(Un)ACCEPTABLE
(Un)Acceptable – is an exhibition of forty-one expressionistic portraits, representing members of the LGBTQ+ worldwide community who have and still are being harassed, tortured, and murdered by bigotry and intolerance in our society. The number forty-one is an acknowledgment to the forty-one members of the LGBTQ+ community that were prosecuted in Mexico in 1901, also known as a The Dance of the Forty-One, for just being themselves.
LGBTQ+ people have been and still are fighting globally for equal rights, even though we have achieved huge advances in the Republic of Ireland, with marriage equality being voted in by the people of Ireland in 2015. However, at the same time in 2015, in Israel, six people were stabbed and a 16-year-old girl was killed during the Jerusalem gay pride parade. Similarly, in 2016 three gunmen entered a gay bar in Mexico and carried out a mass shooting
where at least five, and up to fifteen people are believed to have been killed. Furthermore, an epidemic of violent homophobic attacks in Brazil in 2016, where gay and transgender people were stabbed, strangled, and stoned to death.
Based on sexual orientation the LGBTQ+ community are being persecuted because of political or religious beliefs, killed by their family members or complete strangers who hold a belief that they have a right to do so. Since the time of Nazi Germany, who imprisoned and prosecuted an estimated 100,000 gay people, of which at least 15,000 were tortured and murdered in Nazi concentration camps. Continuing homophobia and transphobia in the
United States of America, has seen a rise in the number of transgender or gender non-conforming people being murder.
As recent as 2021, an Iranian citizen, was murdered by his family, just for being gay. In Spain, a gay man was brutally murdered outside a nightclub, similarly in Latvia a gay man was murdered in another homophobic attack. In 2022 in Ireland, a gay man was badly beaten in a homophobic attack in Dublin. Two gay men in Sligo were murdered in the space of 24 hours and a lesbian couple were violently assaulted in Dublin, less than 24 hours before the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT).
Whilst we celebrate Pride and all the hard-earned advancements the LGBTQ+ community has fought for, homophobia, transphobia and biphobia are still happening today!
