A real shift

In an historic move Irish citizens voted to legalise gay marriage in the first referendum of its kind. The largely Catholic country, which legalised sodomy just 22 years ago, is just one of many countries where a shift in attitudes towards LGBT people can be seen.

Peter Hegarty (University of Surrey) is a researcher in gender and sexuality, history of psychology and social psychology. He is also a former chair of the BPS Psychology of Sexualities Section. He said as he has been in a civil partnership for six years and is an Irish citizen, the referendum was particularly important to him, he added: 'It's been fantastic for Ireland in a number of ways.'

He outlined some of the reasons prejudices towards the LGBT community seem to be shifting and gave examples of the yes campaign's use of social psychology in the run-up to the referendum. He said that although Ireland only repealed the Victorian law against sodomy in 1993 the country's attitudes towards gay marriage have been 'transformed' over the past two decades.

Professor Hegarty said that social psychologists were very aware that for attitude change to happen personal contact with a discriminated-against group was vital. 'Over the last 25 years we've seen a real shift when carrying out surveys of heterosexual people. These days people are far more likely to say they know someone who is lesbian, gay or bisexual and this is true in lots of places. This is really important for changing attitudes towards gay rights and marriage,' he said.

Ireland's population is relatively small and extremely interconnected culturally, Hegarty said this may be another reason that attitudes have taken a dramatic shift. He added that the yes campaign encouraged people to open up a dialogue about gay marriage among their friends and older relatives, to make the conversation and topic more accessible.

One of the most notable aims of the yes campaign was to challenge heteronormativity – or the belief that heterosexual relationships are the only 'normal' or acceptable kind of relationship. Hegarty gave examples of two videos in particular which challenged this idea.

One, called Sinead's Hand, shows a man wandering the streets of Ireland knocking on the door of each house and asking whether he can have Sinead's hand in marriage. The video ends with the caption 'How would you feel if you had to ask 4 million people to get married?'

In the second video a taxi driver is shown on a hidden camera ranting to real customers about heterosexual couples, how they breed too much and how he would not accept one in his cab. Hegarty said: 'These videos were all about turning the lens around. And it's wonderful to see that there's some really good social psychology being used on the ground and effecting social change. The Irish yes campaign was really smart about challenging heteronormativity at an almost cognitive level.'

The BPS Psychology of Sexualities Section is involved in a great deal of social and attitudinal change work including the signing of a memorandum against conversion therapy earlier this year. In a previous life, as the Lesbian and Gay Psychology Section, its members were involved in writing a statement in the Kitzinger Wilkinson case in the supreme court – in which psychologists Professors Celia Kitzinger and Sue Wilkinson attempted to have their marriage, which happened in British Columbia, recognised as a marriage in England.