A01=Averill Earls
Anti-homosexuality law
Author_Averill Earls
Category=JBSF3
Category=JBSJ
Category=NHD
Catholic nationalism
criminal justice
decriminalization
Disregard
Dublin
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
independence
Ireland
Irish Gay Rights Movement
Irish History
Irish Studies
LGBTQ
liberation
Masculinity
policing
post colonialism
Queer
Queer History
Queer Studies
sex
sexuality
Sexuality Studies
social biography
Sodomy law
State-building
Product details
- ISBN 9781439924150
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 20 Jun 2025
- Publisher: Temple University Press,U.S.
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Love in the Lav uncovers Ireland’s queer lives of the past. Averill Earls investigates how same-sex-desiring men lived and loved in a country where their sexuality was illegal and seen as unnatural. Across seven social biographical chapters, each highlighting individuals at the nexus of these histories, Earls constructs a narrative of experiences through the larger contexts in which they are embedded.
Earls uses courtroom testimonies, police records, and family history archives as well as “educated speculation” to show how structures governing male same-sex desire in Ireland played out on the bodies of the men who desired men, the teen boys who sold sex to men, and the way the Catholic-nationalist ethos shaped the GardaÍ who policed them.
Love in the Lav examines the experiences of people such as cabbie James Hand, who was put on trial for gross indecency, to provide a window into the queer working-class subculture of 1930s Dublin. Earls also focuses on issues of consent, especially with teens, and the unregulated queer Irish world of public figures, including MicheÁl Mac LiammÓir, Hilton Edwards, Ronald Brown, and John Broderick.
By examining twentieth-century Ireland through the lived experiences of ordinary same-sex-desiring Irish men who were relegated to obscurity by Irish society, Earls reveals the contradictions, possibilities, and magnitude of postcolonial Irish Catholic nationalism.
In the series Sexuality Studies
Earls uses courtroom testimonies, police records, and family history archives as well as “educated speculation” to show how structures governing male same-sex desire in Ireland played out on the bodies of the men who desired men, the teen boys who sold sex to men, and the way the Catholic-nationalist ethos shaped the GardaÍ who policed them.
Love in the Lav examines the experiences of people such as cabbie James Hand, who was put on trial for gross indecency, to provide a window into the queer working-class subculture of 1930s Dublin. Earls also focuses on issues of consent, especially with teens, and the unregulated queer Irish world of public figures, including MicheÁl Mac LiammÓir, Hilton Edwards, Ronald Brown, and John Broderick.
By examining twentieth-century Ireland through the lived experiences of ordinary same-sex-desiring Irish men who were relegated to obscurity by Irish society, Earls reveals the contradictions, possibilities, and magnitude of postcolonial Irish Catholic nationalism.
In the series Sexuality Studies
Averill Earls is Associate Professor of History at St. Olaf College and Executive Producer of Dig: A History Podcast.
