Irish Lives: A listening ear for the gay community over more than four decades

“Too often we underestimate the power of a listening ear. It has the potential to turn a life around.” So says a message on Gay Switchboard Ireland’s website.

The confidential listening and support service for members, family and friends of the LGBT community, and anyone with questions about their sexuality, marked the end of its 40th anniversary year with an invitation to meet President Michael D Higgins at his home last week.

The President thanked the service's volunteers for their work in the community. His welcome was in stark contrast to the government's initial reception of the telephone service, originally dubbed Tel-A-Friend by Senator David Norris when it was formed in 1974.

At the time, the State-owned precursor to Eircom refused to list the words "gay" or "lesbian" in the telephone directory.

"It's self-evident that society was somewhat oppressive and repressive towards LGBT people, but if you wanted confirmation of the extent of that oppression from the State, that illustrates it," says Tonie Walsh, curator of the Irish Queer Archive and founding editor of Gay Community News.

The service began as the counselling arm of the gay rights movement in Ireland. "It would have been a couple of lads in a room, opening letters and answering phones," says Walsh. Phone calls and letters soon began to flood in.

Norris remembers being part of the group that discussed the listening service at the first public meeting on gay rights, held in Trinity College Dublin in 1973. The original volunteers received training from the Samaritans. The callers' privacy, he says, was absolutely sacrosanct. "We were looking for people with a good, reassuring voice . . . People had to have the capacity to listen and to engage . . . not to be showering people with advice, but just to listen."

First step

“Society was bereft of supports taken for granted today,” says Walsh. “It suggested to people to take the first step in embracing one’s identity . . . It echoes where we are today with

Leo Varadkar

and

Pat Carey

. Coming out is still enormously significant, personally, privately, politically and on a wider cultural level.

“It was really important at a time when you had, because of the law [which criminalised sex between men], a cloud of criminality around the community.”

Decriminalisation laws were passed in 1993, after Norris’s constitutional challenge “took about 20 years from start to finish” in the courts.

Gay Switchboard Ireland director Maria Keogh says the issues have changed over the decades, but the phones still ring every day.

In 2014, the service’s 51 volunteers took 2,900 calls, 200 more than the year before.

“Now people are asking about social issues, like how to tell their parents,” she says.

Calls from transgender and young people are increasing, and a leading reason for calling continues to be social isolation.

Name change

The organisation changed its name from

Gay Switchboard Dublin

to Gay Switchboard Ireland last year to reflect the calls it receives from around the country.

“LGBT people are seven times more likely to attempt suicide than their peers. That number is even higher for transgender people,” says Keogh, citing research in 2013 by the Royal College of Surgeons.

“Talking things out makes a massive, radical change to their lives. It makes them realise they’re just normal people like everyone else.”

Gay Switchboard Ireland is open seven days a week, Mondays to Fridays from 6.30pm to 9pm, Saturdays from 2pm to 6pm and Sundays and bank holidays from 4pm to 6pm. It can be reached at gayswitchboard.ie or on 01-872 1055. The switchboard runs several other support services, including a married men’s group that meets on the first Thursday of each month in Outhouse, Dublin’s LGBT community centre. There is a sexual health drop-in service every Saturday from 2pm to 4pm, also at Outhouse.