OUR LGBTQ+ DECADE

OUR DECADE // LGBTQ+ FEATURE// AN LGBTQ+ DECADE

WORDS: CALLUM SKEFFINGTON

A LOT CAN HAPPEN IN the space of a year. Even more can happen in ten years, and throughout the 2010’s we saw advances in LGBT+ acceptance and equality.

To end the decade with leaders such as Donald Trump, the Tories and the DUP determining the political landscape, it is easy to feel disheartened about the state of the world, but as a community our footprint on the world has increases massively throughout the 2010’s.

Throughout the past decade there were five attempts to introduce same-sex marriage in the Northern Ireland Assembly. Achieving marriage equality seemed to be an impossible task with the DUP standing in our way at every opportunity, but right at the tail end of the 2010’s we were granted the same rights as the rest of the population.

This was, of course, an incredible moment for the LGBT+ community, and soon we will be seeing the first gay-marriages taking place here in Northern Ireland, but marriage equality was a debate across the world. Northern Ireland was one of many; eighteen different nations saw the legalisation of same-sex marriage in the 2010’s.

All the way back in 2010, same-sex marriages were legalised in Iceland, and the prime minister was amongst the first LGBT+ citizens to marry her partner. In 2015, the Republic of Ireland made history when it became the first nation to hold a referendum that legalised same sex marriage, with 62% of voters saying yes to equality. In that same year, the supreme court of America ruled that refusing marriage to LGBT+ couples was a violation of equality, and a nation wide amendment was enacted.

It hasn’t just been a decade of rainbow wedding cakes however. For some nations, the existence of LGBT+ people was finally recognised. Fiji became the first Pacific Island country to formally decriminalise homosexuality back at the beginning of 2010, and in 2016 both Seycellyes and Belize did the same. Another major win for the LGBT+ community came in 2018, when the Indian Supreme Court also decriminalised homosexuality. These advances in LGBT+ recognition have had rippling effects across the world, and we all rejoiced in unison for our community members overseas.

The transgender communnity faces more obstacles on a day-to-day basis than any of us, and though they are yet to recieve the full recognition they deserve within our community and externally, trans rights have still been making a slow improvement over the past ten years. In April 2015, Caitlyn Jenner came out as a transgender woman, and although she is a controversial spokesperson for the trans community, she has become one of the most famous, openly transgender people in the world, alongside inspirations such as actress, model and spokesperson, Laverne Cox.

In September of 2010, the Chief of the Defence Force in Australia lifted the ban on transgender personal, and in July 2015, The Pentagon announced the inclussion of transgender troops in the US military from 2016 onwards.

Of course, there is still a long way to go. There has been many obstacles placed in front of the LGBT+ community throughout the 2010’s, especially towards the end of the decade when political leaders have changed hands and oftentimes our place in the world can be questionable. However we have already seen the continued advancement of our worldwide rights in the beginning of 2020.

acceptance and equality. LGBT+ education in schools has become a major topic of discussion for parents and people of all backgrounds, and the discussion will someday lead to a reality.