with Stephen Meyler

#GLEN #FakeDebates #DreamDaddy

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR?

Even before the gay rights lobbying organisation GLEN made the decision to wind down earlier this year, its funding was itself being wound down. Not only had the private cash from Atlantic Philanthropies dried up, but government support, in the form of money from the HSE, was also being cut. According to GLEN’s former boss Aine Duggan, the HSE was making support for LGBT+ activities less of a priority after the success of the marriage equality referendum.

Is this institutionalised homophobia? Or is the HSE, as it should do with its always under pressure resources, prioritising other funding? After all, GLEN was pretty successful at achieving what it intended. Apart from its big part in marriage equality, it was the main agent of legalisation back in 1993 and over the decades of its existence, the long-term relationships members like Chris Robson, Kieran Rose and Brian Sheehan forged with government officials meant the gay community’s voice was heard, regardless of which parties were in power.

Given that the focus of activity for GLEN and other organisations was for so long on achieving marriage equality, is it any wonder that the civil servants making funding decisions now question why they should fund it quite so much?

Of course, issues like mental health, drug and alcohol use and the surge in STIs haven’t gone away and nor has their far greater impact on LGBT+ people. Although the HSE continues to fund the groups providing services in these areas, GLEN is a lesson and a warning that you can’t take anything for granted.

LET’S HAVE A HEATED DEBATE

Who doesn’t love a poisonous comments section screechfest? The comments below even the most innocuous story predictably degenerate into sexist, racist and homophobic slurs, and I don’t often read far before the idiots and bigots make me despair. But the comments section is just one aspect of how social media and our online engagement are creating illusions of choice. It generates essential eye traffic and consumer/reader engagement tallied by shares, likes, number of comments, retweets etc. All the owners of the sites and the advertisers give us in return is a frisson of dissociated outrage, the key emotional response of our media-saturated world.

One trivial story that reveals these online debates for what they are – money-making gambits – is the one about Cork GAA fans being asked not to bring US Confederate flags to matches. The reason they do this is silly – something to do with Cork being the Rebel County and the Confederate slave-owning states in the US War of Independence being rebels too.

Below the stories are the usual ‘What do you think?’ or ‘Should Cork fans stop bringing Confederate flags to matches? - Vote Now’ tabs, presenting it as a debate with two equally valid sides, that only you, dear reader, can decide. It doesn’t have two sides, though, and before you jump to defend the right of people to display whatever racist symbol they like, consider the purpose of the GAA, whose matches Cork fans with Confederate flags are attending. The organisation and the society it is part of doesn’t accept the display of symbols of hate and believes your right to use them should be limited for the greater good. It’s not a real debate, despite what clickbait farmers would like us to think.

Fake debates are everywhere now, gaslighting us all. The US president can condemn violence on all sides as the cause of the death of a protestor under the wheels of a white supremacist’s car in Charlottesville, Virginia. Statements like that create, deliberately or not, an uncertainty about events that are actually very clear. The people counter-protesting white supremacists getting their neo-Nazi on in a small university town didn’t kill someone with a car; the white supremacist did. Trump’s initial equivocation was later clarified, but not before he had let his many supporters with views that resemble the white supremacists’ know that he wasn’t turning his back on them.

‘DREAM DADDY’ DATING

A hit PC game this summer allows you to create a character that then plays at online dating with a group of daddies. It’s not especially sexualised and daddies have sweet individual back stories – one likes a whiskey after a hard day at the office, another is worried that his 18-year-old daughter is neglecting school – and it seems lots of gamers are entering the game as daddy characters they’ve created themselves, so the dream daddies end up dating other dream daddies. Sounds like way more fun than endless Grindr chats or Tinder swipes!

'Is this institutionalised homophobia? Or is the HSE, as it should do with its always under pressure resources, prioritising other funding?