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Belfastmen
An Intimate History of Life Before Gay Liberation
Tom Hulme (Author)
9781501786440
Hardback, published 15 April 2026
306 pages, 23 Halftones, black and white - 1 Maps
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm, 0.606 kg
"If a key task of the historian is to illuminate dark corners, Tom Hulme has done that in a literal sense, and with aplomb writing fluently, [he] has stylishly documented the combination of fear, longing, class, religion, moralism, pragmatism and politics at the heart of Belfast's history of same-sex desire" - The Irish Times "Public records and private papers reveal compassion and tacit acceptance before 'moral panic' took hold in the 1950s and 1960s." - The Guardian
Belfastmen reconstructs the everyday experiences of queer men in a region infamous for its recent history of intolerance, violence, and religious homophobia to show how queer lives before the gay rights movement were not only possible but also rich, exciting, and fulfilling. Irish churches and governmental authorities found the topic of sex between men unmentionable and imagined such vice as a problem only found in decadent and degenerate societies abroad. Belfastmen shows how this tacit ignorance and public silence paradoxically enabled male queerness to flourish with only rare exposure, condemnation, or regulation. Tom Hulme traces the intimate lives of men across time, space, and self-understanding: their meeting places, their sexual and romantic relationships, the scientific and social models of desire they used to define themselves, and the responses to them from families, neighborhoods, and the law. From Belfast's industrial boom in the late nineteenth century to the social transformations accompanying WWII, Belfastmen reveals how homosexuality finally emerged as a recognized social problem in the 1950s. Only then did Northern Ireland start to transform into the expressively homophobic society of the more recent past.