As all you avid readers already know, the C in GCN stands for community. In a trojan piece of work, Samantha McCaffrey contacted every location where our magazine is delivered, speaking to the myriad voices who make up our LGBT+ family and its allies. Here, those diverse groups share their stories, highlighting the array of people and places GCN reaches.

Bray LGBT+ Youth Group

One of the wonderful places where GCN is delivered is the Bray LGBT+ Youth Group which has being running in the Seomra Youth Centre since 2015. Run by the Bray Youth Service, it’s open to young people aged 14-18 years. I met some of the group on a Tuesday evening, it was teeming rain outside but inside was full of warmth and laughter.

Paul and Danielle are the Youth Workers. Members August and Rowan have been in the group for nearly two years. Rowan didn’t want to to join the group originally, “I was intimidated. I thought that it was going to be a sit down and a ‘so, you’re gay - talk about it!’ and it wasn’t. It was so much better. There are nice people here and they are not interrogating you about your sexuality and gender every week and that’s great.”

Others such as S and Eva have been coming for a few months. Eva said that joining the group “actually made me feel safe in who I am.” S was introduced to the group by a friend who didn’t say where they were going until they got there. S said, “I thought that a youth group would be a) an interrogation or b) just loads of people being obsessive and awkward. Basically an interrogation in a liberal way. But it’s NOT like that!”

Elise has been a member for nearly a year and liked it from the first evening and has been coming ever since.

The group involves lots of chatting and projects like writing and creating their fabulous book, A Guide to All Things Gay.

The young people and their stories, their experiences and their words are at the heart of the guide and everything else, all the information, stems from that. The biggest section involves stories of coming out by the seven young people involved. There’s sections on terminology, queer media and even one on the stupid questions people ask. They printed 2,000 copies and the guide has been sent to every school in Wicklow as well as libraries and many youth projects around Dublin too.

The group spoke about how some things are getting easier in 2019. Rowan described how a month after starting transitioning, “I can go by my chosen name in my school”. But both Rowan and August have experienced other students using their dead name sometimes.

The experience of being LGBT+ is still not talked about enough in school or as part of sex education and SPHE. The sex education that young people do get, comes in secondary school and is not enough. Elise said, “[I’ve learned by] talking to friends, looking things up online. Thankfully my parents are really accepting, so talking with them helps when I’m trying to figure things out.”

Rialto Community Drug Team

Almost 30 kilometres away, we also find a home with the Rialto Community Drug Team which was opened in the 1990’s in St Andrew’s community centre on the South Circular Road. Graham Ryall; the Treatment Services Co-ordinator has been working there for over 25 years.

The work of the drug team changes as the drug scene changes. In Ireland, addiction services have been traditionally heroin based but this reality is changing. Graham’s work with the LGBT+ community started in 2012 when a young woman came to him for support in relation to her use of GHB (Gamma-hydroxybutyrate). Graham had no reference points for what she was dealing with but he wanted to try to respond.

At this point, the usage of chems at after parties was not as widespread in Dublin as the bigger scenes elsewhere around Europe; London, Berlin, Barcelona. Since then, the scene here has developed and with that the growing need for support. Slowly, word spread throughout the LGBT+ community about the RCDT and Graham’s role evolved. More recently, crystal meth (Tina) use has become prevalent. Graham now works with over 50 people, providing support and information and trying to raise awareness. With the development of the scene and the issues emerging from it, there is now a partnership of organisations, including the Club Drug Clinic, HIV Ireland and the GMHS amongst many others collaborating to support people and get an accurate picture of what they may need. There is also a detox bed in St Michael’s in Beaumont, which is really helpful.

Rialto Youth Project

“It’s about minimising the harms that are being experienced by those involved in chem use and working with people where they are at,” Graham says. “It’s about having available services, both clinical and therapeutic for when they request them. Keeping the conversation going in an honest and respectful fashion - no creating of any moral panic.” Graham says again emphasising the importance of talking openly about the issue and developing better and more comprehensive responses. Sharing the St Andrew’s Community Centre is the Rialto Youth Project. I chatted with Lisa Gleeson, Irene O’Donoghue and Emma Behan, three of the great team of youth workers. The youth project has been involved with Pride in the past and likes to take part in BeLonG To’s Stand Up week in November. RYP has always worked to support LGBT+ young people and that continues today. “It’s definitely easier to come out nowadays but we’re not there yet. The youth project aims to support young people to embrace their sexuality and wants to open up conversations about LGBT issues,” Lisa says. For Pride month this year, RYP in conjunction with Fatima Groups United and Graham in the RCDT are hosting a LGBT+ community conversation in the F2 centre in Rialto on the morning of June 19. GCN and Shout Out! will be there. The idea is to open up the conversation about what is happening locally and to raise LGBT+ awareness and visibility in the area.

F2 Centre

Speaking of Fatima Groups United- yet another home for GCN - Richie Kearns is their community health worker in the F2 Centre. The F2 is a great community building in the heart of Rialto and it’s just turned ten years-old. Last year, Richie started the Pride celebrations in the F2 with rainbow flags all around the building. “It’s important to let people know that the centre is welcoming to LGBT+ people.”

The fabulous Rainbow Twirlers, a local majorette group with girls from Rialto, Dublin 8 and Dublin 12, danced and twirled as part of the Pride Parade last year. This year the Rainbow Twirlers will be leading the parade. Richie, as a gay man and a political, social and community activist, is committed to continuing to figure out the next step in supporting the LGBT+ community in his day-to-day work.

When we met, Richie was preparing for a training day with LGBT+ Ireland’s Community Champions workshop that is focused on supporting Irelands older LGBT+ community.

Older LGBT+ people and where they go is something that’s on Richie’s mind, “I drink in Jurassic Park and I’ve noticed older gay men disappearing over the years in The George. I started to wonder where have all the older gay men gone? How do we create a community for support and for contact? What about real support?”

In the health project, Richie has seen first hand that sometimes as we get older, we can get more isolated and disconnected. But what about when you’re LGBT+? Where are they? Where’s the visibility?

And he’s wondering about where these questions fit in with his community health work – what are the experiences for older LGBT+ people, what are their needs, how do we get that more visible on the agenda within community work?

Since the bust, “austerity has killed so many great community projects. Organisations need a community worker and a community work philosophy interested in facilitating and empowering and working for change.”

Richie, as I mentioned earlier, is no stranger to activism. He was a part of the Workers Party youth section that took the ‘condom train’ to Belfast and brought in an illegal condom vending machine. They rang Fitzgibbon Street Garda station to tell them they had broken the law. “We wanted to be arrested, I had the soundtrack of ‘Working Class Hero’ playing in my head. But Fitzgibbon Street told us not to be bothering them on a Saturday.” The group installed the illegal vending machine in the basement of the Workers Party office in Gardiner Place. Since then, Richie has been involved in campaigning for abortion rights, reproductive rights and LGBT+ rights and issues. He was involved with the IFPA (Irish Family Planning Association) for years, helped set up the Lesbian and Gay section of the Labour Party and co-founded SIPTU’s LGBT+.

But back to now. Post marriage equality and after Repeal, “it’s staggering how far we’ve come… and how far we have left to go. But what do we do now that is progressive? How do we change the community landscape?” Richie wants his work as a community health worker to begin to address the concerns of LGBT+ people at a local level and start to get LGBT+ lives on the map in his area. And he has questions. “Post marriage equality, are we tolerated or are we accepted?”