Today's Guardian reports mounting piles of evidence about the extent of the antigay attitudes in Northern Ireland http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/mar/23/workplace-homophobia-northern-ireland
This develops the piece on the blog the other day. Now that there is less killing it seems as if the hatred formerly acted out between the IRA and the so-called Loyalists, is turned towards The Other - migrants and, especially, LGBT people. Of course, the versions of Christianity adopted by some, not all, in Northern Ireland are fundamentalist illiberal and ultimately doomed. Monocredal state funded faith schools do little to challenge the idea that people are more alike than they are different.
It is no surprise that so many LGBT people flee Northern Ireland either for the Republic or the UK. The trouble is that they often bring the internal psychic wounds that being on the receiving end of such hatred with them if they flee into exile. It is sad and, when the general suicide rate is already higher than the UK and that for LGBT (especially) young people even higher makes it utterly tragic.
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