MICKY MURRAY

A NEW FIRST MINISTER.

AS I’M WRITING THIS ARLENE Foster is ending her final week as First Minister of

Northern Ireland, with her final engagement a British - Irish Council summit in Fermanagh, the very place where she began her political career.

It’s no secret that Arlene has been no friend to the LGBTQ+ community, although I’m sure she would disagree, she’s towed the party line just as every DUP leader before her. She has continually stood in the way of progress, overseeing the collapse of the NI Assembly in 2017, and was at the helm during the three years of parties talking and not talking. The only serious attempt at bringing back the devolved Assembly a bid to prevent Westminster legislation which saw the implementation of marriage equality and access to abortion services.

While Arlene didn’t treat the community as poorly as her predecessors, which is an extremely low bar, her replacement has a history of not just opposing progress, but actively taking steps to roll back equality.

Paul Givan may be the youngest person due to fill the post of First Minister, but this in no way indicates that he’s going to be more progressive or forward thinking than previous First Ministers, in fact he was the architect behind the Conscience Clause, which was designed to legislate for discrimination by allowing businesses to refuse goods and/or services to LGBTQ people, he’s the MLA who withdrew the Liofa funding, an Irish language scheme for students, which arguably led to the collapse of the devolved institutions in January 2017, and his most recent fight against progressive legislation is his Private Members Bill, the Severe Fetal Impairment Abortion (Amendment) Bill, which is seeking to restrict access to abortion.

It shows just how much disrespect the DUP have for the LGBTQ+ community when they put forward someone with Paul Givan’s track record for the top job in the Stormont Executive.

It seems that every time we take steps forward we end up getting pushed three steps back, it took the collapse of the Assembly to get rights we’d been fighting for for over a decade, but only only one year for an MLA to bring forward a Bill to restrict those rights again. We finally got Conversion Therapy to the top of the political agenda, a motion which Arlene Foster abstained on, and now we have potential political instability which could halt our attempts to get the practice banned.

Recent polling by LucidTalk showed voter intensions, with the DUP down from 28.1% in the previous Assembly election to 16%, 9% behind Sinn Fein and tied with Alliance who polled 9.1% in 2017. Unlike others I’m not as convinced that the DUP are fearing an early election, the TUV, who are polling at 11% are unlikely to make any gains, meaning that the bulk of their vote will return to the DUP anyway.

I’m such a nerd for polling data and election results.

While political instability and the absence of the Assembly led to key pieces of equality legislation, I’m not sure sure that the institutions would survive another collapse and prolonged absence, which in my opinion would be dire for the the people of Northern Ireland/the North.

The current waiting list for trans/non-binary people to get their FIRST appointment at the gender identify clinic is over four years, not for surgery, not for a referral for surgery, not to get prescribed medication to help them transition, their first appointment, and while health is a devolved issue, having it driven by Westminster will see waiting list being overseen by a Tory Minister, and I think there are very few people here who would be comfortable with Tory Ministers running local services.

There’s no doubt that polls are looking favourably on LGBTQ+ affirming parties, which bodes well for legislative changes in the future, but polls are just polls, if we lived in a world where election outcomes were influenced by twitter then Naomi Long would be First Minister, Labour would win a landslide majority, and Brexit would never have happened, but unfortunately, in my opinion, none of those things have happened yet.

If the DUP are in any way serious about opposing discrimination then they’re new leadership team, which include their most “socially liberal” MLA in their Deputy Leader, then they cannot continue to make attempts to drag us back into the past and roll back the rights that we’ve fought long and hard for.

Ban Conversion Therapy Update

Members of our coalition met with the Communities Minister and Departmental officials recently to discuss the need to move forward with plans to implement a ban, the meeting was fairly positive and there’s a real interest in moving this forward, but it’s looking unlikely that legislation will be ready to be brought forward in this Assembly mandate, which is due to end in May 2022.

This is an opinion piece from the columnist/contributor and not the opinion of GNI MAG / Romeo & Julian Publications Ltd.