“Being screamed at was my introduction to the Belong To crowd.” At seventeen Annaig stepped into a community hall to join what she had been told was a club for gay youngsters. A lesbian in Dublin, none of her school friends were “out” and so she was hoping to find her tribe at a meeting run by Belong To, Ireland’s largest LGBTQ+ lobby group. Before she could even find a seat, the teenager says she was “shouted at and then shunned for misgendering a trans-identified male by accident”.

“I was embarrassed and confused, but I wasn’t being deliberately rude. I was fully in support of trans rights. My mistake was not catching someone’s name, so I said, “Oh, what’s ‘his’ name?” I just didn’t realise ‘he’ identified as ‘she’.”

Now 25, Annaig is one of the founders of Not All Gays, a grassroots group of young same-sex attracted people in Ireland who reject both gender identity ideology and the Critical Social Education Model of youth work practised by Belong To.

Annaig believes that the approach of Belong To is harmful to young same-sex attracted people. The organisation’s “divisive message” risks “rolling back the social gains made by an earlier generation”.

[Basically, it’s an indoctrination organization, not a support group. And what a surprise. ~ Beege]