Meet Mullagh’s same sex parents who are blazing a trail

Locally in Mullagh, Clare and Zara Clarke are known as the lesbian couple with the two brown kids. It’s a description that makes them feel proud.

“You’re accepted for who you are,” Zara says.

“I’ve been in Mullagh since 2002 and I don’t think I’ve heard anybody slagging anybody,” Clare adds.

Having grown up in London and Dublin, they value the “country mindset” in rural Cavan; people who are “nice and polite” and “not rude”.

“They’ve more of a problem if you’re rude or mean, than if you’re gay.”

Clare and Zara featured on the front cover of a book with their two children Devin and Rebecca. They were approached about taking part in the ‘Family Law’ book last April, when they were “happy” to join the project by Sarah-Jane Travers and Ciarán Dunbar, which aims to celebrate diversity in Irish families.

“There’s not much information out there for LGBT+ families, so it was nice to be part of something that’s pushing this information out.”

How do you think the project turned out?

“We loved it, we thought it was great with all the different families coming together. Through the whole thing was - there is no difference, so why is it such a big difference in the law?”

While flicking through, they didn’t notice any difference within each family, and admitted that they were more interested in what each family had to say, and with a small, guilty laugh they add: having a “nosey” at the furniture in the sitting room.

“We’re two women with two kids so we don’t pay attention to the family structure.”

The interviews as part of the project gave participants the opportunity to mention the positives and negatives associated with being a LGBT family in Ireland. How is this experience for Clare and Zara, who live in rural Ireland?

“I think we have a double whammy so we have two mums and then both of our kids are brown,” Zara explains. “So there’s a lot going on within our family.”

They find it most difficult in hospital settings, when they are asked which one of them is the parent, where they respond that both of them are. In their experience, the response to this depends on “the age” of the person, however they said they are also met with “a lot” of acceptance, while others “press further”.

“I get so defensive because it’s upsetting the kids, and it’s diminishing their view of their two parents. They only have me and Zara. They know that we are their parents,” Clare says.

“Open conversations” are very important in the Clarke household, and when they come home from school on a day where they’ve received some sort of comment about their parents, the immediate response is “okay let’s sit down and have a chat about it”.

“Obviously they’re going to get stick and a little bit of backlash out there,” Zara concedes.

Their motto: “No matter what you do, no matter what you wear, no matter what you say, somebody is going to have something to say about you. Just live your life as yourself and be happy.”

By taking part in the book, they also wanted to show that there are people out there like them who are just “living their lives”.

Clare and Zara broke off their relationship almost three years ago, and they also wanted to show “you can still have your family and it can still work even if you aren’t together anymore”.

“We’re not to the extreme where I’ve got to rub everything in you’re face but we do exist and we want to be treated the same as everyone else.”