Love in the Lav

"This history of same-sex-oriented men in 20th-century Ireland is a surprisingly emotional ride.... Love in the Lav puts real humans at the center of the story, striking a balance between being respectfully clinical about homoerotic matters and a little titillating in its focus upon actual lives. From the thousands of records detailing hundreds of arrests, Earls fleshes out the lives of about a dozen named offenders to exemplify the fact that these were real people with agency and feelings." - Gay & Lesbian Review

“Love in the Lav transforms our understanding of the lived experience of same-sex-desiring men in Ireland. With ease, Earls deftly draws us into a world she has created from meticulous research to reveal important insights into Irish society in the twentieth century. With an accessible and engaging style, Earls gives a voice to those ordinary men whose stories have been lost in history.” - Leanne McCormick, Professor of History and Director of the Centre for the History of Medicine in Ireland at Ulster University

“Averill Earls’s Love in the Lav is a groundbreaking contribution to Irish LGBT history and to the wider history of Ireland in the decades after it achieved independence in 1922. She documents how the new Irish state retained the British laws criminalizing homosexuality and implemented them with far greater rigor and commemorates the lives of the gay and bisexual men and youths who were victims of one of the Irish state’s worst human rights violations. This book is a great contribution to international LGBT history in its documentation of how LGBT people fared in one postcolonial country.” - Kieran Rose, Cofounder and Former Chairperson of Ireland’s Gay and Lesbian Equality Network