On marriage #equality in Ireland

More by chance than deliberation, I found myself on holiday in Ireland this May and driving across the country from Wexford to Kerry on the day that the country went to the polls to vote YES or NO on the subject of gay marriage – more formally known as proposed modification 34 to the Constitution, which would “permit marriage to be contracted by two persons without distinction as to their sex”.

As we drove west across seven counties, we saw campaign posters on walls, lamp posts and telegraph poles – and the majority of them were proclaiming NO.

NO to modifying the Constitution; NO to challenging centuries of Church based teachings on what constitutes marriage; NO to welcoming in  a new and open-minded era of love and tolerance.

The NO campaign (who also dominated the radio airwaves, however much we jumped around on the dial, spouting messages of hate on Irish talk radio) had clearly spent a fortune on their poster campaign and this image featured heavily.

(The back story behind its use is also a telling lesson as to the law of unintended consequences regarding the price tag attached to gaining “free” photos of you and your family …)

Thankfully, we started to see more and more YES posters as we drove further west – here’s me with the one near our holiday cottage in Co Kerry. And the following day, as we now know, Ireland overwhelmingly voted YES – and the Irish constitution and the world changed forever.

I’ll admit now to having, as my former boss used to say, some skin in this game. I’m half Irish, I lived there as a child and have spent innumerate holidays there throughout my life. I also come from a comedically large, extended family (my father is one of six children, his father was one of nine) and I know of at least three members of that tribe who are/were gay.  Only the youngest cousin of that group was ever officially out – and she was very much in my mind as we followed the breaking news and election updates on RTE. 

 

(Irish Prime Minister) Enda Kenny made this statement on the day that the successful YES vote was announced – such wonderful, uplifting words:

 

 

 

“With today’s Yes vote we have disclosed who we are – a generous, compassionate, bold and joyful people. The referendum was about inclusiveness and equality, about love and commitment being enshrined in the constitution. The people have spoken. They have said yes. Ireland – thank you.”

And now, as of 16^th November 2015, the first couples to marry as a result of this historic vote and modification 34, have done so – much love, luck and congratulations to them all.

Bravo, Ireland: now let’s see similar legislation come in north of the border, so that the wonderful wedding like the one I attended in Belfast at the end of November can be an option for all couples, not just straight ones.

 

In the pink

Spring is on the way and I’m marking it by refreshing the look of the blog.  I’m also celebrating having a guest blog piece published on one of my favourite websites, The Thin Pink Line. I’ve been a fan of this site (and its founders – check two of them out on the Recommended Reading link) for some years now,  so I’m tickled, em, pink, to be published on there.

My article in question is another take on last month’s launch of the ILGA website,  which is continuing its promise to be a go-to source of news and updates on matters which impact the LGBTI community. Good to see refreshed news items on the front page every time I visit.

My very wonderful network of friends continue to keep up the good work and ensure that I’m invited to relevant and interesting events in the diversity space.  In a few days’ time,  I’ll be at city law firm Herbert Smith listening to Britain’s most successful Paralympic athlete, Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson (she’s won 11 gold medals and broken 30 world records) speaking on motivation, success, diversity and reaching your potential.  More on what she has to say towards the end of the week.

At the launch of the ILGA website

Happy St David’s Day – and, to those in India, Happy Holi!

What a week.

Monday: in Goa, wearing flip-flops, SPF40 and a big hat.

Wednesday: back in London, clad in corporate attire, feeling extremely chilly – and attending a big corporate LGBT bash at British Telecom’s offices near St Paul’s.

The event, chaired by the rather fabulous Michelle Bridgman (a nose at her website confirmed what I suspected on the day – she’s done a lot of stand up comedy: “Are there any straight people here? We’ll start a support group for you if so …”) was to promote LGBT History Month, which is celebrated in the UK each February, and it was also the launch of the new ILGA  website.

ILGA is the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans & Intersex Association which was born in 1978 out of a grass roots movement aimed at, as the co-Secretary General Renato Sabbadini explained, creating global change and awareness of the issues facing the LGBT community. They campaign on the two main pillars of homophobia – law and culture – and Renato hopes that their new interactive website will support their work.

As recently as 2007, homosexuality was de-criminalised in India (where BT has several major call centres), but that still leaves eighty countries in which it remains a criminal act, and a shocking FIVE in which it is punishable by death. And, to their huge credit, BT partners with ILGA and provides them with hosting and technology solutions, such as the new ILGA website; click on the link and take a look.

It’s a new tool, (accessible in French, Spanish and Portuguese as well as English) which informs people of their rights and their risks when travelling – and as such serves as a wonderful (and timely) resource for both employers and individuals. Last year, for example, I took a call from a US based gay colleague who was considering taking an overseas assignment in Singapore and who wanted to obtain the name and contact details of the co-worker who ran that office’s LGBT network. In Singapore, the punishment for being gay is life imprisonment and so of course our (then) mutual employer didn’t have a gay network; I would have found it very useful with my global diversity hat on to be able to direct my co-workers to such a site, and to ensure that my colleagues in the global mobility team were both aware of it as a resource and also had a nodding acquaintance with the issues facing our LGBT colleagues outside countries such as the US and UK.

One of the senior BT developers who worked on the site asked us to imagine how it might feel to be a gay or lesbian member of staff who wasn’t “out” to their manager and who was asked by their employer to go to a country on assignment or on a business trip where their sexuality could put them at risk – how do you, as a gay employee, have that conversation if you don’t have the information to hand which informs both you and your employer of exactly what you could be facing? And how can a manager make appropriate resourcing and deployment issues about their staff without having an up to date awareness of the risks (both potential and actual) in the countries in which the company has a presence?

Thus, on ILGA’s home page you can see a map of the world, into which you can drill via a variety of datasets (for example, female to female relationships, or age of consent laws) and then see how the map changes colour based on the legal status of that situation: so we can see that it’s illegal to be a lesbian in Algeria and Pakistan for example, legal in many other countries and “legal only in some areas” in Nigeria. You can also click on (or search for) a specific country of interest and see what the story is with regard to the law there; I clicked on India where I read about the legal background, anti-discrimination laws, asylum and immigration issues and social climate. There’s also an interactive section, aimed at mimicking the social networking component of sites such as Trip Advisor, where users are encouraged to post their stories of life in and/or visits to various countries, to enable others to gauge the mood and “gay friendliness” (or otherwise) of hotels, bars, restaurants and the country and people in general.

I was hugely impressed by both the site as a resource and also by BT’s support for ILGA. Although a lot of corporate support in the diversity space often is about chucking money at a cause or a group (and thank goodness for that), I think it does BT great credit that they’ve done so much more than that in this instance – they’ve put their massive technical and intellectual expertise to work to support this great cause and provided a genuinely useful tool which could really make a difference to both their own staff and to LGBT people worldwide. The site is so easy to use that I was readily able to demo it to a friend after the event and we were amazed at the wealth of information available; it’s clearly been an enormous project and hopefully will have an even more significant impact both as an information source but also as a risk awareness and a consciousness raising tool.

Loving your work, British Telecom.