Derry used to be notorious for homophobic attacks, but a PSNI crackdown and political support, at least from nationalists, has given the gay community new confidence, writes Bryan Coll.
THE MAIDEN City was once known as a no-go area for gays and lesbians but growing levels of tolerance have sown the seeds of a confident young gay community.
The attacks have died down, but Brian McDermott's home is still his prison. He spends 12 hours a day confined to his bedroom, locks up at five in the afternoon and rarely receives visitors.
During a year-long spate of homophobic attacks, his ground-floor flat was paint-bombed, his windows smashed and his curtains set on fire by a firework thrown through his letterbox. Groups of young people would congregate outside his home, throwing stones at the windows and yelling abuse.
"I still jump if I hear footsteps at night," says McDermott, now retired. "And I'm dreading the long summer evenings. I hope it doesn't start up again."
Born and raised in the neighbourhood, he had shared his Derry flat with his male partner for years without experiencing any hostility.
But the besieging of McDermott's home two years ago was merely one incident in a spate of attacks that earned Derry a reputation as the gay-bashing capital of the North. In 2004-05, 72 homophobic incidents were reported in the Foyle area; the highest proportional figure for any policing district. Organisers of Derry's Gay Pride festival were forced to cancel the event after participants were singled out for attack.
Just as sectarian tensions in this historically divided city were starting to wane, it seemed a new kind of violence had arrived to take its place.
Today, groups of young people ensconced on the cushions of the city's Rainbow Project, a gay support group, speak of a different city. "In bars, we used to have to use code words to speak about gay stuff," laughs Derry native Didi Garnon. "But we don't have to do that any more."
Garnon, along with student friends Jamie Neil and Philip Baxendale, is part of a new community in Derry; local gay people who are staying put. Traditionally, local gays and lesbians left the city in large numbers for London or Dublin or else lived a closeted existence.
When Neil "came out" as gay in his final year of school, he says his family, friends and teachers were overwhelmingly supportive. "Of course there's more acceptance in larger cities like Belfast," says Baxendale. "But here, it's starting to come up to that level."
Garnon believes young gay people from Derry have a duty to stay in the city. "I think we should be challenging attitudes instead of running away," he says. "It's exciting to be here during a time of change."
Statistics show that it's not just attitudes that are changing. Derry has become a much safer place for gay people. From April 2006 to March 2007, 10 homophobic incidents were reported to the police in the Derry area, a reduction of almost 80 per cent from the previous year. By contrast, incidence rates in Belfast have remained fairly static (54 homophobic hate crimes in 2006-07 compared with 59 in 2005-06).
So how did the gay-bashing capital turn attitudes around?
"These kinds of incidents were happening anyway but had gone unreported in the past," says Sean Morrin of the Rainbow Project. For Morrin, who has worked with the welfare group for more than 10 years, Derry's recent hate crime hiatus was actually an encouraging sign. "Gay people finally had the confidence to come forward and talk to the police."
After years of relative ambivalence towards anti-gay crime, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) were also forced to change its attitudes. It was a combination of bad press received for Derry's perceived epidemic of hate crime and a freed-up police diary due to reduced sectarian crime in the city, that spurred the PSNI into action.
"Hate crime wasn't receiving enough attention," says PSNI Chief Insp Milton Kerr. "We had shied away from gay incidents for too long." In 2004, the PSNI established the Foyle Protocol in partnership with the Rainbow Project and other local community groups. Victims of homophobic hate crimes could report attacks to third parties who would then act as intermediaries with the police.
"Our main challenge was to build confidence in the gay community," says Chief Insp Kerr, who was closely involved with the protocol. "The result is that we've seen a massive reduction of incidents and people know that if they assault a gay person, the chances are they'll be convicted. In the past, they might have got away with it."
Now boasting one of the lowest homophobic crime levels in the North, Derry has emerged as a model city for tackling hate crime. The Partnership Protocol is due to be extended across Northern Ireland with the specific aim of reducing homophobic crime in rural areas.
Even large cities with long-established gay communities, such as Glasgow and Brighton, have expressed interest in copying Derry's strategy. "This was a wider community response," says Morrin.
"We knew we couldn't tackle it on our own and it wasn't our responsibility to do so. I think people in Derry just sat up and said: 'this can't continue'."
When Derry's Gay Pride event was reinstated in 2007, local politicians clamoured to be seen at the event. Yet public support for Derry's - and Northern Ireland's - gay community is almost exclusively confined to one side of the political divide.
Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness followed in the footsteps of the SDLP's Annie Courtney by launching the 2007 Pride event. McGuinness appeared in front of Free Derry corner, painted pink for the occasion.
By contrast, local DUP MLA William Hay has opposed the use of the city's Guildhall for civil partnership ceremonies and members of the Free Presbyterian Church, founded by First Minister Ian Paisley, picketed the Pride event last year.
"We are implacably opposed to the rights being afforded to sodomites," says Rev Ian Brown of the Free Presbyterian Church in the city. "There will never be support for a sodomite festival from members of our church. We look at it as a degradation of our social climate."
Rev Brown's church is located in the Waterside district, an area that has witnessed some of Derry's most violent homophobic assaults. Although he condemns physical violence, Rev Brown casts doubt on the veracity of police statistics. "There is enough reason to suspect that a large number of homophobic incidents, gay-bashings, call them what you will, are actually gay-on-gay attacks. The sodomite community are quite an aggressive community."
According to a 29-year-old gay man, Derry's gay scene is "almost exclusively Catholic", a segregation partly explained by the fact that Derry's gay venues are all located on the predominantly Catholic side of the river Foyle.
According to local community workers, the public hostility of the Free Presbyterian Church and most of mainstream unionism to Derry's gay community has compounded the difficulties faced by young gay Protestants.
"Unionism has failed gay people badly," says David McCartney of the Rainbow Project. "Instead of supporting young people, parties like the DUP pander to the lowest common denominator when fishing around for votes."
At Pepe's bar, Derry's only gay venue, politics is very much off the agenda. "I think it's the last thing people would be talking about when they come here," says manager Kyle Ennis, while clearing up the debris of a recent refurbishment. "People just come here to be themselves. They're glad to have a place where they don't have to put up a mask."
A few hours later, the bar fills up for its regular midweek karaoke session. As in any town with a single gay establishment, Pepe's clientele form a generous age bracket. But it's the youngest customers who are drinking the most. Despite the bar's claim to operate a strict over-18s policy, the Wednesday night crowd includes several groups of friends who look no more than secondary-school age.
Derry's more tolerant atmosphere may be allowing young gays and lesbians to express themselves more freely, but the flip side of this is that teenagers are being introduced to the alcohol-dominated gay scene earlier than ever before.
"I'm horrified by the age of people in the gay bar," says Kieran, a middle-aged gay teacher from Derry. "Since there are no other venues, young kids just go there and start drinking. It's depressing."
Although he applauds the "complete transformation" of attitudes towards gay people in the city, Kieran believes this new openness masks a more serious problem that has long been ignored: rising addiction levels and mental health problems in Derry's gay community.
"With the scene getting younger, many people find they are too old for gay bars, which means they lose their social network," he says. "A lot of older gay people in Derry still have repressed feelings about their own sexuality. They just keep their heads down and a lot of them turn to drink."
A recent study into the mental health of gay men in Northern Ireland showed above-average levels of alcohol and drug use.
Disturbingly, the report also stated that gay men in the North are 30 times more likely to commit suicide than their heterosexual counterparts.
That's a statistic that Conor, a 26-year-old from a large housing estate in the city, can relate to better than most. He was subject to a campaign of abuse from young neighbours that lasted over three years.
His door was regularly broken down during the night and his windows smashed with metal bars. "I just wanted to kill myself," says Conor, reflecting on the attacks.
After fleeing to the city's Waterside area, he brought forward a case against his attackers that resulted in one of the first criminal convictions for homophobic intimidation in Derry.
Today, he views the future with confidence and beams a broad smile when describing his future plans. Like most of the young gays and lesbians his age, he is determined to make the most of a city that has emerged as the gay-friendly capital of the northwest.
"If I move away from Derry, it'll be to travel and to see some different places. It won't be because I'm gay."