It’s Our NAGiversary!
A thousand deep belly laughs, hundreds of voice notes, plenty of tears, too many nights out and 366 days (it’s a leap year) later; we made it. A whole year of NAG-ing, and we’re just getting started.
NAG’s first breath of life was born from a crumb of an idea amongst friends, in busy pubs and around kitchen tables, followed by two weeks of Zoom calls, days of thinking of a name, campaigns and logos. Terse words and frustration at the use of ‘gay rights’ as a battering ram for legislation that was anything but progress for gay rights, erasure of lesbians and our experiences in LGBTQI youth groups and the silencing of our voices over years all came to a head; we’d had enough and we were going to put our money where our mouth is. If not us, who? If not now, when?
And despite the very much expected onslaught of vitriol and accusations from anime profile pictures, with mental illnesses and disabilities laid out in bios like badges of honour, the support was (and still is) overwhelming. We launched with a campaign against the ‘hate speech’ Bill and worked alongside an army of other grassroots groups, to put a halt to the draconian laws that would serve to prosecute the very individuals it promised to protect. Not all gays want to remove freedom of expression and robust debate. Within 2 weeks of NAG’s official birth, we had received two mentions in the Seanad debates on the Bill and one of our members was interviewed on Cork’s Red FM to discuss our stance on the impacts the Bill would have on, not only the general public, but more specifically same-sex attracted individuals.
Meanwhile, we were also milling into our second campaign - Take Back Pride. A counter to the historical revisionism so often sprayed across social and mainstream media during the treacherous month of Pride. A daily post celebrating a lesbian, gay or bisexual, and correcting the rewritten history of so many figures through our history. One of our lesbian co-founders caught astonishingly blatant revisionism by Dublin Pride; an exceptionally poor doctoring of placards in a photo from the protest in Fairview in March 1983 to include ‘trans rights are human rights’. And the tweet reporting the Stalin-esque propaganda exploded, resulting in a piece being written in The Irish Independent. Not all gays want to erase the memories of those who fought for our equality, to promote a modern agenda.
Since then, we have attended and spoke at Let Women Speak events, met with Senators to discuss the safeguarding issues in LGBTQ+ youth groups and NGOs, appeared in The Sunday Independent and The Critic discussing the LGB erasure in Belong To and the ‘community’ in modern day Ireland and were interviewed by the incredible, DJ Lippy for Make More Noise. We hosted a semi-jokey award ceremony, as a protest against the GALAs that awarded a sports award to a fetishistic male who plays GAA against young women and girls, and were so honoured to be joined by the fabulous Gay of The Year, Mr. Menno.
Through blood, sweat, tears, one or two doxxing attempts by TRAs, falling out with old friends, late nights, and a whole lot of wine, we have achieved so much more than we could have ever dreamt of a year ago. We have met some of the most inspiring activists and the seats at our kitchen table that were once filled by friends from lives gone by, are now filled by the most awe-inspiring people - women and men of all ages, from all walks of life who are willing to answer phone calls at the drop of a hat, that will laugh and cry with us, who will stand shoulder to shoulder alongside us to defend the rights of lesbians, gays and bisexuals and protect women and children.
We want to thank each and every one of you who have supported us as group of young LGB adults, especially those of you who gave us a platform when others wouldn’t. There are truly not enough words in the English language to express our gratitude for your support and friendships. NAG formed because we felt we no longer had a ‘community’, and you gave us a new one, and welcomed us with open arms.
Our work is not finished, and we have so much we can’t wait to share over the next 365 days and beyond, including a campaign against surrogacy legislation, so watch this space. We will continue to hold the line until same-sex attracted people are safe from erasure, homophobia and lesbophobia, and coercion, that gay rights are not used as a shield for pushing exploitative or controlling legislation, and most importantly that no children are exposed to safeguarding nightmares in the name of ‘inclusivity’ and ‘gay rights’.
Bisoux,
Not All Gays x
