Invisible Threads GoLoud

In this eight-part series, we meet 8 older members of the LGBT community to reflect on the journey to finding your identity and the courage it takes to be yourself. Invisible Threads - coming soon to GoLoud.

Luchia Fitzgerald is a 74 year-old activist for gay liberation and women's rights. Born in Bessborough mother and baby home outside Cork City, she was brought up by her grandmother from the age of four years-old,until she ran away to Manchester as a teenager in 1961 following physical and mental abuse from her family. After a period of living on the streets, she met another Irish Woman, Angela Cooper, by chance at an underground gay bar. Together, they co-founded the Manchester branch of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), opened the city’s first women’s refuge, launched a radical queer printing press and organised demonstrations in defiance of Margaret Thatcher’s repressive Section 28 bill. As she has aged Luchia has remained politically engaged and now fights on behalf of older LGBT people.

Tom is 66 years old and lives in Aughrim Co. Wicklow, he is originally from Limerick. Tom moved to Dublin in the mid-80s where he began to explore some of the gay scene which existed at the time – however an underlying need to be ‘normal’ lead him to reject that part of his identity and through conversion therapy he locked it away and get married. Over the years the pressure of denying his true identity took its toll and after a period of depression when he was 55 years-old he came out. He is an active runner and has represented Ireland as an over 65s master athlete in Europe.

Eilish O'Carroll is a 68 year-old actress, writer and comedian. Eilish is the sister of Mrs. Brown's Boys star and creator, Brendan O'Carroll, she grew up in a traditional catholic Irish home. She was married twice to a man, and has two children, In 2003 she began a relationship with a woman. She has stated she was homophobic until she came out in her forties.

Sean is a 62 year-old retired physio & farmer, he has been livening West Cork in Skibbereen since 1991. Born in Michigan, near the Canadian border to an Italian mother, and a Scottish father in to a military family. When he was 19 he joined the Navy and was one of the first service members to be honourably discharged when he revealed his identity to his superior following the death of his partner. He moved to Ireland in 1991 where he worked with one of his sisters on a family farm in Ballylickey.

Louise Hannon is a 60 year-old transgender woman from Northern Ireland, living in Dublin. Louise was the first transgender person to use the Employment Equality Act to win a case against an employer on the grounds of gender discrimination. From an early age, Louise realised that she wasn’t comfortable in the male role, at the age of 16 seeing derogatory media coverage of April Ashley terrified her and she married and had children, in the early 00s after her marriage broke down she relocated to Dublin where she began the process of transitioning.