Europe’s oldest matchmaking festival is going gay for the first time this August.

Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival in County Clare, Ireland, will invite gay singles looking for love for a weekend filled with parties and events.

It will also be the first matchmaking festival in the world for the LGBT community, the organizers have claimed.

Former Dublin Pride organizer Eddie McGuinness, who was pitched the idea by local hotelier Marcus White, told Gay Star News: 'All of the local businesses have taken it really positively.

An anti-gay senator has said the Ireland constitutional convention voting in favor of marriage equality was ‘flawed’.

Rónán Mullen, an independent politician, has said senators were made to feel bad if they did not take the ‘politically correct’ position.

The 100 convention members casted their historic votes on 14 April in Dublin with 79 voting in favor of marriage equality.

Gay teachers in Ireland have said their students are bullying them, and they fear they cannot do anything about it in case they lose their jobs.

At the Teachers’ Union of Ireland annual conference, Patrick Hogan, from Limerick City Council, said action was needed immediately to stop ‘the fear being suffered by so many of our colleagues.

‘Our LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) colleagues fight to overcome the huge fears they face in their schools every day,’ he told the conference.

The celebration of LGBT Pride takes all sorts of different forms around the world.

What began as a political movement, demanding equality and human rights for LGBT people, has evolved in many places into festivals, parades and parties of all shapes and sizes.

What’s undeniable is that the focus and character of a pride event is very much shaped by the city and people that it represents.

Sandwiched in between a Ladbrokes bookmaker and a Greggs bakers on a pretty ordinary street in Manchester, England is a theater. It's called the Dancehouse these days but back in 1951 it was known as The Regal. It was outside The Regal that British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist Alan Turing met Arnold Murray, a 19 year old gay man who would ultimately play a huge part in Turing's suicide just a few years later.

The first study into LGBT parents in Ireland revealed legal vulnerability which adversely affects gay families.

The study, published yesterday (13 February), examined the experiences of 153 LGBT people who are already parents to 272 children and 170 people who are actively attempting to become parents.

In terms of total number of participants, football is one of the biggest and most popular sports going for gay men and lesbians.

In 2013 the International Gay and Lesbian Football Association (IGLFA) is holding its European Championship in Dublin.

We caught up with Paul O’Brien - lead organizer for the event and key player with the Dublin Devils Football Club - to find out how preparations are going.

Why are the IGLFA European Championships being held in Dublin in 2013?

Julia Hoggett’s job title is a mouthful and you probably need to be a banker to know what it means. But this understated mom is also a role model for gay women as a senior executive at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

When she’s not spending time with her partner and kids in Ireland, she’s ‘Managing director, head of short term fixed income origination, EMEA, head of covered bonds and FIG flow financing, EMEA’ (we told you) for the bank.

And when she’s not doing that, she’s co-lead of the company’s LGBT employee network.

An Irish cell phone advert which mocks and 'dehumanises' transgender people has been reported to advertising watchdogs.

The 40-second TV spot explains how it's no longer necessary to do silly things to get free internet on your Meteor mobile, listing going to a trans bar as an example.

But campaigners from the Transgender Equality Network Ireland (TENI) don't see the funny side and are calling for the advert to be banned.

'Ireland's trans community should not be used for cheap laughs,' said TENI director Broden Giambrone.

IRA leader Michael Collins may have been gay, claims a gay Irish senator in his new autobiography.

Collins is considered by many to be a revolutionary hero who helped pave the way for the foundation of the modern Irish state.

As well as being the intelligence director of the IRA, a military group which fought British rule during the 1919–21 Irish War of Independence and later became known as a notorious terrorist group, Collins was both Chairman of the Provisional Government and Commander-in-chief of the National Army.

A former Irish President has said the Catholic Church is partly responsible for the growing number of gay men who take their own lives.

Mary McAleese, who served from 1997 to 2011, said when the research is broken down, it shows young gay teens are one of the most at-risk groups in Ireland.

A Northern Irish politician has resigned after comparing homosexuality to bestiality.

The Belfast Telegraph reports Lord Maginnis quit the Ulster Unionist Party today (28 August) after having been a member for 50 years. He said he had ‘agonized’ over the decision in the last three months.