Talk:Gay Star and Upstart

Catch for Deleted Content

Placed here for easy retrieval when/if it's necessary. sthomson 01:18, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Gay Star and GAY publishing came comparatively late to Northern Ireland. The first credible Gay group founded in the region was a branch of the Committee (later Campaign) for Homosexual Equality, in January 1969. It had a ‘welfare’ arm called the Elmwood Trust, which had among its Trustees the current head of the (Anglican) Church of Ireland, Archbishop Robin Eames, and the renowned poet John Hewitt. CHE did not flourish for a number of reasons chief among them being that Northern Ireland plunged into civil war in the course of 1969 / 1970.

In 1972 GLF (the Gay Liberation Front was set up by Andy Hinds (now a theatre director), Maeve Malley was also involved. It became a recognised student society of Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), Student Union, not without controversy, as the GLS – Gay Liberation Society. GLF absorbed CHE, an unusual situation, where the more radical group was larger than the less radically-inclined. This may account for the Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association - NIGRA’s flexibility over the years.

It was set up in 1975, and included GLF, women’s Sappho groups in Belfast, Craigavon and Derry / Londonderry, the NICRH (NI Council on Religion and Homosexuality), and a group for transsexuals and transvestites (later called the Belfast Butterfly Club). Youth groups as such came and went, but currently there is Glyni (Gay and Lesbian Youth NI), there has never been a bisexual group, despite a considerable number of individual bisexual people being involved in the movement, especially in the early days.

Split article?

Shouldn't it become two articles, one for each magazine? And check the capitalisation on both? Itsmejudith 20:42, 26 September 2006 (UTC)