A couple of years ago Michael Barron, the director of Belong To,
the national organisation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered
(LGBT) young people, was driving through Buncrana with his husband, when
he saw some teenagers graffiti-ing a wall.
“One of the guys was writing
the word ‘gay’. I don’t know what came over us, but we decided to stop.
We assumed it was an act of homophobia.” He laughs. “When we went over
the guy was writing ‘Being Gay is Okay’.’”
Things are changing for gay teenagers in Ireland.
Belong To has had a lot to do with that. Ten years ago, it began as a
one-man operation run from a small desk-less office on Dublin’s Capel
Street.
Since then they have gone from dealing with 52 young people in
north Dublin to 3,500 across 24 LGBT groups countrywide and have become a
model of good practice for Unesco,
working closely with other LGBT organisations internationally.
The
aforementioned graffiti artists were working with an LGBT group and
local gardaí.
Depression
Depression
“I had been working in Focus Ireland,
” says Barron, sitting in Belong To’s more spacious headquarters on
Parliament Street, recalling the group’s origins. “I was the only out
gay member of staff so when a gay or lesbian person would come in I was
asked to work with them . . . It was clear that there were a
disproportionate number of young homeless people who identified as gay
or lesbian.
“If we were working with a young migrant or a
young Traveller there were organisations to link in with, but when it
came to the LGBT young people there was nothing.”
From the start, Belong To was committed to working with marginalised young LGBT people from all strata of society.
The
most powerful thing, says Barron, was young people getting to meet
others who were going through the same things.
But the remit has changed
over the years.
“At the very beginning we were
very much a local youth project, but it was quickly clear that young
people were travelling really long distances to come to us. One young
guy used to travel from outside Westport every Sunday, a round trip of
10 hours door to door.”
Another turning point
came when Belong To arranged a youth exchange to Manchester.
“[We had
to] ask if there was any medication they needed. Seven out of the 12 of
them were being medicated for depression. That was a real eye-opener . .
. We got a lot more serious about policy and social change work. How
could seven out of these 12 teenagers be medicated?”
Belong
To began to focus more on the mental-health needs of LGBT teenagers,
who are disproportionately likely to self-harm and to use drugs. A lot
of things were driven by frustration, says Barron.
“I would visit this
young trans woman who was committed to [a mental health institution].
Her family, her community, her school and the institution were awful to
her. She was being treated terribly . . . This was around the time we
were negotiating for the inclusion of LGBT people in the National
Suicide Prevention Strategy. I was really upset for her but it was
motivating.”
LGBT people’s needs were highlighted in the
National Suicide Prevention Strategy and this led to a huge growth in
LGBT services in Ireland.
Attitudes have changed a
lot.
The organisation now works closely with schools on their “Stand
Up” anti-homophobic- bullying campaign, but initially their work with
schools caused uproar.
“I was called into the Department of Education to
explain myself . . . There was actual paranoia about turning kids gay.”
LGBT
people are now coming out younger and younger, and generally, says
Barron, they have very positive experiences.
He cites RTE’s Growing Up Gay
documentary series as a turning point. In the months after it aired,
the number of people coming to Belong To doubled. “The kids who were
here before called them the Growing Up Gay babies.”
They get a lot of calls from concerned
parents wanting to do the right thing.
“I remember one mother told us
she thought her daughter was gay so she’d left a copy of Gay Community News on her bed. A few days later the daughter rang and said “Oh my God! My mother left GCN on my bed?’”
Homophobic violence
Homophobic violence
If
Ireland is a better place for LGBT people than it was 10 years ago,
this is partly because Belong To has helped convince everyone from the
Department of Education to the HSE that the rights and welfare of LGBT
young people are our collective concern.
They are currently recruiting
businesses for their Superhero Network, to help fund their anti-bullying
campaign.
Things are far from perfect. Barron
attended a recent meeting of LGBT young people where a third of those
present had been bullied out of school. And there are still, he says,
horrible incidents of homophobic violence.
But in general he believes
Ireland is becoming a more accepting place.
“The
biggest single shift that’s happened in gay rights is that tens of
thousands of gay teenagers are coming out,” he says. “We’re in a very
important moment with gay marriage and trans rights, but I’d guess we’ll
look back and say the biggest thing that happened is that all these
tens of thousands of teenagers came out. If a young person comes out as
gay in a family in 2013 that will transform the family in a positive
way. Then it goes on to transform neighbours and aunts and uncles and
friends. Eventually it transforms the country.”
To find out more about Belong To’s Superhero Network go to belongto.org