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23rd May 2015

Buzzfeed’s Declan Cashin shares an emotional email from a former classmate

Declan had written an evocative piece about the Marriage Referendum

Tony Cuddihy

Journalist Declan Cashin has shared an email he received from a former classmate in response to a piece he wrote on Buzzfeed.

“My adolescence was spent – wasted – denying and suppressing my natural urges. The only respite from the deafening silence around homosexuality was the constant static noise of homophobia from the church, from school, from pop culture and, although often inadvertent, from my family,” he wrote.

Cashin’s piece spoke to the isolation felt as a gay teenager in Ireland in the 1990s, and can be read in full here.

He has now shared the following correspondence from a former classmate of his which, amid all today’s celebrations, shows the more personal side of growing up gay – and attitudes to that – in Ireland.

Pic via Declan Cashin/Twitter

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