By Damian McCarney
damian.mccarney@meathpost.com

Plans are in place to form a new group providing a support service,
advice centre and social outlet for Meath’s estimated 14,000 strong
gay community.

The organisation will mark a major step towards meeting the shortfall
of support services for the gay and lesbian community. A new website,
www.gay&lesbianmeath.ie, providing information on gay rights, a chat
forum, and a social diary, will be launched in the coming weeks to get
the initiative underway.

The website will be followed later this spring by a telephone support
line manned by trained volunteers, and ultimately the group, operating
under the provisional title of Gay & Lesbian Meath, hope to secure
their own premises. The impetus for the group came from recent
meetings hosted by Navan Community Forum.

Dr Alan Dibble, a psychologist who works with the HSE in Navan, is one
of the driving forces behind the project. He, along with Mark Coogan
have already set up a social outlet for the gay community with Cookies
Dining Out Club which meets up once a month, but he believes that
there is a need for an organisation which provides an overall support
service similar to the Outcomers in Dundalk.

Dr Dibble only “came out” last autumn, after a close friend persuaded
him he was being homophobic by hiding his homosexuality.

“If there had been a community resource like we are trying to create,
I would have come out earlier,” enthused Dr Dibble, who is originally
from Maryland.

He believes that other young gay people, struggling with their sexual
identity will also benefit from the new initiatives and “the caution
and difficulty would start to wither”.

“I work with young people who are worried about their sexual
orientation and are afraid to do anything about it because they do not
have a place to go. All they know is that their peers are very
derogatory about it, and that makes them feel negative about
themselves.
“To have a place where they can go and meet others around their age,
as a support group, to access education and to understand themselves
better would be great,” said Dr Dibble.
Ned Rispin of Navan Community Forum said that he has encountered
instances where people have been discriminated against “in all walks
of life because of their sexuality” and insists that establishing this
service in Meath is vital.
“There are 164,000 people in County Meath, 10 per cent of them are
gay, so there is 16,400 gay people in Meath, and there is no network,
no support, no place for those people to go, and that is why the Navan
Community Forum set up the group.”