The Claddagh Embrace
former gay mural in Dublin, Ireland
The Claddagh Embrace, or just Claddagh Embrace, was a large-scale paper wall mural on a building in Dublin, Ireland created by street artist Joe Caslin. The mural was unveiled on 10 April 2015 during the lead up to the referendum on the Thirty-fourth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland, which legalized same-sex marriage in the Republic of Ireland. On 21 April 2015 Dublin City Council (DCC) sent a warning letter calling for the mural's removal as the mural was placed on a historic building without requesting planning permission from Dublin City Council. Rain heavily damaged the mural on 29 April 2015. The mural depicted a male same-sex couple, and is considered a symbol of same-sex marriage in the Republic of Ireland. A month later, Caslin released a sister piece featuring a female same-sex couple in County Galway.
History
Background
Katherine Zappone and Ann Louise Gilligan lost a case in the High Court in 2006 for the recognition by Ireland of their Canadian same-sex marriage. The Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitants Act 2010 instituted civil partnership in Irish law. After the 2011 general election, the Fine Gael and Labour parties formed a coalition government, whose programme included the establishment of a Constitutional Convention to examine potential changes on specified issues, including "Provision for the legalisation of same-sex marriage". The Convention considered the issue in May 2013 and voted to recommend that the state should be required, rather than merely permitted, to allow for same-sex marriage.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Claddagh Embrace” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.