RTÉ star Brendan Courtney left shaken after passers-by shout ‘there’s the faggot off the telly’
Broadcaster and designer Brendan Courtney says he “felt extremely angry” after being verbally assaulted in Dublin’s city centre in broad daylight.
According to the Herald, the incident took place on Dublin’s Exchequer Street on Tuesday morning when two men shouted homophobic abuse.
“I was wandering down the street when they shouted, ‘There’s the faggot off the telly’,” he said.
“On a human level it’s mortifying to be called something like that in such a public place.
“Everyone is looking at you and you feel very exposed.
“Then I just felt extremely angry because it’s mental that people can still be so ignorant.”
Courtney added that homophobic abuse is not uncommon in Dublin.
“If you ask any other notorious gay in this city, they’ll say it’s part of their life but I’m not accepting it any more.
“I was just so angry yesterday morning,” he said.
Courtney said he “stopped mentioning” homophobic incidents for a while until earlier this year, when “everything happened with Panti and then I saw how badly he was treated.”
Rory O’Neill, who plays Panti, caused controversy in January when he labelled Catholic lobbying group the Iona Institute ‘homophobes’ on an Irish talk show, over their position on same-sex marriage.
“I felt solidarity with Panti and so I started posting about these incidents again,” he added.
A year earlier, he revealed that he suffered from homophobic bullying while at school: “It was physical and verbal because I was obviously gay. But I’m a very forceful person and I just stopped going to school. Then I was caught and I said, ‘Sort them out or I’m not going back in’. I changed schools and I was really popular at the new one, I kind of reinvented myself.”
