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Showing posts from September, 2018

The future of the LGBTQ+ movement in Ireland three years after the Marriage Act

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(Speaking notes: Trinity College Dublin Politics Society and Q Soc Panel Discussion, Robert Emmet Theatre, TCD, 18 September 2018) It is important to open by acknowledging just how much legal and social progress the LGBT community has made in Ireland over the space of 30 years.   I was a student here in Trinity in the mid-1990s. At that stage, social conditions as well as the legal landscape were already improving for LGB people. [1] Nonetheless, we really could not have envisaged at that time that, 20 years later, we would have marriage via referendum or a gender recognition law based on a self-determination model.   Throughout the European continent too, there has been a sea-change in perspectives on LGBT people and rights, as reflected in European Court of Human Rights case law and in developments at EU level (such as the Framework Directive on Employment and Article 21 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights). It is equally important, however, to remember that this pr