TORONTO — Actor Colin Farrell has written an impassioned plea for marriage equality in his native Ireland.
In an essay published in the Sunday World the 38-year-old actor said the issue is “personal” because his older brother Eamon is gay.
“It’s about inclusion. It’s about fairness,” Farrell wrote.
“It’s about giving our lesbian and gay sisters and brothers back a right that should never have been stolen from them in the first place.”
Ireland is holding a referendum early next year to decide whether or not to extend marriage rights to gays and lesbians.
According to an Ipsos MRBI poll for the Irish Times in October, 67 per cent of people said they will support equal marriage.
“This referendum is a chance for us to arise,” Farrell wrote. “To wake up to the conviction that true love from the heart of one being to another cares not for the colour, nor the creed, nor the gender of who it chooses to share that path with.
In his essay, Farrell said speaking out in support of equality is a “moral necessity if we’re to have a society where peace, compassion and kindness become the ruling classes.”
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Farrell’s brother Eamon married Irish artist Steven Mannion in Vancouver in 2009. The couple lives in Dublin.
“They had to travel a little farther than down the aisle to make their vows, though, to Canada, where their marriage was celebrated,” said Farrell.
“The fact that my brother had to leave Ireland to have his dream of being married become real is insane. INSANE.”
In comparison, Farrell pointed out he can drive to Las Vegas from his home in Los Angeles and “get drunk and meet a woman and have Elvis marry us for $200.”
The star of movies like Saving Mr. Banks and the made-in-Toronto films Total Recall (2012), S.W.A.T. (2003) and A Home at the End of the World (2004), wrote about knowing from an early age that his brother was gay.
“My brother Eamon didn’t choose to be gay,” Farrell wrote.
“But he was always proud of who he was … Even when others were casting him out with fists and ridicule and the laughter of pure loathsome derision, he maintained an integrity and dignity that flew in the face of the cruelty that befell him.”
Farrell urged people to register to vote “so that future generations will know that there was a day when the people of Ireland staked claim once more to their independence and that we chose to live independent of inequality.”
He added: “How often do we get to make history in our lives? Not just personal history. Familial. Social. Communal. Global. The world will be watching. We will lead by example. Let’s lead toward light.”
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