The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. If you grew up in Northern Ireland during the s and s, sectarianism pervaded every aspect of your everyday life. In simple terms, sectarianism is the dislike, hatred, and distrust of another religious faction, a bundle of ideas, beliefs and practices including verbal and physical intimidation and violence as well as political, economic and institutional discrimination.
In symbolic terms, the signing of the Good Friday Agreement and the Belfast Agreement marked the beginning of the end of sectarian violence by mainstream republican and loyalist paramilitaries. And while sectarianism still looms large in Northern Ireland, statistics from the Police Service of Northern Ireland show an overall downward trend in sectarian incidents and crimes.
Although there is still a long way to go in terms of eradicating sectarianism, these statistics offer a sign of optimism and improvement. Two issues in particular have caught the attention of NI Assembly members and local councillors, especially those from the Democratic Unionist Party DUP , in recent years. On the one hand, sexual citizenship β gay rights, abortion and reproductive rights β and on the other, sexual commerce: the sale and consumption of adult goods and sexual services.
The attitudes of individual politicians and political parties, and, more importantly, the policy responses to issues of sexual citizenship and sexual commerce have taken on a deeply conservative and fervently activist bent. Sextarianism revolves around religious and patriarchal ideas, beliefs, practices and policies that stigmatise, physically harm, and criminalise members of sexual minority groups, and deny them their human and labour rights.
And in terms of political sextarianism, there has been considerable controversy , about a local bakery refusing to make a gay-themed cake for an LGBTQ customer. Political sextarianism has seen Northern Ireland consumed by a range of sexual rights issues, among them gay adoption , gay marriage and gay blood donation.
