pogoism

This is late news, but I really wanted to write something about it…

Every few years, the Equality Commission of Northern Ireland surveys the population of Northern Ireland to determine how people feel about different minorities in the country, and the results of their latest study are frankly shocking.

Here are some of the results:

• 51% would mind having a Traveller as a neighbour or as an in-law, and 38% said they would mind having a Traveller as a work colleague.
• 35% would mind having a close relative in a relationship with a lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) person, and 23% said they would mind having an LGB person as a work colleague or neighbour.
• 28% would mind having a migrant worker as an in-law, and 23% and 22% respectively would mind having a migrant worker as a neighbour or a work colleague.

Seriously. That means, assuming I have 2 neighbours, the chance is almost 50% that one of them will have a problem living next to me, as a gay man. That’s ridiculous. Why on earth should it matter to anyone if their next door neighbour is gay or lesbian?! I can usually see things from other people’s points of view, but in this case, I really can’t fathom it.

Most of the negative views in the survey were towards Travellers (28%), but LGB people weren’t far behind, at 21%, and Eastern European migrants at 20%. Given the trouble last month, where migrants were effectively forced out of their homes, that doesn’t bode well for the gays.

To make all this even worse, when ECNI did the last survey, the number of people who minded living next to a LGB person stood at 14%. Now it’s 23%. That’s right, it’s gone up. How does that happen?! How does bigotry and discrimination go up?!

It’s not so bad though, and I certainly don’t want to portray Northern Ireland as a bigotted hell-hole. From my own two years of living there, I’ve experienced very little in the way of discrimination, and I certainly feel safer being myself in Belfast than I do in my hometown, 30 miles away from London.