Holding lines shaping futures

The European wing of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, ILGA-Europe, works to bring together and assist activists and organisations in driving change and continuing the expansion of freedoms for LGBTQ+ people. ILGA-Europe supports those groups to develop coherent strategies and narratives, and bridges gaps between them and government and private organisations to see those strategies through to success.

The organisation is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year and finds itself taking the opportunity to reflect on how much has been achieved in that time as it galvanises its members for the future. “The change since 1996 has been unimaginable. There weren’t partnership rights in any European country beyond Denmark and Belgium at that point. There were no legal gender recognition rights, very few countries had self-determination. Intersex people weren’t recognised,” recalls Brian Finnegan, Communications Director for ILGA-Europe (and former GCN Editor).

“A vast amount of things have happened, and that has been because we’re such a strong movement, and a movement that is an example to other movements. Not only do we strategically work, we do it on very little. We do it on people power, and we do it cohesively.”

This year’s conference, hosted in collaboration with Outhouse LGBTQ+ Centre and LGBT Ireland, is following two tracks: ‘Holding the Line’ and ‘Shaping What Comes Next’. This combination sees ILGA-Europe moving the focus of its work towards emphasising the links between democracy, democratic rights, and LGBTQ+ people and movements.

“We’ve always been holding the line. But the line is hardening and moving ever further to the right,” explains Brian. “Democracy is under threat in many countries, and democratic values are under threat across Europe. The freedoms and the forward motion that we saw cannot be taken for granted.

“There are [LGBTQ+] people in prison in Türkiye today. That is not a crackdown on LGBTI people — they call it a crackdown on LGBTI people, or a crackdown on morals or whatever — but really, it’s a crackdown on dissent, on a very creative, galvanised, resilient, and long-standing movement that consistently dissents and finds new ways to dissent. It is a crackdown on dissent from an antidemocratic leader, who wishes to have a chilling effect on all society by saying, ‘If you dissent, we throw you in prison’. It is cracking down on the most organised and galvanised movements across society in Türkiye: other human rights movements, the women’s movement. That is what was happening in Hungary last year too. It’s a playbook that’s come from Russia, and it’s found a way to spread fast. It is to chill dissent, and it tells everyone else, ‘don’t dissent’.

“It is anti-democratic. And LGBTI people are at the front line of fighting against and absorbing attacks on democracy.”

It was this insight that led IGLA-Europe to launch a campaign last year called ‘Protect Pride, Protect Democracy’, which aims to highlight the link between the rights to assembly and protest that allow Pride marches to go ahead, and the LGBTQ+ rights that Pride aims to highlight and elevate.

“It is about making the connection between LGBTI rights and democracy very deep within the LGBTI psyche,” says Brian. “So that you know that when you march at Pride in Dublin, you’re exercising your democratic right to be on the streets and to say, ‘I demand respect, I demand equality under the law’.

“People think democracy means voting in an election. But democracy means fully functioning independent courts. It means the freedom of association to build organisations, NGOs; it means freedom of expression; it means freedom of assembly. These are democratic rights that we cherish, but we don’t fully understand that they are democratic rights because they’re just an everyday thing that we take for granted.

“So our work is to make clear two things: that attacks on LGBTI people and their rights are attacks on democracy itself; and that attacks on LGBTI people are early warning signs of democratic decline in countries.”

This represents a shift in focus and communication from issue and identity-based movements — for example, focusing on trans or intersex rights — to something broader that encompasses a wider societal lens. Focusing on those democratic values requires multiple levels of engagement to be successful: for individuals to understand how they make use of those values to bolster their rights and protections; for organisations and NGOs to be able to work more closely by identifying shared values; and for political institutions to view attacks on LGBTQ+ organising as a greater attack on democratic rights and to act accordingly.

“The LGBTI movement has consistently been an identity-based movement. We don’t want to take away from that. We understand that that is very important. But we haven’t talked about LGBTI people as protecting everybody’s rights,” argues Brian. “It’s not ‘protect our rights now’... When we march at Pride, we are protecting democracy.”

While those are serious topics and may sound overwhelming, ILGA-Europe sees the focus on democratic values as being foundational to building the future of the LGBTQ+ movement. “The world will turn,” Brian assures. “The authoritarian or anti-democratic-leaning world we’re in now will shift again into a more liberalising space. We know that we have to work towards that time. We have to strategise now, so that when that time comes we can capitalise on the work that we’re doing now, to create opportunity at that time. So it’s really long and deep thinking.

“Holding the line means finding ways to continue our work: making our movement strong and growing; finding ways to support each other; finding ways to fund it; finding the energy and strength to carry on. We have our eyes on the long prize, knowing that the work we do now strategically will pay off at that time.”

Some of that energy needed comes from the enjoyment of getting together within the community and in-person where possible. While we might take for granted that we can march at Pride, Brian explains that it’s an important part of being able to continue advocacy and activism.

“Right now, [Dublin] is taken over by people [for Pride], and they see it as a party, which it is and it should be. Joy is also a really important part of planning for the future. Keep joyful, but understand that your joy is political…

“I’m in a WhatsApp group with the Turkish movement and activists at the moment, and lots of letters are coming from prison. I loved this one from Selin Berghan; she is a member of the supervisory board of Kaos GL, which is the biggest [LGBTQ+] organisation in Türkiye. And she says, ‘I’m sending my gullüm (queer joy) to all my friends I struggle alongside. They can’t steal our joy!’ I think that’s an important thing to say: in the world that we live in, which is burning, it’s very hard to wake up and be joyful. But they cannot steal joy.”

With all of these conversations and topics in the air, there was no small amount of work to be covered at the Dublin conference. “It’s a major moment in the year for the movement, and it’s by no means a small undertaking,” says Brian. “There are 450 delegates at the conference. We bring a very large percentage of those under scholarship. They’re not paying to be at the conference. We pay for their hotel rooms, their meals, and their flights. We work with many member organisations in Ireland, and we’re delighted to be coming to Ireland. The Irish government is supporting this conference, and we’re enjoying working with our local hosts Outhouse and LGBT Ireland, who have been really great in this process.”

Ahead of the conference, ILGA-Europe’s hope was to emerge with new strategies and paths that can help its members continue their own campaigning and grassroots work. “It is about finding ways for the movement to sustain, and to exchange information with each other,” explains Brian. “We have 700 member organisations, and we work very closely with a good many of them on the ground. We use the conference on an annual basis as a convening of the movement in which those strategic conversations can be had. We take notes of those conversations, and we build a picture, and we then give that picture back to the movement, and say, ‘This is what we learned, and these are ways forward’. So we look at concrete learnings, concrete strategic goals, and we help foster and work towards those goals.”

And of course, there is an element of joy brought to the conference too. “It’s fun!” Brian says. “There’s a karaoke night on the Friday at every conference, which is really great because it’s for people from vastly different cultures. So you have people singing songs from Central Asia, and you have people singing ‘I Will Survive’. It goes across the spectrum, and it’s really great fun!”

Find out more about ILGA-Europe at ilga-europe.org.

This article is part of GCN’s new Amach le Bród (Out with Pride) series, to combat anti-LGBTQ+ misinformation and platform underrepresented voices. The project was funded by the Coimisiún na Meán News Reporting Scheme.