Solidarity
Chester A. Arthur III
Born in Colorado in 1901, Arthur was the grandson of the 21st US President Chester A. Arthur (who was himself the son of an emigrant from Cullybackey, Co. Antrim). Seeking a connection with his ancestral roots in 1921, Arthur travelled to Ireland where he expressed his solidarity with the Irish republican cause. A bisexual, astrologer and sexologist, Arthur befriended numerous Irish republicans while living in Dublin in the 1920s, including Kathleen O’Brennan and Ella Young.
Image: Still from the 1930 film Borderline, via YouTube
Collette O’Regan and RoCK
In 2014, RoCK – Rainbow Community Kampuchea – became the first Cambodian LGBTQ+ organisation to receive official recognition from the Cambodian state. Among RoCK’s founding members was an Irish woman: Collette O’Regan. Born in Cork in 1968, O’Regan first became interested in Cambodia as a student at University College Cork in the late 1980s when she joined the Cork Cambodia Solidarity Group.
Photo courtesy of Collette O’Regan