“A lot of people were surprised that a drag queen would make a serious point,” Rory O’Neill, aka Panti Bliss, said recently in Seattle. “They think everything you say would be a joke.”
Panti Bliss was somewhere between Paris and Seattle, stuffed in a suitcase that Delta Air Lines had sworn up and down would be here before the end of the day.
Until she arrived — “she” meaning blond wigs and long lashes and foundation wear that does exactly what it should, and then some — Rory O’Neill would speak for Panti, his drag personality, about something they both know well: equality for the LGBT community.
It’s a right, a freedom that both Ireland and the United States share — and that Washington passed on its own in 2012, becoming one of only eight states to allow same-sex marriage at that time. The rest of the country followed last year with a vote by the U. S. Supreme Court.
And while we had our share of foot soldiers in the fight for equality, it was Panti Bliss, “The Queen of Ireland,” who helped bring a 62 percent yes vote in that very Catholic of countries last year.
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“A lot of people were surprised that a drag queen would make a serious point,” O’Neill said the other day. “They think everything you say would be a joke.”
O’Neill was in Seattle to promote “The Queen of Ireland,” a documentary about O’Neill/Panti’s role in getting the referendum passed. The film played over the weekend as part of The Seattle International Film Festival and is a candidate for Best of SIFF, a showcase of jury award winners and crowd favorites that will screen later this month.
It turns out that Panti Bliss was the perfect person to get a Catholic country to support gay rights.
It started when O’Neill went on an Irish talk show and called out people who he believed were homophobic. The national television network, RTE, was threatened with legal action and paid out penalties to those O’Neill named, spurring a national debate about censorship, free speech and equality.
Not long after, Panti delivered a “Noble Call” at the Abbey Theatre, explaining how it feels to be treated as a lesser citizen, and how he had to check himself just standing on the street, lest he be attacked.
He received thanks, he said, and not only from the LGBT community: “A lot of women, a lot of disabled people. A lot of autistic people. It’s about anybody who feels on the outside for whatever reason. And it turns out that almost everybody feels that in some part, in some way.”
And Panti, a straight-talking drag queen, became the face of the movement.
“She’s rooted in real,” said O’Neill, 47. “She’s not a purely theatrical character. And at home, people are used to seeing Panti jump into cabs. They think of her as a real person. She is a real person. She’s just another version of me.”
In fact, O’Neill said, Panti is now part of the establishment. She received an honorary doctorate from Trinity College (O’Neill accepted for her, in a tuxedo, no less). She’s been asked to open science fairs.
“That’s a funny position for a drag queen to be in,” O’Neill said. “I got into drag in the first place because it’s underground and transgressive. So to suddenly be establishment is sort of a weird situation to be in.”
What isn’t weird is how equality has become a reality both here and in Ireland.
As O’Neill said in the film: “The sky didn’t fall. We’re all OK.”
If Ireland voted today, he said, the percentage for equality would have been even higher than it was in last year’s election.
O’Neill credits places like Seattle and Washington state for inspiring young Irish people to push for equality and same-sex marriage.
“That was followed very closely,” O’Neill said of our referendum. “Because of the internet, we were seeing (equality) every day.”
So what do we do now? Count our blessings, O’Neill said.
Ireland only decriminalized homosexuality in 1993.
“It’s very inspiring to see us go from there to where we are now, and in a very short amount of time,” O’Neill said. “It’s amazing.”
While Ireland is historically, devoutly Catholic, the power of the church was “decimated” by the priest-abuse scandal, O’Neill said, as well as the cases of two high-profile priests found to have fathered children with women they had been involved with for years.
“Ireland is still very much about tight, close-knit families and small communities,” O’Neill said. “So they voted in favor of people they know. All the ‘no’ arguments were these intellectual arguments, but people didn’t want to vote against people they love.”
Still, he said, we need to remember we live in relatively small pockets of the world where gay people have equality, “whereas in vast parts of the world, they are so far away from there.
“For me, the message of the film is: We’re really lucky, and incredible change is possible,” O’Neill said. “And sometimes change comes in the most unexpected ways.
“Who would have thought that a brassy blond drag queen could affect change in that way?”
So it wasn’t just wigs and lashes and foundation-wear in that bag, lost somewhere between here and Paris. It was the face of change, and freedom and love.
And it got here, by the way. Just in time.