By Digital Desk Staff
The GAA is set to register its first ever LGBTQ+ club that aims to be an inclusive place for people to train.
The new club, Na Gaeil Aeracha, will be based in Dublin and will be the first club of its kind in the country.
It is hoped that the club’s team will be up and running by next year.
Co-founder Caoimhe Baxter said the club will be a safe place for people to train.
“For whatever reason, a lot of people do not feel comfortable in a typical heteronormative club and this just means that a lot of people may have not have joined in the GAA whenever they were young or they were pushed out,” she said.
It just means that this club is going to be inclusive of absolutely everybody
“It just means that this club is going to be inclusive of absolutely everybody.”
Baxter said those behind the new club did not believe that the GAA was not generally inclusive of the LGBTQ+ community.
“We are not saying that the GAA in general are not inclusive of the LGBTQ+ community, but whenever a club is set up as openly queer and openly accepting, it means that a lot more people will feel comfortable to join,” she said.
“Maybe they didn’t in the first place or maybe they were pushed out of the sport due to many different factors.”
The historic development emerged at a webinar to help increase inclusion in sport, hosted by DCU’s Centre of Excellence for Diversity and Inclusion according to the Irish Examiner.
The GAA has increasingly been to the fore in promoting LGBTQ+ rights and supports in recent years and had its first official delegation take part in Dublin’s Pride Parade last year.
Men's Gaelic games already have two prominent gay activists in Cork star Dónal Óg Cusack and referee David Gough, but few other members at inter-county level have come out in the same public manner yet.
