Declan Flynn was a 31-year-old working at Dublin Airport for Aer Rianta. Were he living in 21st Century Dublin you might see him as just another good looking young gay lad smiling in a selfie on Facebook or maybe bopping on the dancefloor of The George with his mates of a Saturday night.
The Whitehall man's life was brutally snuffed out by hatred and ignorance in Fairview Park in 1982 - but his tragic death set the wheels in motion for the Pride movement and even marriage equality. Declan, and countless others like him, lie cold in the grave now, his young life brutally snuffed out by hatred and ignorance on a cold September night in 1982.
Dublin in the early eighties was a grim place to be gay. Criminalisation made it extremely difficult to learn about other LGBT people, let alone actually meet them.
Within this environment of dread and isolation there was an ongoing campaign of harassment, blackmail, assault and robbery against gays actively ignored by the Gardaí. Driven by desperation to connect, despite the risks, Fairview Park was a place where lonely men could meet.
Read more: Dublin Pride 2023: All you need to know about parade route, road closures, traffic diversions
That fateful night Declan sat down on a park bench beside another young man. Before he knew what was happening, he was set upon by a predatory gang who had lain in wait behind some trees. He managed to break free and ran terrified towards the gate of the park.
But he never made it. They caught him and laughing they brutally battered him. They kicked and punched him and beat him with sticks.
When he stopped moving and they had exhausted themselves they stole his watch and the £4 in his wallet. They left Declan's horribly beaten body where it lay, choking on his own blood. Declan Flynn would pass away shortly afterwards in hospital.
Of course, his brutal murder was not an isolated event. Due to a combination of the draconian criminalisation of LGBT people and the environment of shame and silence there had been countless unsolved or unreported attacks and murders against gay men.
The very same year that Declan died, for example, a man called Charles Self was viciously murdered, stabbed 14 times. I’ve never felt the expression "Gay bashing" is appropriate. It seems almost dismissive in its simplicity, reductionist in its childishness.
It doesn’t fully articulate the violence, the terror, the chilling effect the crime and its anticipation have on both the LGBT community and wider society as well as the direct victim.
It doesn’t illustrate the gruesome wilful denigration, the robbery of the person’s safety and sense of self. To be set upon by a gang, to fear for your life and if you survive it to forever carry around the feeling that simply being what you are makes you a target for life-threatening attack.
The ages of the perpetrators of the were all in their teens. When asked about the crime, one of the killers blithely said: “We were all part of the team to get rid of queers in Fairview Park."
But it was the deplorable comments of the presiding judge Justice Sean Gannon which most chillingly showed the opinion of the State towards the value of gay life. As he handed out suspended sentences and allowed all the killers to walk free, he said: "This could never be regarded as murder.”
But if the justice system would not respond to the horrific crime the wider Irish society was disgusted by it and the gay community, motivated by both righteous anger and understandable fear of a reoccurrence, began to come together and rise up.
Disparate groups and concerned individuals were galvanised into action. A crowd of almost a thousand people marched from Liberty Hall to the scene of the murder in Fairview Park.
Openly gay citizens and their straight supporters from unions, political parties and social organisations stood shoulder to shoulder to express their desire for justice. The likes of this had never been seen before in Dublin.
The visibility of so many LGBT people on the news, in broad daylight as it were, was itself shocking to Irish society. Bonded by their outrage and desire for change, a community was formed.
The event lit the fuse on the Irish Gay Rights movement and that summer the first Dublin Pride took place, more protest than parade. Two hundred brave vanguards of equality marching from St Stephen’s Green to the GPO. From such tragedy and heroic beginnings, Irish Pride was born.
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