St. Patrick’s Day is just around the corner, which means that queers everywhere will be… doing the same thing they do every other day of the year. ☘️ 🌈
St. Patrick’s Day has never been a very gay holiday, unlike Halloween or Oscar Sunday. Plus, queers have had their fair share of drama around the day, with organizers of the New York and Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parades historically mistreating our people.
That said, you might have something to wave in those organizers’ faces this year. According to Brian Lacey, whose 2015 book Terrible Queer Creatures explores Irish gay history, St. Patrick was an inveterate lover of boys.
How about we take this to the next level?
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In the book, Lacey recounts an instance when St. Patrick doted upon the son of a man he had just converted to Christianity. No doubt, all the work of summoning God and promising eternal paradise must have worn Patrick out: Daddy needed a support twink.
But that’s not all! Patrick also gave the support twink a name. Disregarding the fact that you’re not supposed to name them (that’s how you get attached), the name was kind of cute – Benignus. Like the tumor!
Patrick and Benignus then became “lifelong companions.” Patrick even baptized him and made him the next bishop of Armagh, an illustrious position that probably meant something at the time.
Of course, that’s all just the secondhand account of a seventh century cleric named Tirechan, so take that with a grain of tasty red balloons. However, there’s also the not insignificant fact that Patrick was brought to Ireland as a Roman slave – and we all know what that means.
Of course, he famously escaped Ireland and only returned later to evangelize it, leading some to wonder how he got back. A well-placed boyfriend? A buttload of money that he already had, since he was most likely just an average guy who originally escaped Ireland to avoid a boring job as a tax collector? Guess we’ll never know!
In any case, the whole book by Lacey, which is appropriately inspired by a James Joyce quote, is worth a read. Notably, it paints a portrait of an erstwhile Ireland that very well could have been amenable to St. Patrick’s boy-cruising.
For instance, in the Gaelic Era, which lasted from prehistoric times to the 17th century, bards and poets freely gave themselves to handsome princes. Only later, after Catholicism took over the nation, did Irish people become so hostile to queer Irish folk like Oscar Wilde and Roger Casemant. (Even in 2009, a planned statue of Wilde in Worthing, Ireland – the town where he wrote The Importance of Being Earnest – incited vehement opposition.)
Patrick also wasn’t the only rumored gay saint.
There’s also Saint Sebastian, a third-century Christian martyr who has become something of a queer icon in the past century. Sebastian, who served as a Roman soldier under a pagan emperor, Diocletian, found himself sentenced to death by arrows for daring to be Christian.
However, Sebastian’s apparent sadomasochistic pleasure as he got pierced with multiple arrows, combined with his eight-pack and chiseled biceps, caused him to become a sex symbol among queer Renaissance men who later painted him. There was just something about his slightly parted lips and Sephora-friendly mug that made gay painters go, “Huh.”
In any case, there’s no shortage of queer myths surrounding saints in the long history of the Catholic Church; and plus, everything we know and love about St. Patrick is based on hearsay anyway. (The snakes thing? A lie.)
So what’s wrong with engaging in a bit of myth-making of our own? This year, if anyone runs their mouth about gays in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade and how that’s destroying the fabric of society, then just remind them of the queerness of the holiday they’re celebrating. After all, it’s not just about St. Patrick and the benign tumor that he loved.
It’s also about indiscriminately kissing people just because of something their shirt says, which is also how I’d describe an average summer at Fire Island.
So, go out and get your green on!
Related:
Why are all the dudes in Renaissance paintings so hot?
Seriously, early modern art is literally filled with hot dudes everywhere you turn.
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gothvixen
Sir Roger Casement is an acknowledged Fenian hero who brought rifles to Ireland 3 days before the Easter Ring of 1916. He was captured, tried and hanged by the occupying British and interred in the grounds of Pentonville Prison, until his remains were retuned to Ireland in 1965, when he received a State Funeral with full military honours, and was laid to rest in Glasnevin Cemetery. I’ve visited his grave to pay my respects. Very far from being hostile, Ireland considers him a legendary martyr to the cause of Irish freedom. As for St Patrick, he returned because he was captured by the forces of the High King Niall of the 9 Hostages.
still_onthemark
Yeah, that paragraph implies that Wilde and Casement faced more hostility from Catholics in Ireland than they did from the British authorities? ???
abfab
Grocery update. The stores are filled with big, shiny cabbages, gorgeous carrots of every size and color, Idaho potatoes, red yellow and gold. Best news of all———–the corned beef has already been marked down!
Yum.
still_onthemark
They’re always after me Lucky Charms!
abfab
And magically delicious!
abfab
Not to mention the Irish Spring man lathering up in his tub. ”Manly yes-but I like it too!”
wikidBSTN
You’re a gay man in a world that totally denies your gay existence and demands that you either marry and live your life as a peasant OR
you can go into the Church where you will only be with other men who are never allowed to marry and (at worst) you will have food, shelter, three squares a day and more than likely, better than that.
Where do you think all the gay men went? Hmmmmmmm ??
abfab
Give Ireland Back To The Irish
Song by Paul McCartney and Wings
Give Ireland back to the Irish
Don’t make them have to take it away
Give Ireland back to the Irish
Make Ireland Irish today
Great Britain, you are tremendous
And nobody knows like me
But really, what are you doin’
In the land across the sea?
Tell me, how would you like it
If on your way to work
You were stopped by Irish soldiers?
Would you lie down, do nothing
Would you give in or go berserk?
Give Ireland back to the Irish
Don’t make them have to take it away
Give Ireland back to the Irish
Make Ireland Irish today
c
Great Britain and all the people
Say that all people must be free
And meanwhile back in Ireland
There’s a man who looks like me
And he dreams of god and country
And he’s feeling really bad
And he’s sitting in a prison
Say, should he lie down, do nothing
Should give in or go mad?
abfab
And please, no Irish holiday would be complete with out ENYA! SAIL AWAY, SAIL AWAY, SAIL AWAY!
(love her)