There was a conversation on RTE the other day, a conversation which touched on homophobia; the video of the conversation was taken down from YouTube and then restored with parts removed.
RTE has removed content from the RTE Player featuring Rory O’Neill’s interview on The Saturday Night Show.
In an interview following a performance by O’Neill’s alter ego Panti, host Brendan O’Connor spoke to the performer about homophobia in Ireland. O’Neill spoke about how he believed Ireland had a bad rep but as a small country could change much faster.
Nothing too horrifying there. He goes on to say that everybody knows gay people, which makes it hard to “be mean” about the subject.
Because Ireland is such small communities grouped together, everybody knows their local gay!
Maybe twenty years ago it was ok to be really mean about him, but nowadays it’s just not ok to be really mean about it.
The only place that you see it’s ok to be really horrible and mean about gays is on the internet in the comments and people who make a living writing opinion pieces for newspapers.”
Rory O’Neill
When O’Connor asked who the writers were that O’Neill was talking about he named Breda O’Brien and John Waters, as well as the Iona Institute.
And the interview was later taken down.
RTÉ confirmed its actions in a statement to TheJournal.ie:
Last weekend’s The Saturday Night Show was removed from the Player due to potential legal issues and for reasons of sensitivity following the death of Tom O’Gorman as would be standard practice in such situations.The programme has since been returned to the online player but O’Neill’s interview has been cut short.
What potential legal issues?
Can anybody seriously think that anything he said was libelous? If so, things are more different on that side of the Atlantic than I had realized.