You know we love you

IT was 2001, and a lovely occasion was being celebrated in a family home in Clontarf. There was a card, a cake and champagne, in tribute to the fact that youngest daughter Joan O'Connell had just come out as gay to her family.

"I was lucky to have a family that not only was so supportive, but made it an extra-special occasion," says Joan, now 27. The actual coming out happened by accident, while Joan was studying law in college in 2001. Her older sister Barbara, a primary school teacher, was on a night out, and heard through a friend of a friend about the great work her sister was doing as a facilitator with a gay youth group. She told Joan what she had heard, and assured her that she loved her, as did her mother, Ann Cooney, the next morning.

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