HALF a lifetime ago I first set foot on Irish soil within a few hours of Bobby Sands' death to report, in the no doubt ham-fisted way of a young outsider, on "the troubles".
A few days later, on the day of the hunger striker's funeral, feeling like a veteran already, I ended up in the Europa Hotel. Here's what I wrote: "At one end of the bars of one of Belfast's main hotels, an Irishman named Kelly assured me that I was surrounded by 'the only people in this community who don't give a f*** what religion you are'."
I had found myself among a group of gay men who were under siege. For both the Catholic Church and Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party were hounding this despised minority and fighting to keep the law criminalising them on the Northern Ireland Statute Book.
Save Ulster from Sodomy was the campaign then, and now, 34 years later it seems that change has been glacial. Except you can't even use that term since many of those who rail against homosexuals also disbelieve the geological evidence, holding hard to the Biblical record that the earth was only created 6000 years ago, and that fossils and indications of Ice Ages must have been left here by God to test our faith.
Why, you ask, this trip down memory lane? Because suddenly it feels relevant again. Not just because the Republic of Ireland is going through its own fierce debate on gay marriage, but because in the North the DUP, now the dominant force in Ulster Unionism, is still riddled with homophobia. And if the Conservatives are narrow winners over Labour next week, and the rump of Nick Clegg's party is insufficient to get Cameron back through the door of Number 10, who will he turn to? You guessed it, the DUP, who may well add to their eight seats.
This week the Stormont Health Minister, Jim Wells, resigned a few days after telling a hustings that children of a same sex couple were more likely to be abused. First he denied it, then a blogger produced video evidence, so he blamed his comments on stress from his wife being gravely ill, which he them used as his pretext for stepping down. As Minister, he also held the view that abortion should be denied even to victims of rape.
His predecessor as Minister of Health, Social Services and Public Safety was Edwin Poots, who used the position to ban gay people from giving blood and fought attempts to bring gay adoption laws into line with the rest of the UK. He was Environment Minister when he proclaimed his "young earth" view that the earth is 6000 years old. Scientists put it at 4.5 billion years.
Why does this matter? Well compare and contrast these two politicians with Holyrood's two most recent Health Secretaries, Shona Robison and before her Nicola Sturgeon, who has gone on to be First Minister and "the most dangerous woman in Britain" after performing strongly in the televised leaders' debates. Had they, or any other SNP parliamentarians, come out with the utterances of some in the DUP you would never hear the end of it.
The SNP, whatever your views on the constitutional question, is in the mainstream of Northern European social democratic parties. You simply cannot say that about the DUP, which grew out of an evangelical church and the role of its charismatic loyalist leader in the troubles. It has a strange admix of policies, ultra-Unionist, socially conservative, pro-defence, pro-border controls, but hostile to benefit cuts. It has espoused "equidistance" between Labour and Tories but in reality is far closer to the latter and has refused to be part of any voting bloc which includes the SNP.
Westminster DUP leader Nigel Dodds and party leader Peter Robinson have both been critical of the Tories for tactics which they see as playing into the SNP's hands. David Cameron has rarely been put on the spot about whether he would accept DUP support and yet he has constantly asked the same question of Ed Miliband regarding the SNP.
While Labour used to be able to rely on the SDLP for support, that party has fallen to just three MPs because of advances by Sinn Fein, with five, but who as abstentionists will play no part at Westminster. So the squeeze in Northern Irish politics towards Republicans and the DUP only matters to Westminster in the case of the latter. Fossils sent to test us, you might say.
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