LGBT Disregard

The ‘Disregards’ campaign and this website is an initiative of the LGBT Restorative Justice Campaign, founded by Kieran Rose, Karl Hayden and Brian Sheehan, with the help of many activists, academics, researchers, historians, civil and human rights groups and LGBTQ+ community organisations, and which has the support of a range of TDs and Senators.

You can contact the campaign via the form below if you have any queries about disregards or redress or anything else on this website.

If you were one of the men who faced the harshness of the laws and would like to let us know your experiences, please contact us in confidence below. If you were the partner, family member or friend of a person who had to face the policing or legal system, we’d value hearing your experiences, in confidence. Please contact us below.

Scroll down to access supports, community services and helplines.

Supports

Note on Terms used on the website

The laws being considered for the Disregard scheme criminalised men who had sexual relationships with other men, whether they identified as gay, bisexual, men who had relationships with men, queer, or didn’t identify in this way at all.

Those laws, while they didn’t directly criminalise sex between women, did have a huge impact on lesbian and bisexual women and women who had relationships with women. These laws and other laws – such as vagrancy and public order laws – extended to criminalising other ordinary aspects of same-sex relationships – holding hands, kissing, displays of affection etc. – and they impacted on people who were trans. Much further research is needed into how trans people were policed and under what legislation.

Collectively, these laws created a hostile environment for people who might now identify as LGBTIQA+. Throughout this site, the term LGBT+ is used to refer to all people who were directly and indirectly impacted, and to the communities to which they belong.