problems in other areas because when there was, in the absence of law, government departments were free to kind of say, ah, you need to passport change? Sure, no problem, we'll change if you get it done. We accept that you're now calling yourself a man or we accept that you're now calling yourself a woman. Yeah, no problem, we'll do that. Once the law came in and actually stipulated the grounds in which things happened, suddenly people found that actually when they went to get their passport changed, the passport office was saying, well, we can't just give it to you, you have to have this and you have to have that. So, getting the act was great but it also created problems and so we're in a process of review now where that has to be looked at and things hopefully changed for the better, yeah. Well, I will let you know that the whole issue of St. Patrick's Day has been sort of borrowed on the other side of the EU. No, really? In Chicago, where I live, they die of the river green and everyone gets completely black. Is that not just because Trump put somebody in charge of the EPA who doesn't like stuff? Oh, there's a mess. And we have a gay Prime Minister, I don't know if you know that. I know, I do know that, it's fantastic. Ireland has just sort of gone leaps and bounds over everything else there, you know? But I want to, again, I want to look back once more because you brought up a point, we always prepare in advance for a lot of this, you brought up a point. Just getting their story straight, that's all it is. Because, and I found this particularly interesting and that's why I'm bringing it up, there was a marked difference between the official policies of the church and individual actions of church members when the AIDS crisis hit Ireland. Please fill us in a little bit on that. Oh, okay, so I mentioned earlier about how about 40 plus percent of social services in Ireland were provided on a voluntary basis. A lot of that voluntary basis would have been, say, true. So, okay, so I think it's now 92% of our social media schools in Ireland are run by the Catholic Church still, still to this day. So they receive funding from the state to provide education to our children, yet they're allowed to keep their religious ethos in place and not have to sacrifice any of the funding that they get from the state in order to be able to do that. Our hospitals, to a lesser extent now, but at one time, most of our hospitals were run by religious orders. And if I can just go back for a second, the experience around HIV and AIDS, we had two main hospitals on either side of Dublin City. Cities divided by a river, so we have the north side and the south side, and there was one established general hospital on the south side, which was dealing with most, if not all, of the cases of HIV and AIDS in Ireland, open to a certain point. And then, obviously, as the problem progressed and we needed to get a second hospital in Dublin City to do it, the only hospital that was really available to do it was a hospital called the Matter Hospital, which was run by religious nuns. And when they were starting to, and this is mid-1990s, I just wanted you to understand this, okay, when they were about to set up this department in their hospital, we said, actually, before you do that, can we just check where is your position in terms of providing condoms for people coming into the clinic and also in terms of providing support and care to gay men and their partners and recognizing their partners and all this kind of thing? And we realized very quickly that their ethos was gonna dominate, and it wasn't in favor of what we were looking for at all, so we had to get involved lobbying there to make sure that when they eventually did open the clinic, that it was on the same basis as the clinic on the south side of the city, and that eventually we got there, you know? But we have in our quality legislation a little get out clause for religious institutions that only in so far as their religious ethos might be affected by somebody either taking a job with the organization or the services that they provide, do they have the grounds in which to discriminate against people in the nine grounds covered of which sexual orientation gay men is covered? They were never able to prove a circumstances where they could actually really use that properly because the authority that was set up to govern that law made sure that they couldn't just get away with it in an easy way to do it. So we were kind of lucky in that regard, and I have to say people weren't discriminated against, and there is case law there to show how they were discriminated against and how the judgements came down in our favor, not in their favor, but in our favor in most of these situations. So in terms of the Catholic Church and their involvement around HIV and AIDS, so on an individual basis meeting religious, nuns, priests, whatever, you would find some of the most compassionate, well-meaning, brilliant, motivated people willing to make huge sacrifices on an individual basis, and I worked with many of them and they were fantastic. And then you come to the institutional position and the institutional position was, I sure God loved them, these poor people living with this disease and I sure God loves them anyway and all that kind of thing, but don't talk just about what you do when you're under the covers or that kind of thing, do you know? There was the experience for a lot of gay men that if they went to some of the social services that were provided by the Catholic diocese and Dublin, that if they had been a murderer, they would have got more understanding than the fact that they were gay men. And that was an awful experience. It took a while to get that to change and eventually they opened a center in Dublin City called Open Heart House and for all of my loud-mouthedness and all the rest and my criticism of the church and all this kind of thing, I was approached when they were setting it up but they were doing a consultation process and I was approached and asked if I'd help them in terms of looking at what they should provide, how they should provide it, where they should provide it and all this kind of thing. And so they were really, really good but the one thing I kept pushing with them was you gotta get over this gay thing, you know? You'll get every other group that's affected by HIV and AIDS coming through your door but gay men will not go near you if you're gonna stand there in judgment of us and thankfully they didn't do that, sorry, thankfully what I mean by they didn't do that is they didn't judge people, sorry. Just in case that was picked up the wrong way but they really, they kind of bought into it at that stage. So that was, it was good to see that move and I still have an interest because I spent a year in formation for the priesthood. I thought at one stage I wanted to be a priest and I spent a year in formation for that and I still have an interest in the Catholic church, how it works and the politics of what goes up. And particularly the experience of being involved in the ES equality campaign for marriage equality a couple of years ago and seeing we have an archbishop in Dublin who's very liberal, very, very liberal and really annoys the conservative lay Catholic community because he's so liberal and of course has to take the official church position on everything that happens in society but he's one of those people who leads by omission rather than attack. So when he was asked to make comments around say same sex marriage, it's what he didn't say that was the most impactful thing about it. That's how brilliant he was that he knew, I think he wanted to see it happen but he's tied by the policy, the dogma of the church. So it was what he didn't say that I think opened the door for a lot of Catholics to feel they could actually vote in favor of this thing. So that was interesting to see. So that's where we come from, the Catholic Church which at one time in Irish society, controlled Irish society, you go back to the 1950s, the 1960s, there was an archbishop in Dublin who actually before he ever became archbishop in the early drafts of a constitution, our constitution that's in place now from 1938, he was involved in helping to draft that as a priest in his early days and it was very, very conservative, you know and he wanted it to be even more so at the time but luckily now we've been able to change the few things in it and it's come around the way, it should be, a few little tweaks here and there and we'd be fine, like if we can take out any references to God, that would be fantastic but we'll get there eventually. But yeah, so they've come a long way and so on an individual basis, I have great time for individual religious, I really do, great laugh with them, really love the way that they're driven to want to do the right thing and then as an institution. What's the biggest misconception about you? Oh, God, I don't know, that's a hard one because I remember when you first brought this up I was trying to think, what the hell? I don't know, I really don't know to be honest with you and because I think sometimes I might think that what somebody says about me is not true or is not correct but actually they could be right, it's just that I'm not aware of the fact that that's the truth, do you know what I mean? So I'm not really sure what's the biggest misconception about me. Yeah, yeah, sorry, maybe one of them would be just that I'm not very political in the sense of party political but actually I can put that one to rest because I've nailed my colors to the mask quite strongly now in terms of one particular political party but yeah, I think a lot of people thought in the past I wasn't political but actually I've always been political, I've always been interested in politics, it's just that if you want change to happen and it has to happen through legislation you can't just work with one political party, you have to work with them all and you have to bring them all along on the journey and going from, like I sat in our parliament the night that the decriminalization bill was passed and I sat there and I watched the whole thing and I'd watched all the different stages in the parliament and that particular night I saw how politics was used, the parliamentary system was used by political parties to get something across that they knew needed to be got across the line but knew that if it was done in a certain way by having a vote and all this kind of thing that there was a chance that because politicians would have their name recorded beside their vote would be afraid to vote in favor of it made sure that the vote didn't happen. Oh, okay. So for me that's the kind of like that's the bill I love that where politics can act in a way to bring about beneficial change for minority groups without necessarily having to rely on the majority to make it happen. Does that make sense? Yes. So that was one of the experiences here in Ireland was to see that happen. And to see actually to see how many of the political parties have come a journey now. I mean the most conservative political party in Ireland has an LGBT group in it. Wow. Wow. So I mean that's and we're not talking log cabin Republican type thing where they say one thing and do another. Yes. And they're actually very, very active and they're very much in favor of LGBT issues. And of course it's their prime minister who's in office at the moment and he's out and he was elected having come out as a gay man before the leadership battle and still went on to become the leader of the party is I think it says a huge amount about how Irish society has changed as well. Absolutely. I agree. What legacy do you want to leave with the Leather King community? I don't know that there's an opportunity for me to leave any legacy. Because I think that it's on its own two legs. The guys who are behind it now who are organizing events and that have an energy that we couldn't have had in the past. And I think that that's incredible. I think if there was a legacy thing it would be that we have a supportive community that we're not just coming together to organize events just because we want to get our rocks off. That there's a, because I'm very community orientative. And so I feel that if anything we do can then have an extra element to it, an extra dimension where it's, it gives people confidence in themselves and their own identity and what they do that they should feel right about that, that they shouldn't feel ashamed about who they are, what they are, what they're into, what they're not into. That's in a sense I suppose would be a legacy if anything that would be it. Because I think every so often those who've been, if you like it, the forefront of trying to bring change have to step aside. Yes. So that new ideas, new energy, new people come along. It's not the gay world as we see it, as we want it. Maybe my time of being effective is over. Maybe all the things that I can do that I can help to bring about change was have been done. And that this time now for a younger generation or new ideas didn't have to be a younger generation. I think actually that's a mistake we make sometimes that we think that older members of the community can't contribute in a very progressive way when in fact they can and do. And that we should be open to that and we should be making room for that to happen as much as we make it for younger gay men to be able to take on those roles as well. That's just in terms of gay men obviously, because I'm quite passionate about the whole LGBT aspect of our community. And increasingly now in Ireland, we're starting to see other groups of people, so non-binary people, asexual people, intersex people beginning to kind of come out and get involved in things as well. They're starting to turn up at events and meetings more often than did before. And I embrace that, I think it's wonderful. And I love the fact that we're becoming more diverse in Ireland. I think that we have people coming from other parts of the world to live in Ireland is fantastic. I really think it is. I think it's good for any society to have that outside element coming into it. It adds to the culture, it adds to the flavor, it adds to the excitement. And if they're really good looking, then it helps even more. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Carl Hayden, thank you for being my chat subject in Dublin, Ireland, Sunday, January 28th, 2018. And I extend a heartfelt thank you for including Inside Mother History at Fireside Chat here in Ireland. Thank you. All right.