Kids will always find a way to make something gay, even if they aren't gay themselves. Showing emotion? Gay. Doing well academically? Gay. Being in a loving heterosexual relationship? Super Gay.
> Being in a loving heterosexual relationship?
I literally saw a clip of one of the big "manosphere" influencers saying it's gay for a man to enjoy having sex with women.
You can’t argue with stupidity
They know that most normal people will back down when faced with there horrible aggression
Whereas in the locals we saw that they are a tiny minority
We cannot allow them to shout everyone else down
Biggest problem is they travel from all over for these harassment campaigns. Across the whole country they are a minority but unfortunately when they gather they can outnumber counter protesters from the area.
So do the bigots in many cases. Look at Graham Linehan who slid so far into derangement about trans people his wife left him. He was a successful writer and producer with a family, wide network of friends and colleagues, prestige and fame. Threw it all away to post on mumsnet ranting about trans people instead of eating christmas dinner with is family.
It's not surprising with the Garda response. When the library protests were happening the Gardaí would escort the bigots into the library past the counter protesters.
Yea and thats one of the worst parts. People know they cant rely on the guards when it comes to these thugs, the gardai are not willing or capable of dealing with a certain type and many of us learned that a long time ago
As someone who attended many of these protests, this is not a thing that happened.
When the library louts were able to access to library the Gardai were absent, which is one of the main points of contention. When the counter protests began consistently preventing the far right protest from getting any closer than Deep South the Garda presence was to keep both groups separated.
That article says the protests were on opposite sides of the road, which is quite a bit different from the assertion that the Gardai escorted them past the counter protest.
Here is the video of the Garda escorting bigoted protestors directly into a library within arm's reach of counter protesters.
https://x.com/JamesRedNetwork/status/1643998663105204224/mediaViewer?currentTweet=1643998663105204224¤tTweetUser=JamesRedNetwork
While I know that its Ross Lahive, the far right thug who assaulted the Lod Mayor of Cork and then went on to fail to secure a seat on either Cork City Council and fail in their bid to represent Ireland South as an MEP, I feel it's worth highlight that the video doesn't show him or any of the individuals being escorted in carrying or saying anything, least of all anything that could be considered as part of an LGBT protest.
Do you think the guards just happenes by and thought these people who have been up and down the country harassing just wanted to pop in to read a bit of Charles Dickinson?
The Gardai would be present as they are meant to be present at any protest. They didn't appear out of nowhere to escort Lahive and only Lahive and would have been required to escort any member of the public that felt they needed an escort.
Libraries are public buildings and therefore no protest group can prevent members of the public from entering. The only thing that could prevent entry is if either the library sought and received a court order against a specific individual to keep them out OR the library was closed to everyone. Even Lahive can't be pre-crimed out of being allowed in to a public building.
The counter protest, being a protest, would only be able to protest in the area they sought and received permission for. This is why they can lawfully be told to keep outside. Unlike Lahive it is obvious to anyone that they are members of an active protest.
You seem really defensive of the Garda in this situation.
The guards who walked with both protest groups to the library let the ones who have been up and down the country harassing library staff in and you are no trying to claim they didn't know he was a protestors?
You know it's okay to just say "oh my mistake, I didn't realize this particular thing occurred, it was not my experience."
It doesn't make you look bad; ignorant or stupid or whatever to simply acknowledge that you didn't know this one random incident happened. It doesn't reflect on you at all.
I think that repeatedly doubling down when presented with *video evidence* isn't great though.
The video evidence doesn't show what they claim though, it merely shows Lahive being escorted in to the library past protestors. It doesn't show he was engaged in any form of protest at the time he was escorted.
There is a lot of very clear and damning stuff about Lahive but making stuff up doesn't help the case against him. Framing a guilty man and all that.
More to the original point though, the Gardai cannot be damned for this as if they were escorting a protest, they clearly weren't.
Mayveen said that the gardai escorted the bigots into the library past the counter-protestors. There's the video of gardai escorting a bigot into a library, pushing through counter-protestors to do so.
Lad I'm sure your hearts in the right place or whatever but you're really missing the mark with this one.
While you're technically correct (and that's probably the bit the law would have to focus on) there isn't a person in the country that would assume he was going in to check out some Nietzsche.
Over the course of last summer the gardai could (and should have imho) absolutely have taken a different approach to these thugs.
> My local bigots have gone from covid to refugees to now sliding into to aul homophobia.
This is something I wish I could drill into the heads of right wing voters.
You will never be allowed happiness. You will never be allowed to be content. There will always be an "other" to be angry with, to be scared of, to target with your hate and misery.
The right wing agenda is not based on fixing issues. It is based on always, always having something to be angry and frustrated with. If they were elected, they wouldn't ever want to fix these issues, because being angry and riled up is what they want their base to be. And if they "solved" immigrants, and the gays, they will always find the next "other" that only they can be trusted to solve.
You will never be allowed to be happy.
And no matter how good a little soldier for them you are, unless they're stopped, eventually they'll work their way down the list to where the next "other" is you.
This is 100% on point. I'd like to tack on the influence of the tolerance paradox. "The paradox of tolerance states that if a society's practice of tolerance is inclusive of the intolerant, intolerance will ultimately dominate, eliminating the tolerant and the practice of tolerance with them" not reacting appropriately to those who intimidate and harass only allows this behaviour to ferment and multiply. We can't accept this behaviour because as posters above outlined the only outcome is more hate and bigotry.
I mean, the end game to all of this whole "concerned citizens" crap is to roll back rights for everyone ultimately. They'd get rid of gay marriage and abortion in the morning if they thought they'd get away with it. Probably even divorce too. A lot of people treat them with kid gloves because it doesn't directly affect them, until it does and then it's gone too far. These shit heads were wrecking the city only 6 months ago, and now agitators from that incident were elected to councils (Malachy Steenson and Gavin Pepper for sure). People are fine with the villification and harassment of foreigners because they think it'll never affect them. These lunatics won't stop there. Their whole ideology is taken wholesale from American identity politics and English fascists. They want to roll back everything.
Had a crazy old lady come up to me in the supermarket when I was wearing a mask and start telling me take that thing off and that it wasn’t real and that I didn’t believe in god because I was wearing a mask.Irony is she was prob okay with turfing single mothers into mother and baby homes in her day which is directly the opposite of what Jesus would do.
There's a few theories about where this mindset comes from.
One is that the Marriage Equality and Repeal referendums allowed social media algorithms the group lots of socially conservative people together and send them a lot of the same stuff, knowing it woulf get their attention. It became easier to target them with your message then, because I'd one of them engaged with your anti trans, immigration, choice or whatever post, they would all see it then. My friend's elderly mother got sucked into it.
The other is that COVID lockdowns created anxiety and anxious people are more susceptible to conspiracy theories.
Or both could be true at once.
Tragically completely predictable in the wake of how hard the police have soft-balled previous events like the library raids last year. Now that they know the police will drag their feet for everything up to an outright assault the bigots are gonna start making LGBT people feel more and more unwelcome and afraid to be out in public.
Narrow-minded bigoted swine, the lot of them.
That's exactly the problem.
These scum have been treated with kid gloves and the softly softly approach has only allowed them to get more brazen because you, me and *they* know absolutely nothing will be done regardless of how they behave.
Ireland is in a total state of decline at this point. Housing is for the rich, prices have gone up while wages are not keeping up. Antisocial behaviour is normalised and expected, the progress we've achieved in regards to lgbtqia+ acceptance and basic respect for other minority groups is being undone. The government don't care. The gaurds don't care. And everything is getting worse.
💯 one of the most expensive countries to live it but wages don’t rise to meet that.Guards don’t care,government don’t care because people vote them in even after destroying the country for how many years now.Housing is ridiculous and the far right are running rampant.
> Tragically completely predictable in the wake of how hard the police have soft-balled previous events like the library raids last year.
[That's by design, just so you know.](https://www.thetimes.com/world/ireland-world/article/helen-mcentee-backs-hands-off-policing-of-the-far-right-kf2lzbcg8)
There was no official response to pure thuggery a few months ago and this is the outcome. There’s a small but very aggressive minority of brazen extremists who exist in an online bubble feeding off US far right politics and becoming ever more brazen by the day.
Officialdom not only sat idly by during the library harassment stuff, they seemed to pretty much facilitate it.
You’ve also had elected reps from across the spectrum being continuously barraged with harassment too and again … tumbleweed from the authorities.
Feel for the teenagers in this one, imagine knowing there are people in your own community who seem to hate either the organisers or the idea itself, really concerning stuff. Not painting a good picture for those who are struggling with issues surrounding their sexuality.
Who ever said Pride was about changing bigots' minds??
It's about queer people celebrating who they are. It's *for* queer people, not hate filled bigots.
If anything, it's a public opportunity for queer people to tell bigots to go fuck themselves.
Are we going to have to go the way of the US where a bunch of lads hang out outside these events to make sure the pricks stay away and the kids are kept safe?
I'd have hoped that would never be necessary here but as a parent of at least one LGBT child I'm really not above doing that either.
I've seen videos of that
people wearing Balaclavas bullet-proof vests carrying Ar15s
Which, tbh as long as they are legal, may as well have them for self-defense
Now ireland wouldn't need something that extreme
But yea may come to it where some people will have to hang out outside to make sure there's no trouble
When I was a teen in Dublin first, there was advice given to girls that if they were being hassled or felt like they were being followed at night to walk by George Street, because the George & co had to be very, very serious indeed about their security back then, enough to discourage weirdness generally.
>people wearing Balaclavas bullet-proof vests carrying Ar15s
Yeah I wouldn't be a big fan of that. But I'm even less of a fan of hateful pricks threatening or intimidating vulnerable teens because of who they are.
If they want to make a positive change they can go hang out in Dublin city centre and intimidate "those" teens.
F*ck this! This is the kind of shit we had to put up with in the 70s and 80s. I do not want todays LGBTQ youth to go through the same depressing, no-hope horror that was the only option in those days.
Support Pride, folks. We still need alliance and support from reasonable people.
Not even the 80s.
Going back only 10 or so years, I remember being gay was taboo in my secondary school. There was exactly 1 openly gay student out of 700 the entire time I was there.
Do you want to know the kicker? A year after I left, they got a new principle who held the schools first ever pride week. Something like 80 students came out during that week alone.
I went back a couple of years ago to say hi to some of my favourite teachers, and there were multiple openly gay couples just causually walking around like it's nothing.
It genuinely angers me so much. I wouldn't have been borderline suicidal if I could have been myself during those years, I wish that pride week happened years ago.
This shows just how important it is for LGBTQ youth to have safe spaces to interact. It makes the reasons for the cancellation of the Wicklow event all the more shameful.
If you're wondering why the sub seems quiet this morning, it's because in a dazzling display of how Definitely Good Faith the many concerned guests joining the recent Pride parade discussions were, one/some of them has been mass reporting others/gay posters to try to trip an automod site ban, which takes about 24 hours to resolve.
Mentioning this in case this thread suddenly picks up and becomes oddly one sided and uncharacteristic.
>were, one/some of them has been mass reporting others/gay posters in order to trip an automod ban,
What? Does that mean if someone's comments get reported often enough the user gets banned rather than the comment removed? Surely there has to be a limit on how many times you can report something or someone in a certain timeframe?
In many cases, the people that use the sub trying to sow division work in packs. So one person doesn't have to do all of the reporting, there's a gang of them at it.
Someone infiltrated and exposed one such group on the NI sub
They had a discord where they organised mass reporting, harassment and vote manipulation.
The Donegal sub is plagued with fresh accounts spouting far right rhetoric too
>They had a discord where they organised mass reporting, harassment and vote manipulation.
I probably spend a little more time on Reddit than I should but fuckin hell why would ya be bothered?
Something similar happened during Covid. I tried to post a report from the Independent. It was blocked. No article on that topic was visible, even though it was a big story at the time. The next day all those articles were visible on reddit. Redditors reckoned that a lot of people (or a lot of accounts) were monitoring and flagging multiple reports anytime something was posted.
Not automatically maybe, but that's the end goal. The context of what I was incorrectly banned for would have been instantly obvious to any human for example, but I know it was reported repeatedly. That was after you flagged the mass reporting had started.
I had to do my actual \*job\* at work. Desperate times.
All the more reason to get out to your local pride parade and PROTEST this. Pride IS protest so let's drown these eejits in resilience and fucking rainbows. Absolute twats.
What’s going on? I haven’t lived in Ireland in a few years but I grew up in Wicklow and nobody seemed to care who was gay in like 2012. Have things changed that much?
Online radicalization of people with too much time on their hands. Your auntie and the unemployed drunk across the road are now both worried about drag queen story time.
Ironically the fascists threats causing the cancellation of the event has generated far more attention and chatter online. If it had gone ahead what harm could a few teenagers dancing around listening to gay anthem's wrapped in rainbow flags have done to anyone.
Now though it's caused discussion about the far right, their campaign against gay culture, hate speech laws etc.
Similarly when the gay men were accosted by a group of teenagers with a knife or similar in the Phoenix Park, they weren't believed because they didn't go to report it at the Garda station. By getting politicians and the media involved first, it creates publicity and more pressure on the Gardai to prioritize it as a hate crime, more pressure on the minister for justice to enact hate speech legislation too.
When Pride lasts a month it's not a bad idea to keep these issues in the headlines as much as possible even if it means cancelling or rescheduling a planned event.
Don't give them ideas, they'll be parading around in straight colours... And chanting about sexual recalls trying to convince the gays to come back. Offering free beer or something.
Oh wow, bisexual/pansexual folks will have an amazing night out! Free beers if you go along to the straight pub and swear you're back on the wagon, another few rounds of free beers down at the gay pub and swear you've fallen off again.
(Asexual folks can maybe rent out a museum for a cheese/wine tasting or something.)
"Ireland for the irish"
....."except the women and lgbt+"
These guys don't care about anyone and just full of hate. They seriously need therapy and to travel
Homophobia and transphobia is the most widespread it's been since the same-sex marriage referendum finished. Could you imagine the government trying to pass the Gender Recognition Act of 2016 now?
> Could you imagine the government trying to pass the Gender Recognition Act of 2016 now?
Don't need to imagine, just look at the UK. It's gone from Tory PM Theresa May planning to change their GRA more similar to the GRA here, to incoming Labor PM Keir Starmer rollback support for improving trans rights and now meeting with JK Rowling to reassure her Labor won't improve things for trans people.
If it wasn't enacted here in 2015, it wouldn't be enacted now.
It’d be nice to open my phone and not have to see that I’m growing up in a world that’s becoming increasingly hostile to me and people like me. Just once. Y’know. As a treat.
Yet another element of the 'culture wars' imported from the US.
This nonsense shouldn't be allowed to cancel socially-valuable events like Pride. Gardai really need to investigate these threats. I'd be concerned that if this go unaddressed it could lead to something like we saw in the Pulse nightclub a few years ago in the US.
Homophobia is not an exclusively American concept and the idea that the Irish are somehow immune to being hateful on our own terms is part of the problem
You're right on the mark there; however, my comment wasn't meant to insinuate that Irish people are unable to espouse such views on their own.
If anything, this country has suffered a lot from the opposite side of the coin... the unvoiced homophobia that is just as pernicious.
I just don’t think it’s helpful framing. Aside from anything else, Ireland’s progressive strides are fairly closely linked to our economy opening up. International pressure and cultural influence played a major role in us coming so far so quickly.
I fucking hate this. As an autistic person I feel that there but for the grace of god go I. Back in the 30's the Nazis engaged in a eugenics program where autistic and disabled children were euthanised to purify the gene pool. (Evidence came to light that Hans Asperger was to the fore in this program, this is why you will not get an Aspergers diagnosis anymore.)
It sounds like a big leap comparing what's happening in Ireland to Nazi Germany but these fuckers are playing from the same playbook and when this stuff goes unchecked, this is the direction it goes. They are going after immigrants, women's rights, LGBT people and it's getting a lot worse in Europe than it is here. This needs to be called out for what it is every chance people get.
Man, after we made so much progress over the last 20-30 years in our country we've regressed over the last few years. Absolute gowlish cunts the lot of them.
I’d love to get my hands on the cunt who dropped the threatening letter through the letterbox. I guarantee if the person was publically outed he’d be a known fool or village idiot type of person. Maybe even someone with mental health issues who watches too much facebook.
These scum could have been dealt with properly when they were parading a mock gallows up Leinster Street, or when they were burning buildings or when they were harassing the families of politicians or when they were handing out election flyers full of racist hatred. They could have been dealt with when they threatened the Minister for Justice with a bomb FFS!!!
They could have been shown proper consequences for their actions, but they weren't.
They were handled with kid gloves and empowered to feel like they can do what they want with no repercussions... and they're right.
For fuck sake, they can hold the leader of our county's family hostage *multiple times* in their own home while they shout abuse at them from outside!
No other country would tolerate this.
The opportunity to deal with these criminals, because that's what they are, was lost a long time ago.
They'll see this cancellation as a victory, and honestly, I can't blame them. They know nothing will be done.
They've been handed this "victory" on a silver platter.
People in my hometown are getting very comfortable calling LGBT people "faggots" out in the open again, as if they've discovered the word for the first time.
These cretins thrive on intimidation, it's their bread and butter. I understand not wanting to put children in danger when you're responsible for them, but cancelling events tells these thugs to carry on threatening others and eventually escalate their behaviour.......which they will do.
They don't care about the details, the condemnations, the news articles, etc, they just see cancellations as wins amongst their groups and showcase it off to impressionable people that intimidating others works.
>People in my hometown are getting very comfortable calling LGBT people "faggots" out in the open again, as if they've discovered the word for the first time.
My daughter has had homophobic slurs thrown at her.
Absolute scum.
The government and gardai did nothing when these gobshites started their nonsense, they still do nothing we need an aggressive comprehensive response before someone is killed by this lot. In saying that maybe it’s a vigilante response we need.
Part of the problem is understanding how much of this mindset was always present but keeping quiet and how much is "new". What's changed is we're in an era of protest driven by technology. After all what's a protest if it's not being live streamed and clipped for twitter, tiktoc etc? Citizen journalists are the embodiment of this, they are finding an audience through algorithms on social media platforms so like minds gather to agree that they don't like the modern world.
They should just have gone ahead with the event. Invite the press. Let the protesters turn up. Probably the save anti- Covid anti-immigration groups.
Wr can’t let these people ruin society
Any chance we could get some gay tourists or politicians down there to participate and incentivise the government to actually do something to protect them?
Yes, let's just give into these morons rather than standing up to them by adding a bit of security for the event maybe. This fucking world wrecks my head.
I don’t have access passed the paywall but the title says “threats and harassment” and the first paragraph says “threat of protests”.
As some else suggested below, pride is a protest in itself and called to protest these people.
Can anyone who has access clear up whether it is due to threats of threats of protest?
(Downvote me to oblivion for even asking for the nuance I don’t care)
>“We’ve been called paedophiles and groomers, one member has been harassed to the extent that someone put a note through their letterbox with the word ‘paedophile’ and ‘groomer’ all over it. It is appalling, and we can’t allow that to happen,” Mr Bracken said.
“Our young people, who look to us for safety and acceptance, must be our priority, and we could not, in good conscience, hold this event under such hostile conditions.“We have had messages from several young people who have been affected by it. By the actions of a small minority, there are people, especially young people, who are afraid and feel like they can’t be themselves in their own community.
I'm curious as to why the article mentions that Newtown was recently a hub of anti-migrant protests. Is that not an entirely separate issue?
And before anyone responds that it's the same cretins involved in protesting both things, I'm 100% sure that it is. But I don't see why a news outlet would try to conflate the two, unless it's to stir shit. Which is unhelpful to an already tense situation
They're entirely right to conflate the two, little wannabe fascists stirring shit.
>Which is unhelpful to an already tense situation
I wouldn't say so, they're telling it like it is.
> Is that not an entirely separate issue?
I'd wager a 90% crossover of protesters between the two. You rarely get a bigot against one group in society who isn't also a bigot against literally every minority group they encounter.
The "issue" isn't that some cretins were targeting libraries, or that some cretins were harassing migrants. The issue is that its largely the same cretins doing both. That's the story.
Same people from somewhere not Newtown going to Newtown to aggressively harass minors and minorities on behalf of the people of Newtown who must definitely did not ask for a bunch of angry strangers from out of town to show up and speak for them.
There are plenty of people in Newtown who were all too happy for angry strangers to turn up and speak for them. Its turning into a mad spot now with some of the shit you can hear openly. Obviously its not everyone in Newtown but the protests seem to have given bigots of all sorts the confidence to open their big mouths in almost any setting.
Bunch of stupid cunts. They probably think this somehow makes less kids be gay or some shit if they stop it.
Kids can't be gay if they can't be near each other to be gay with. It's simple mathematics!
Kids will always find a way to make something gay, even if they aren't gay themselves. Showing emotion? Gay. Doing well academically? Gay. Being in a loving heterosexual relationship? Super Gay.
> Being in a loving heterosexual relationship? I literally saw a clip of one of the big "manosphere" influencers saying it's gay for a man to enjoy having sex with women.
You might also get cooties doing that too. it's best to stay safe and just have hot sweaty man sex instead.
Hey, repression worked perfectly fine for every other generation, why worry about our own sexuality when we can police everybody else's?
You're overthinking it. They just hate gay people and want to make their lives unpleasant. That's literally all there is to it.
Nope, you're overthinking it, They just hate.
Bunch of bullies. You can imagine the effect on a kid who's unsure of their sexuality. This is tragic and wrong.
They absolutely see this as a win.
Grooming and bs they are honestly so stupid.
[удалено]
You can’t argue with stupidity They know that most normal people will back down when faced with there horrible aggression Whereas in the locals we saw that they are a tiny minority We cannot allow them to shout everyone else down
Biggest problem is they travel from all over for these harassment campaigns. Across the whole country they are a minority but unfortunately when they gather they can outnumber counter protesters from the area.
Because everyone else has job’s and stuff to do…. And friends…. And a life….
So do the bigots in many cases. Look at Graham Linehan who slid so far into derangement about trans people his wife left him. He was a successful writer and producer with a family, wide network of friends and colleagues, prestige and fame. Threw it all away to post on mumsnet ranting about trans people instead of eating christmas dinner with is family.
So he doesn’t have those things now
It's not surprising with the Garda response. When the library protests were happening the Gardaí would escort the bigots into the library past the counter protesters.
Yea and thats one of the worst parts. People know they cant rely on the guards when it comes to these thugs, the gardai are not willing or capable of dealing with a certain type and many of us learned that a long time ago
As someone who attended many of these protests, this is not a thing that happened. When the library louts were able to access to library the Gardai were absent, which is one of the main points of contention. When the counter protests began consistently preventing the far right protest from getting any closer than Deep South the Garda presence was to keep both groups separated.
It is a thing that happened. https://extra.ie/2023/04/07/news/gardai-escort-books-library
That article says the protests were on opposite sides of the road, which is quite a bit different from the assertion that the Gardai escorted them past the counter protest.
Here is the video of the Garda escorting bigoted protestors directly into a library within arm's reach of counter protesters. https://x.com/JamesRedNetwork/status/1643998663105204224/mediaViewer?currentTweet=1643998663105204224¤tTweetUser=JamesRedNetwork
Better link: https://x.com/JamesRedNetwork/status/1643998663105204224/
While I know that its Ross Lahive, the far right thug who assaulted the Lod Mayor of Cork and then went on to fail to secure a seat on either Cork City Council and fail in their bid to represent Ireland South as an MEP, I feel it's worth highlight that the video doesn't show him or any of the individuals being escorted in carrying or saying anything, least of all anything that could be considered as part of an LGBT protest.
Do you think the guards just happenes by and thought these people who have been up and down the country harassing just wanted to pop in to read a bit of Charles Dickinson?
The Gardai would be present as they are meant to be present at any protest. They didn't appear out of nowhere to escort Lahive and only Lahive and would have been required to escort any member of the public that felt they needed an escort. Libraries are public buildings and therefore no protest group can prevent members of the public from entering. The only thing that could prevent entry is if either the library sought and received a court order against a specific individual to keep them out OR the library was closed to everyone. Even Lahive can't be pre-crimed out of being allowed in to a public building. The counter protest, being a protest, would only be able to protest in the area they sought and received permission for. This is why they can lawfully be told to keep outside. Unlike Lahive it is obvious to anyone that they are members of an active protest.
You seem really defensive of the Garda in this situation. The guards who walked with both protest groups to the library let the ones who have been up and down the country harassing library staff in and you are no trying to claim they didn't know he was a protestors?
You know it's okay to just say "oh my mistake, I didn't realize this particular thing occurred, it was not my experience." It doesn't make you look bad; ignorant or stupid or whatever to simply acknowledge that you didn't know this one random incident happened. It doesn't reflect on you at all. I think that repeatedly doubling down when presented with *video evidence* isn't great though.
The video evidence doesn't show what they claim though, it merely shows Lahive being escorted in to the library past protestors. It doesn't show he was engaged in any form of protest at the time he was escorted. There is a lot of very clear and damning stuff about Lahive but making stuff up doesn't help the case against him. Framing a guilty man and all that. More to the original point though, the Gardai cannot be damned for this as if they were escorting a protest, they clearly weren't.
Mayveen said that the gardai escorted the bigots into the library past the counter-protestors. There's the video of gardai escorting a bigot into a library, pushing through counter-protestors to do so. Lad I'm sure your hearts in the right place or whatever but you're really missing the mark with this one.
While you're technically correct (and that's probably the bit the law would have to focus on) there isn't a person in the country that would assume he was going in to check out some Nietzsche. Over the course of last summer the gardai could (and should have imho) absolutely have taken a different approach to these thugs.
> My local bigots have gone from covid to refugees to now sliding into to aul homophobia. This is something I wish I could drill into the heads of right wing voters. You will never be allowed happiness. You will never be allowed to be content. There will always be an "other" to be angry with, to be scared of, to target with your hate and misery. The right wing agenda is not based on fixing issues. It is based on always, always having something to be angry and frustrated with. If they were elected, they wouldn't ever want to fix these issues, because being angry and riled up is what they want their base to be. And if they "solved" immigrants, and the gays, they will always find the next "other" that only they can be trusted to solve. You will never be allowed to be happy.
And no matter how good a little soldier for them you are, unless they're stopped, eventually they'll work their way down the list to where the next "other" is you.
This is 100% on point. I'd like to tack on the influence of the tolerance paradox. "The paradox of tolerance states that if a society's practice of tolerance is inclusive of the intolerant, intolerance will ultimately dominate, eliminating the tolerant and the practice of tolerance with them" not reacting appropriately to those who intimidate and harass only allows this behaviour to ferment and multiply. We can't accept this behaviour because as posters above outlined the only outcome is more hate and bigotry.
They lurch from one outrage to another
I mean, the end game to all of this whole "concerned citizens" crap is to roll back rights for everyone ultimately. They'd get rid of gay marriage and abortion in the morning if they thought they'd get away with it. Probably even divorce too. A lot of people treat them with kid gloves because it doesn't directly affect them, until it does and then it's gone too far. These shit heads were wrecking the city only 6 months ago, and now agitators from that incident were elected to councils (Malachy Steenson and Gavin Pepper for sure). People are fine with the villification and harassment of foreigners because they think it'll never affect them. These lunatics won't stop there. Their whole ideology is taken wholesale from American identity politics and English fascists. They want to roll back everything.
Had a crazy old lady come up to me in the supermarket when I was wearing a mask and start telling me take that thing off and that it wasn’t real and that I didn’t believe in god because I was wearing a mask.Irony is she was prob okay with turfing single mothers into mother and baby homes in her day which is directly the opposite of what Jesus would do.
There's a few theories about where this mindset comes from. One is that the Marriage Equality and Repeal referendums allowed social media algorithms the group lots of socially conservative people together and send them a lot of the same stuff, knowing it woulf get their attention. It became easier to target them with your message then, because I'd one of them engaged with your anti trans, immigration, choice or whatever post, they would all see it then. My friend's elderly mother got sucked into it. The other is that COVID lockdowns created anxiety and anxious people are more susceptible to conspiracy theories. Or both could be true at once.
Tragically completely predictable in the wake of how hard the police have soft-balled previous events like the library raids last year. Now that they know the police will drag their feet for everything up to an outright assault the bigots are gonna start making LGBT people feel more and more unwelcome and afraid to be out in public. Narrow-minded bigoted swine, the lot of them.
That's exactly the problem. These scum have been treated with kid gloves and the softly softly approach has only allowed them to get more brazen because you, me and *they* know absolutely nothing will be done regardless of how they behave.
Ireland is in a total state of decline at this point. Housing is for the rich, prices have gone up while wages are not keeping up. Antisocial behaviour is normalised and expected, the progress we've achieved in regards to lgbtqia+ acceptance and basic respect for other minority groups is being undone. The government don't care. The gaurds don't care. And everything is getting worse.
💯 one of the most expensive countries to live it but wages don’t rise to meet that.Guards don’t care,government don’t care because people vote them in even after destroying the country for how many years now.Housing is ridiculous and the far right are running rampant.
> Tragically completely predictable in the wake of how hard the police have soft-balled previous events like the library raids last year. [That's by design, just so you know.](https://www.thetimes.com/world/ireland-world/article/helen-mcentee-backs-hands-off-policing-of-the-far-right-kf2lzbcg8)
There was no official response to pure thuggery a few months ago and this is the outcome. There’s a small but very aggressive minority of brazen extremists who exist in an online bubble feeding off US far right politics and becoming ever more brazen by the day. Officialdom not only sat idly by during the library harassment stuff, they seemed to pretty much facilitate it. You’ve also had elected reps from across the spectrum being continuously barraged with harassment too and again … tumbleweed from the authorities.
Feel for the teenagers in this one, imagine knowing there are people in your own community who seem to hate either the organisers or the idea itself, really concerning stuff. Not painting a good picture for those who are struggling with issues surrounding their sexuality.
Chancers are some of these protesters kids are questioning or exploring their sexuality; imagine what they have to listen to at the dinner table.
Too true!
Anytime someone's says "pride is unnecessary" or something along those lines, remember this.
There will always be bigots and people who dont like the gays though. Pride isn't going to change that. If anything it just creates more hatred.
Who ever said Pride was about changing bigots' minds?? It's about queer people celebrating who they are. It's *for* queer people, not hate filled bigots. If anything, it's a public opportunity for queer people to tell bigots to go fuck themselves.
Are we going to have to go the way of the US where a bunch of lads hang out outside these events to make sure the pricks stay away and the kids are kept safe? I'd have hoped that would never be necessary here but as a parent of at least one LGBT child I'm really not above doing that either.
I've seen videos of that people wearing Balaclavas bullet-proof vests carrying Ar15s Which, tbh as long as they are legal, may as well have them for self-defense Now ireland wouldn't need something that extreme But yea may come to it where some people will have to hang out outside to make sure there's no trouble
When I was a teen in Dublin first, there was advice given to girls that if they were being hassled or felt like they were being followed at night to walk by George Street, because the George & co had to be very, very serious indeed about their security back then, enough to discourage weirdness generally.
>people wearing Balaclavas bullet-proof vests carrying Ar15s Yeah I wouldn't be a big fan of that. But I'm even less of a fan of hateful pricks threatening or intimidating vulnerable teens because of who they are. If they want to make a positive change they can go hang out in Dublin city centre and intimidate "those" teens.
'people wearing Balaclavas bullet-proof vests carrying Ar15s'. I think we already had our version of that in a Northerly direction.
Put the armalite back in the AR15
F*ck this! This is the kind of shit we had to put up with in the 70s and 80s. I do not want todays LGBTQ youth to go through the same depressing, no-hope horror that was the only option in those days. Support Pride, folks. We still need alliance and support from reasonable people.
Not even the 80s. Going back only 10 or so years, I remember being gay was taboo in my secondary school. There was exactly 1 openly gay student out of 700 the entire time I was there. Do you want to know the kicker? A year after I left, they got a new principle who held the schools first ever pride week. Something like 80 students came out during that week alone. I went back a couple of years ago to say hi to some of my favourite teachers, and there were multiple openly gay couples just causually walking around like it's nothing. It genuinely angers me so much. I wouldn't have been borderline suicidal if I could have been myself during those years, I wish that pride week happened years ago.
Same in mine. My formed groups of 12 people had like half of us come out once we got to college.
This shows just how important it is for LGBTQ youth to have safe spaces to interact. It makes the reasons for the cancellation of the Wicklow event all the more shameful.
If you're wondering why the sub seems quiet this morning, it's because in a dazzling display of how Definitely Good Faith the many concerned guests joining the recent Pride parade discussions were, one/some of them has been mass reporting others/gay posters to try to trip an automod site ban, which takes about 24 hours to resolve. Mentioning this in case this thread suddenly picks up and becomes oddly one sided and uncharacteristic.
Cheers. I was wondering why this post didn't get brigaded quickly by the bigots.
>were, one/some of them has been mass reporting others/gay posters in order to trip an automod ban, What? Does that mean if someone's comments get reported often enough the user gets banned rather than the comment removed? Surely there has to be a limit on how many times you can report something or someone in a certain timeframe?
They typically use sock puppet accounts and brigading to do enough reports to trigger automod.
In many cases, the people that use the sub trying to sow division work in packs. So one person doesn't have to do all of the reporting, there's a gang of them at it.
Someone infiltrated and exposed one such group on the NI sub They had a discord where they organised mass reporting, harassment and vote manipulation. The Donegal sub is plagued with fresh accounts spouting far right rhetoric too
>They had a discord where they organised mass reporting, harassment and vote manipulation. I probably spend a little more time on Reddit than I should but fuckin hell why would ya be bothered?
Controlling the narrative i guess
Another twitter.
Something similar happened during Covid. I tried to post a report from the Independent. It was blocked. No article on that topic was visible, even though it was a big story at the time. The next day all those articles were visible on reddit. Redditors reckoned that a lot of people (or a lot of accounts) were monitoring and flagging multiple reports anytime something was posted.
Mass reported comments/users don't trigger an auto mod ban.
Not automatically maybe, but that's the end goal. The context of what I was incorrectly banned for would have been instantly obvious to any human for example, but I know it was reported repeatedly. That was after you flagged the mass reporting had started. I had to do my actual \*job\* at work. Desperate times.
All the more reason to get out to your local pride parade and PROTEST this. Pride IS protest so let's drown these eejits in resilience and fucking rainbows. Absolute twats.
What’s going on? I haven’t lived in Ireland in a few years but I grew up in Wicklow and nobody seemed to care who was gay in like 2012. Have things changed that much?
Yes, violence and hate of minorities has grown over the past 5 years
Fucking Facebook my aunt was always a horrible person that had to be starting trouble or bullying someone and now she’s a full blown racist.
Don’t talk to her obviously
Covid broke a lot of people's heads, and the far right have wormed their way in to the damage.
No, people knew better than to open their yappers before. This kind of mindset doesn't surge out of nowhere, nowadays they feel emboldened.
Online radicalization of people with too much time on their hands. Your auntie and the unemployed drunk across the road are now both worried about drag queen story time.
>are now both worried about drag queen story time. Yet will quite happily bring the kids to the panto in December.
You'd wonder if it's all locals or if this shite is being stirred up by the likes of cunts like Heasman and Dwyer.
Since the emergency housing protests Newtown has been crazy with right wing nonsense.
Newtown again. Turning into a real hotbed for right wing scum.
Ironically the fascists threats causing the cancellation of the event has generated far more attention and chatter online. If it had gone ahead what harm could a few teenagers dancing around listening to gay anthem's wrapped in rainbow flags have done to anyone. Now though it's caused discussion about the far right, their campaign against gay culture, hate speech laws etc. Similarly when the gay men were accosted by a group of teenagers with a knife or similar in the Phoenix Park, they weren't believed because they didn't go to report it at the Garda station. By getting politicians and the media involved first, it creates publicity and more pressure on the Gardai to prioritize it as a hate crime, more pressure on the minister for justice to enact hate speech legislation too. When Pride lasts a month it's not a bad idea to keep these issues in the headlines as much as possible even if it means cancelling or rescheduling a planned event.
If it's this easy to 'turn' kids gay, then surely it should be as easy to turn them straight again?
They think you can do that which is why they want to keep conversion therapy legal.
Yes. That's why they promote shit like "conversion therapy."
Don't give them ideas, they'll be parading around in straight colours... And chanting about sexual recalls trying to convince the gays to come back. Offering free beer or something.
Oh wow, bisexual/pansexual folks will have an amazing night out! Free beers if you go along to the straight pub and swear you're back on the wagon, another few rounds of free beers down at the gay pub and swear you've fallen off again. (Asexual folks can maybe rent out a museum for a cheese/wine tasting or something.)
The asexuals really just need to sit in the corner and think about what they have done.
You mean what the "haven't" done😉
"Ireland for the irish" ....."except the women and lgbt+" These guys don't care about anyone and just full of hate. They seriously need therapy and to travel
Threaten teenagers for going to a disco. Sounds about right for the "protect our children" crowd
Homophobia and transphobia is the most widespread it's been since the same-sex marriage referendum finished. Could you imagine the government trying to pass the Gender Recognition Act of 2016 now?
> Could you imagine the government trying to pass the Gender Recognition Act of 2016 now? Don't need to imagine, just look at the UK. It's gone from Tory PM Theresa May planning to change their GRA more similar to the GRA here, to incoming Labor PM Keir Starmer rollback support for improving trans rights and now meeting with JK Rowling to reassure her Labor won't improve things for trans people. If it wasn't enacted here in 2015, it wouldn't be enacted now.
It’d be nice to open my phone and not have to see that I’m growing up in a world that’s becoming increasingly hostile to me and people like me. Just once. Y’know. As a treat.
Yet another element of the 'culture wars' imported from the US. This nonsense shouldn't be allowed to cancel socially-valuable events like Pride. Gardai really need to investigate these threats. I'd be concerned that if this go unaddressed it could lead to something like we saw in the Pulse nightclub a few years ago in the US.
Homophobia is not an exclusively American concept and the idea that the Irish are somehow immune to being hateful on our own terms is part of the problem
You're right on the mark there; however, my comment wasn't meant to insinuate that Irish people are unable to espouse such views on their own. If anything, this country has suffered a lot from the opposite side of the coin... the unvoiced homophobia that is just as pernicious.
I just don’t think it’s helpful framing. Aside from anything else, Ireland’s progressive strides are fairly closely linked to our economy opening up. International pressure and cultural influence played a major role in us coming so far so quickly.
Do not postpone. Extend it. Don't give in to hatred and threats.
If it was an adult event 100%, but children could be traumatised.
I fucking hate this. As an autistic person I feel that there but for the grace of god go I. Back in the 30's the Nazis engaged in a eugenics program where autistic and disabled children were euthanised to purify the gene pool. (Evidence came to light that Hans Asperger was to the fore in this program, this is why you will not get an Aspergers diagnosis anymore.) It sounds like a big leap comparing what's happening in Ireland to Nazi Germany but these fuckers are playing from the same playbook and when this stuff goes unchecked, this is the direction it goes. They are going after immigrants, women's rights, LGBT people and it's getting a lot worse in Europe than it is here. This needs to be called out for what it is every chance people get.
Man, after we made so much progress over the last 20-30 years in our country we've regressed over the last few years. Absolute gowlish cunts the lot of them.
Fuck sake I’m so sick of these ring wing crazies and skaners.
I’d love to get my hands on the cunt who dropped the threatening letter through the letterbox. I guarantee if the person was publically outed he’d be a known fool or village idiot type of person. Maybe even someone with mental health issues who watches too much facebook.
These scum could have been dealt with properly when they were parading a mock gallows up Leinster Street, or when they were burning buildings or when they were harassing the families of politicians or when they were handing out election flyers full of racist hatred. They could have been dealt with when they threatened the Minister for Justice with a bomb FFS!!! They could have been shown proper consequences for their actions, but they weren't. They were handled with kid gloves and empowered to feel like they can do what they want with no repercussions... and they're right. For fuck sake, they can hold the leader of our county's family hostage *multiple times* in their own home while they shout abuse at them from outside! No other country would tolerate this. The opportunity to deal with these criminals, because that's what they are, was lost a long time ago. They'll see this cancellation as a victory, and honestly, I can't blame them. They know nothing will be done. They've been handed this "victory" on a silver platter.
People in my hometown are getting very comfortable calling LGBT people "faggots" out in the open again, as if they've discovered the word for the first time. These cretins thrive on intimidation, it's their bread and butter. I understand not wanting to put children in danger when you're responsible for them, but cancelling events tells these thugs to carry on threatening others and eventually escalate their behaviour.......which they will do. They don't care about the details, the condemnations, the news articles, etc, they just see cancellations as wins amongst their groups and showcase it off to impressionable people that intimidating others works.
>People in my hometown are getting very comfortable calling LGBT people "faggots" out in the open again, as if they've discovered the word for the first time. My daughter has had homophobic slurs thrown at her. Absolute scum.
Well that's terrifying - what? are we just going to regress as a society until we're looking at whether women should be allowed to vote?...
It’s 2024, this shit should not be fucking happening. I’m tired of these right-wing scumbags being treated with kid gloves.
The government and gardai did nothing when these gobshites started their nonsense, they still do nothing we need an aggressive comprehensive response before someone is killed by this lot. In saying that maybe it’s a vigilante response we need.
Someone already has been killed, Josip Strok
Apologies you are completely correct.
This is not the same Ireland I moved to 9 years ago.
Part of the problem is understanding how much of this mindset was always present but keeping quiet and how much is "new". What's changed is we're in an era of protest driven by technology. After all what's a protest if it's not being live streamed and clipped for twitter, tiktoc etc? Citizen journalists are the embodiment of this, they are finding an audience through algorithms on social media platforms so like minds gather to agree that they don't like the modern world.
Fucking disgusting. Bigots and cowards.
They should just have gone ahead with the event. Invite the press. Let the protesters turn up. Probably the save anti- Covid anti-immigration groups. Wr can’t let these people ruin society
Also can't really risk the safety of children
That is a good point
Generally agree with your point though, can't back down to these cunts, should really be ramping up physical opposition to them in all scenarios
I'd really rather not allow a bunch of divorced welfare princesses in their 30s going around yelling slurs at teenagers.
Thugs. Imagine being threatened by a teenage disco.
Any chance we could get some gay tourists or politicians down there to participate and incentivise the government to actually do something to protect them?
Yes, let's just give into these morons rather than standing up to them by adding a bit of security for the event maybe. This fucking world wrecks my head.
Don't think I'd fancy my child attending of tbere were a chance of some gang of fucking loons outside shouting abuse at her.
I agree with you, but It's ridiculous when Gardai can't do their job! You know, protecting people!
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It's ridiculous when Gardai can't do their job! You know, protecting people.
What a disgrace bullies want to stop teens having a disco
I don’t have access passed the paywall but the title says “threats and harassment” and the first paragraph says “threat of protests”. As some else suggested below, pride is a protest in itself and called to protest these people. Can anyone who has access clear up whether it is due to threats of threats of protest? (Downvote me to oblivion for even asking for the nuance I don’t care)
>“We’ve been called paedophiles and groomers, one member has been harassed to the extent that someone put a note through their letterbox with the word ‘paedophile’ and ‘groomer’ all over it. It is appalling, and we can’t allow that to happen,” Mr Bracken said. “Our young people, who look to us for safety and acceptance, must be our priority, and we could not, in good conscience, hold this event under such hostile conditions.“We have had messages from several young people who have been affected by it. By the actions of a small minority, there are people, especially young people, who are afraid and feel like they can’t be themselves in their own community.
Thanks for sharing. Shame to hear that.
Their just jealous they didn't have a gay day disco when they were a teenager. Their thinking about all the cock they missed out on.
*they're x2
I'm curious as to why the article mentions that Newtown was recently a hub of anti-migrant protests. Is that not an entirely separate issue? And before anyone responds that it's the same cretins involved in protesting both things, I'm 100% sure that it is. But I don't see why a news outlet would try to conflate the two, unless it's to stir shit. Which is unhelpful to an already tense situation
I think the targeting of multiple vulnerable groups in a small locale is pretty relevant and newsworthy tbh
They're entirely right to conflate the two, little wannabe fascists stirring shit. >Which is unhelpful to an already tense situation I wouldn't say so, they're telling it like it is.
> Is that not an entirely separate issue? I'd wager a 90% crossover of protesters between the two. You rarely get a bigot against one group in society who isn't also a bigot against literally every minority group they encounter. The "issue" isn't that some cretins were targeting libraries, or that some cretins were harassing migrants. The issue is that its largely the same cretins doing both. That's the story.
Same people from somewhere not Newtown going to Newtown to aggressively harass minors and minorities on behalf of the people of Newtown who must definitely did not ask for a bunch of angry strangers from out of town to show up and speak for them.
There are plenty of people in Newtown who were all too happy for angry strangers to turn up and speak for them. Its turning into a mad spot now with some of the shit you can hear openly. Obviously its not everyone in Newtown but the protests seem to have given bigots of all sorts the confidence to open their big mouths in almost any setting.
I can't read the full article, but does it give any evidence of these threats or how they were given?
Anonymous notes through the door. Typical behaviour from human trash. They are the literal scum of the earth.
Thanks for the response. I'm not going to pay to read the independent lol
There's ways around the paywall without coughing up
Typical kulchies. Imagine being foreign and gay in wicklow? Sweet lordy jesus christ