"I think marriage is an expression of love"

i_steal_sheep

That's it in a nutshell.

http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/standing-stronglike-a-warrior-29105428.html

While I was being introduced to Donal Og Cusack in the magnificent Ratra House in the Phoenix Park last Monday night, Norma Smurfit emerged from one of the meeting rooms. "Don't tell him your secrets," she jokingly told him.

The legendary hurling goalkeeper, for his club, Cloyne, and his county, Cork, became an inspiration to many when he publicly revealed he was gay. As he wrote in his 2009 autobiography Come What May: "Since I was 13 or 14, I knew I was a bit different. I hate labels, though. That's the way I am. There was never agony. This is who I am. This is what I do. It's logical to me. I thought about this, but never had any problems dealing with it."

To put it in perspective or some kind of context, Donal was the first high-profile elite sportsperson to come out as gay in Ireland. In hindsight, Donal hopes his story meant it would make it easier for other gay men and women in Ireland to come to terms with their sexuality.

He was born on March 16, 1977, in Chapel Street in Cloyne in east Cork, the eldest of four: himself, Conor, Victor and Treasa. His father, Donal, was a crane-driver; his mother, Bunny Costine, a religious woman who went to Mass every day and said the rosary at home. He describes his mother as "very determined, and she loves her fashion"; his father is, he says, "a passionate man – and what he is passionate about is the game".

That was something his son inherited in spades. Now 35, Donal Og also grew up with a passion for music. His favourite band was probably The Progidy. "I loved the energy of the music," he says of the Essex techno outfit that gave the world such club classics as Firestarter and Smack My Bitch Up. "I liked listening to that type of music. I love dance music still. When I used to dream about hurling as a kid, I would go off into my dad's car and turn on The Prodigy. Music For A Jilted Generation ... I remember that album," he recalls.

Hurling rather than The Prodigy was in the soil of where Donal Og was reared. "Practically next door to me, Christy Ring was born," he says, referring to the GAA demi-god who was a member of the Cork senior inter-county team from 1939 to 1963. "And just a couple of steps outside my front door was a massive marble statue of Christy."

Young Donal would pass it every day as he went to school – "looking up at this god almost when you're a kid. So sport was the currency almost. GAA was the main thing in my life, still is. I identified myself through hurling. My parents encouraged me and I loved the game from as long I could remember." His aunts Marie, Kathleen and Bernadette all played camogie for Cork for many years.

Playing senior inter-county hurling for Cork since 1996, he went on to win five Munster titles and three All-Ireland medals. In 2006, he had to cut short a team trip to South Africa. There were Chinese whispers back home about his sexuality. This was, he recalls, stirred up by a English newspaper asking questions and threatening to 'out' him, whether he liked it or not.

"A couple of friends got phone calls and things like that. I can remember having a conversation with the president of the Gaelic Players Association and telling him that I didn't give a damn. He said, if it was another player, you wouldn't be saying that and that players need to be respected," remembers Donal, who is now the chairperson of the Gaelic Players Association (he is also on the board of An Gaisce).

They left letters in Cloyne for his parents, he says. "It is very much history now for me, but they said that they'd heard that I'd come out to my team-mates in South Africa, which wasn't true." The reporters also dropped letters into people whose names were Cusack and lived in Cloyne as well, he adds. "There was stuff like that."

When he got home from South Africa, he told his mother and father. He believes his mother "kind of always knew". Overall, he says, "my parents have gone beyond their duty in terms of the love and care they have shown me during my life".

"When I came out publicly, there would have been a lot of people asking me to do things," he remembers. "I just wanted to keep doing what I was doing. But I'd also be very conscious of the decision I made. I'd like to think it would make it easier on the next man or for some kids perhaps in a family who have a stereotypical view of a gay man that is presented through the media."

For this reason, Donal has lent his support and moral authority to the BeLonG To Stand Up Campaign 2013. Next Wednesday sees the launch of the fourth Annual Stand Up! Awareness Week Against Homophobic and Transphobic Bullying. Importantly, the campaign has not only been endorsed but also supported by the Department of Education and Skills, as well as by the National Association of Principals and the various teachers' unions, the Irish Secondary School Students Union and the HSE, among many others.

"One thing I feel passionately about," Donal says, "is that there are some young people – I know things are getting better – whose actions are influenced by guilt, worry about their sexuality. That's not right."

He has corresponded and spoken to many of them personally. He hopes the fact of him doing what he was doing – not being what some might see as a stereotypical gay man – encourages them to be themselves.

"But also it would be hard for some young people if there are homophobic images or messages. Everybody's mindset is different. There might be some people who are stronger mentally than others. But what I would say to them is: 'It gets better and it is definitely nothing to be ashamed of or anything like that. There is a good life out there.'"

"I am passionate about young kids out there who are worried about it. There are enough things to be worried about other than that," he says, adding: "I think it is a waste of a life if a person can't express who they are."

Donal's grandfather Michael Costine – who is 91 – has a saying: 'Live when you can; die when you can't help it'.

"I'll never forget those words ," says Donal with a twinkle in his eye, "because they are the words of a wise man."

He says his hopes for the BeLonG To Stand Up Campaign 2013 is to help a lot of young people around Ireland to deal with their thoughts and feelings.

What was going on in Donal Og's inner world as a teenager in terms of his sexuality was, he says, nothing dramatic.

"I never agonised over it. I would have known I was a bit different. I would have known I had a crush on a guy or whatever. I knew that was part of your journey."

But the important point is, why should your sexuality have to be hidden inside you.

"I agree 100 per cent with you. The way I live my life, I am a sports person who happens to be gay. The people I spend my time with, it is not relevant. It is not a factor."

He can remember being in a gay night club in Cork when he was 21. Someone came up to him and asked him was he Donal Og. He said he wasn't. "I wasn't proud of that," he says now.

He told some of his friends when he was younger. There were different times with different people. The first time was with a friend and a mentor of Donal's to this day, Dermot Falvey. He thinks he was 21 at the time. Before that, Donal still had girlfriends in his teens. "I just knew it wasn't there. But you wouldn't have found it easy to walk down the street in Cork holding a boyfriend's hand.

"You must remember that, when I was born, it was still illegal to be gay in Ireland, so if you're talking about the context, it has changed a lot since then," he says.

"Have I walked down the street in Cork holding hands?" he says later, returning to the question of almost an hour before. "Have I done it? Absolutely. Does it bother other people? To be honest, most people it doesn't."

I ask him if he would like to be married one day. "Oh yeah. I think marriage is an expression of love. And do you know what?" he says with a big smile. " I would like to get married in the church in Cloyne, because it is part of the community down there.

"But I also understand, in terms of the whole religious movement, if you looked at the last policy document of the Pope, it was written around love. And if people love each other – and if that is what God is about – then people are entitled to get married." In terms of gay marriage, he says, there is absolutely no question that there should be no civil or legal argument against it.

He lives by himself in a semi-detached house on a small estate a few miles outside Cloyne and is currently single. "Of course, I've had relationships, but not the one I'd want to be married to," he says with a laugh.

He is young, fit, handsome, a sports person, famous. Why isn't he in a relationship?

"Why isn't anybody of 35 in a relationship?" he chuckles. I tell him he'd make a great dad. He thanks me. "I'd love to have kids. And introduce them to sport and do the things that other parents do."

As for the game for him personally, it seems a bit up in the air recently. The headline in the Irish Independent on February 1 was emphatic: 'Barry-Murphy Calls Time On Career Of Cork Colossus Cusack', adding in an article by Colm Keys that Cusack's long career "looks to be at an end after Jimmy Barry-Murphy confirmed that he has been released from the squad".

Cork Colossus Cusack says, when I ask him why he was dropped: "Being dropped from Cork? I don't want to talk about it. The Cork players did well last weekend and I wish them well."

Donal Og can talk about consciousness as freely as he can talk about the beautiful game. He loved The Power Of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle and The Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman in particular.

"The warrior does not give up what he loves, he finds the love in what he does," Donal says. "Death isn't sad. The sad thing is: most people don't live at all. It's the journey, not the destination. A warrior is not about perfection or victory or invulnerability. He's about absolute vulnerability."

Something of a peaceful warrior himself – he was once described in the Examiner as the lightning rod for the Cork hurlers strike in 2008 – Donal, who has worked since 1999 for a multinational in Cork as an engineer with an innovation centre, has a more than a passing interest in the mind.

"The mind is powerful; it can take control of your being. It is about focusing on where you are. There are skills you can bring to your daily life, too – like breathing and a little bit of meditation," he says, adding that at the end of training sessions he would often spend a minute or two meditating.

"I was born a Catholic. I try to take the best of what suits me from any religion and learn from them. There is something out there, an energy of some sort that I can connect with, but not necessarily a man called Peter at a gate.

"If I do die and meet him, I would at least like to think that he would give me some time to debate with him before he sends me on my way," he continues. "I Iike a lot of Buddhist teaching. For example: 'Though thousand times a thousand in battle one may conquer, yet should one conquer just oneself, one is the greatest conqueror'. That resonates with me."

Donal Og Cusack is an ambassador for the Up! Awareness Week against Homophobic & Transphobic Bullying, which is an initiative of BeLonG To Youth Services. Schools and youth organisations nationwide will take a stand from March 10-15.

For full details go to www.belongto.org

Lyaiera

That sums it up for me. I could never understand how anyone sees it any differently. It's just two people officially showing the world they love each other. I don't know why it needs to be more complicated than that. If you keep going down to the root of the definition of marriage I think that's where it'd be.