The disturbing findings of a group of Trinity researchers on the mental health problems facing the LGBT community in Ireland, particularly young people, is a challenge to the open and socially liberal society we have believed ourselves to be.
Particularly revealing is the realisation that as many as 70 percent of LGBT people aged 14–18 have seriously contemplated suicide, with 56 percent of the same group having carried out self-harm. These individuals did not grow up amidst the political and social control of the Irish state and society by the Catholic Church, but in the increasingly cosmopolitan and diverse Celtic Tiger years.These young people were not born, as their parents were, to an Ireland where homosexuality was criminalised. It was in the modern Ireland that was amassing the political will to extend the right to marry to the LGBT community that they were left subject to this mental anguish.
These findings carry with them a necessary lesson. While legal recognition of the LGBT community and their rights is an essential precondition for their full and equal participation in society, it is by no means enough. Validation from the impersonal institutions of the state is of undoubted practical and symbolic importance, but it can never replace the respect and support of our peers and families, of our fellow citizens, for who we are, irrespective of sexual orientation. There is a duty on all of us, therefore, not only to tolerate and passively acknowledge the freedoms of LGBT people, but also to actively strive to make them feel accepted and at ease. They need support and validation not only from the letter of the law, but from real people.
This understanding must shape not only how we behave in day-to-day interactions, but also how we approach sexual education in schools. Any variety of such education that seeks to avoid all mention of the LGBT community will not help us overcome the tragic statistics that were published this week. From very early on, young people need to be made aware of the existence and validity of a diverse range of sexual orientations. This has the potential to give reassurance to young people coming to terms with their identity and the understanding their peers need to give them support as they do so.
