The resilience of homophobia is striking, particularly in “traditional” societies like Northern Ireland. Many people here who would never dream of uttering a bad word about those of another race or religion gladly bandy around words like “poof” and “fag”. These terms are still considered acceptable insults for someone whose behaviour fails to live up to some standard of “masculinity”.
Homophobia is considered a harmless prejudice, just a bit of banter. It’s obvious that anti-semitism, bigotry and racism are all killers but there has never been an anti-gay pogrom or a homosexual holocaust. For this reason homophobia remains an acceptable prejudice.
However homophobia does kill. I’m not speaking here of the instances of “queer-bashing”, terrible as they are. Rather I’m referring to a hidden but much larger problem. A recent survey revealed that 30% of young gay people in Northern Ireland have attempted suicide. This is a statistic which truly merits the term “shocking”.
Northern Ireland is not an easy place to be young and gay. Bullying at schools is rife and parents tend to be less accepting of their children’s sexuality than parents elsewhere in the west. I’ve lived in Belfast most of my life but I can never recall seeing two men walking down the street hand in hand. To do so would lead to insults at best, violence at worst. In this little corner of Europe homosexuality is still something hidden, something shameful. It’s no wonder then that so many young gay people have so little self-worth that they don’t want to go on living