“The Gaelic Athletic Association formally endorses the distribution of puberty blockers to children”
That is something the organisation would most likely deny formally, but it is nevertheless the most logical conclusion to be drawn from its likely representation at this Saturday’s ‘Belfast Pride’ parade.
It’s likely because national and provincial GAA officials and employees have taken part in the Dublin and Belfast marches since the early 2020s. There has been no public indication of a change for 2025.
‘Stand By Your Trans’ was the slogan of the Belfast event in 2024, and the GAA’s Ulster Council and Antrim County Board sent delegations to it, suited and booted in multi-coloured jerseys and festooned with flags, all the better to stand strong by their trans and so on.
‘NO GOING BACK’ – A PROTEST FOR PUBERTY BLOCKERS
Belfast’s event this Saturday is even more politically contentious, however. Indeed it’s arguably the most politically infused ‘Pride’ parade on this island to date. It’s entitled, ‘No Going Back’.
This is not a protest against the new 3-up, 3-down rule in Gaelic football, which limits forwards from crossing halfway to help their back line. No, it’s a strident reaction against the ruling of the UK Supreme Court in April that the definition of a woman is based on biological sex, and the decision to ban the use of puberty blockers for children north of the border (as in Great Britain).
Call me old-fashioned, but I’d wager that a survey of members of the GAA, Camogie Association and (actual) Ladies’ Gaelic Football Association would find a majority agreeing that a natural-born male should not use a female changing room or play on a women’s team just because he / she wants to, and that juveniles should not be given drugs that would permanently prevent their maturation to adulthood. Let’s pause the clock on these thoughts for a moment though.
Belfast’s proud gender warriors have taken their truculence to new depths. They have ruled that all political parties who voted for the ban on puberty blockers cannot be represented as such at this year’s event, to the ire of Sinn Féin and Alliance apparatchiks who fixate on being on the right side of the virtue-signal but are now prohibited from painting pink party logos on their cheeks for the city promenade.
Hence every corporate body parading behind the ‘No Going Back’ banner this Saturday is presumed to be explicitly or implicitly in favour of biological males powdering noses in the ladies’ loo, dressing next to girls, and throwing their testosterone-fuelled frames into sporting combat with the fairer sex – in spite of court rulings and large political majorities on these issues. Media questions about whether the civil service’s representation in such an overtly political protest has led to a fudged compromise whereby its Head (Jayne Brady) will be absent but departmental branches will brandish their paraphernalia, lest they be accused of being something-phobic.
The Pride promoters have already counted the GAA as standing foursquare behind trans demands. How do we know this? Since 2023, they have debarred Ulster Rugby from their Belfast parades, after the IRFU decided not to allow biological males to play in female contact rugby games. The absence of any such ruling on the part of the Gaelic association is taken as endorsement.
THE TRANSGENDER ISSUE IN GAELIC GAMES
GAA President Jarlath Burns joins a “pre-pride” event
Gript has previously covered the disquiet among LGFA members about their organisation’s policy of allowing biological males to play against females. This matter arose when a Dublin ladies’ junior shield final in 2022, in which the referee stopped play to inform Na Gaeil Aeracha (‘the Gay Gaels’) of a problem with number 21 – ‘the player is a man’ – and the pictorial evidence afterwards proved the latter’s physical advantage over girl opponents.
The LGFA hierarchy’s response, in February 2023, was to covertly introduce a Transgender Policy permitting any male over-12 to play in female games if they could provide supporting paperwork. CEO Helen O’Rourke circulated this policy to county boards with the proviso that it was ‘NOT for circulation to clubs or members, as they must first be discussed and approved by Central Council’. No clubs were allowed to debate the matter or discuss their concerns; not even the parents of young girls who might be directly affected. Attempts by numerous members around the country to raise the question were effectively stifled or neutered. An umbrella group called ‘Gaels for Fair Play’, advocating for female-only games, has been all but ignored by the MSM too. So while the IRFU and numerous sporting organisations in Ireland and Britain have gone one way, the LGFA, and by extension the GAA with which it is planning to integrate, has gone the complete other.
This has been the general pattern of things in recent years. Those at the helm of the GAA, LGFA and Camogie Association have doubled down on all gender matters – which are suddenly many – to mimic the hyper-‘inclusive’ policies of the political elites and commercial stakeholders, to heck with the cultural ethos of the association or anything else. The Gaelic sports bodies, subjected to intense tackling on four sides – government, NGO agendas, sponsors and the inter-county players’ union – have figuratively spilt the ball and lost possession.
WHO’S BEHIND THE GENDER AGENDAS IN GAELIC SPORTS?
First, the governmental gender diktats are the easy parts to follow. Two years ago the GAA’s Congress voted to bring in a 40% quote for female membership of its higher chambers, as mandated by Minister Jack Chambers, in order to secure the maximum sports capital funding. So it is that some male voluntary officers will not be allowed to take up the positions to which they were duly elected. Is this inclusive or exclusive? Ná cuir an cheist sin, le do thoil. The targeted full integration of the Gaelic organisations by 2027 is seriously questioned by many local and county officials, but only in hushed tones – especially as the project is being led by the matriarch Mary McAleese herself. They will just have to accept being conscripted – I mean, baptised – into the new Gaelic union, whatever its name.
Onto the more insidious role of NGOs and their EDI offspring. The advent of EDI committees and policies to the GAA in recent years – owing to the same insatiable desire to tap into all public funding sources and keep expanding its workforce – has accelerated the alignment of the association with public policies and NGOs. The GAA’s ‘National Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Working Group’ is currently drawing up ‘a new EDI strategy for Gaelic games’, according to www.gaa.ie. (Note: Equity has replaced Equality.) Details are vague, but we can look to the Ulster GAA Secretary’s Annual Report for 2024 for clues. It cites a goal of ‘Diversity Mark accreditation which we are working towards with the help of the Diversity Mark team’. A quick dig reveals that ‘Diversity Mark’ is an offshoot of ‘Women in Business NI’, formed with the aid of the Northern Ireland Civil Service in 2016-17.
You couldn’t make this stuff up. Anyone familiar with the GAA’s origins and the voluntary parish ethos that was its backbone should be offended to learn that its leaders are prostrating and prostituting themselves before a splinter-group of NI businesswomen and mandarins, to beg acceptance and offer up its very composition and ethos on a plate. It’s utterly self-defeating too; these diversity tsars have no true grá for club or county. They don’t know balls, one might say. Like Athena Swan in universities, and Stonewall elsewhere, one can only wonder how so much authority is invested in a fly-by-night body, and who’s really overseeing the accreditors? The report also mentions a provincial ‘EDI policy and strategy document’ in the making, ‘along with other agreed key objectives regarding gender diversity in our organisation’. Of course, Ulster – like Croke Park and coming soon to a GAA board near you – has a full-time EDI Officer, who goes to learn ‘best practice’ from disciples of EDI in Stormont and Westminster. And who could doubt that these high priests of EDI support trans inclusion in women’s Gaelic games and back puberty preventers to boot?
More peculiar still, the ‘Diversity & Inclusion in the GAA’ document on its website provides a direct link to the Transgender Equality Network (TENI) page, which expresses ‘anger’ over the UK Supreme Court ruling. The GAA is usually ultra-cautious about linking its media channels to any extraneous body, unless there’s big money involved. So why is this extraordinary exception made on such a contentious subject?
Then there are the corporate sponsors and their constant pontifications. Stand up, Musgrave Group, owners of the SuperValu brand. Its round-the-clock advertisements on TV and radio tell us how the GAA is for ‘all sexualities’. Remember when the All-England Club or the Royal & Ancient Golf Club or any other sports body or sponsor bombarded our ears with ‘sexualities’ at 3.00 pm? Me neither. It’s all very pointed. A couple of years ago, SuperValu / Centra had drag artist ‘Cherrie Ontop’ as one of their three brand ambassadors for NI, promptly after this character (née Matt Cavan) had delivered a drag-queen storytelling event for children in Belfast. Amid the ensuing controversy, the message was clear: we champion the gender-bender against the protesting rabble.
‘Community Includes Everyone,’ goes the mantra. The same firm cared little for the Cork community or GAA custom when it demanded full naming rights to the city stadium last year. ‘SuperValu Páirc’, it insisted; ‘SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh’, it conceded reluctantly – after public outcry – to the name of pale, male and stale Pádraig, the General Secretary who had done arguably more than anyone in history to build up the GAA’s national community. Musgrave really knows where its bread is buttered though – as any store owner should. At the April event to announce extended sponsorship of the Football Championship for five years, SuperValu’s ‘Real Progress’ campaign boasted (again) of commitment to inclusion, and featured six ‘diverse’ players, one of whom just happened to be Cork goalkeeper Micheál Martin, son of you-know-who.
The prospect of another half-decade of SuperValu sermons and rainbow bootlaces does come with a potential upside. ‘Community Includes Everyone’ must mean match tickets for all shop customers in future. And all readers should get their requests for All-Ireland final tickets into their local store urgently. They could hardly exclude you now, could they?
Last but not least, there’s the role of the Gaelic Players’ Association, which acts as a union for elite players. The GPA is the de facto NGO 1.0 of Gaelic games. Funded to the tune of several million euros annually by Croke Park and state aid, its expenditure is quite opaque, to say the least. And like any NGO worthy of the name, it is always in campaign mode to justify its funding, without ever resolving the real causes of problems. Despite keeping male club players outside the tent (no inclusion there), the GPA latched onto the integration agenda to broaden its membership to include all female inter-county players, and to adopt a new trendy cause. The ‘Skortgate’ scandal of spring 2025 was largely of the GPA’s concoction. Set aside for a moment one’s preference for shorts or skorts. Every sporting executive sets a dress code, and camogie players had always worn some form of skirt. But the GPA ran its players’ surveys and protests in order to caricature voluntary Camogie Association officials as dinosaurs, set on living out The Handmaid’s Tale on the Gaelic fields of Ireland; and its role in humiliating them and steamrolling the issue through a special congress was all but a subversion of established democratic process.
THE GENDER MISSION CREEP CONTINUES
These gender-agenda generators, working together, have each found it in their interest of late to ‘out’ ever more players. The GPA opened ‘Pride Month’ festivities with a big-reveal event, at which the Armagh footballer and All-Ireland medallist, Mark Shields, spoke about being gay. For some individuals, telling their stories is certainly something they feel relieved and happy to do.
Yet, it’s clear that others are using players for their own agendas above all. In mid-June, a club player who had recently given a podcast interview about coming out – very much promoted as an exclusive scoop – joined Shields and other identifiably gay Gaelic personalities for the launch of some SuperValu ‘Carry with Pride’ merch. Meanwhile, the Dublin camogie captain, who is co-chair of the GPA and a leading skort-fragette, was the focus of a magazine feature with her female partner, in connection with a brand ambassadorship. Evidently there are scores of out-there Gaelic players already, it is all quite passé now, and there are perks for those who want to talk about it.
It’s equally true that plenty of gay people don’t really want to publicise their personal lives, just as many straight people don’t want to either. And the way that some gay players are cajoled by vested interests to declare their sexuality, ostensibly for a greater cause – ‘smashing huge holes in the wall of stigma that still prevents gay men in particular from feeling they can live their full identity (www.gaa.ie) – is just a sideline’s breadth away from how Peter Tatchell and OutRage! used to pressurise gay celebrities in Britain to come out publicly. One Gaelic player wrote a public letter a few years ago, stating that the GAA didn’t have to do anything for him; having been accepted by team-mates and others, he just wanted to play on as normal, without a fuss. It was a brave move, as it didn’t suit the activist lobby. It went to prove also that the GAA is not the hive of homophobia that many would have you believe, and shouldn’t really feel obliged to wave rainbow flags at every point.
The mission creep progresses steadily nonetheless, as the gender stakeholders determine. The GAA, LGFA and Camogie at the Croke Park Hotel ran a ‘Pride Breakfast’ (correction: cringefest) on the morning of the big parade in Dublin. Pictures on the GAA website show President Jarlath Burns with a full squad of Na Gaeil Aeracha and enough large ‘Pride Progress’ flags – the ones that include the pro-trans and ‘Black Lives Matters’ colours – to fill Hill 16. These PP flags bear the official logos of the GAA, LGFA and Camogie, as quite the Troika. A woman who appears to be Mrs Burns is shown holding one of the flags. These organisations have been known to be protective of their symbols, requiring anyone to apply for official permission to use them. This is all rather queer, and leaves one questioning. Has the GAA Ard Chomhairle licensed the use of this logo in support of XY chromosomes playing camogie, puberty blockers (which aren’t banned in the south yet), and ‘a future fully divested from police, prisons, and all punishment paradigms’ (as BLM espouses)? If not, what’s it doing on the GAA website, in plain sight?
DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT
The GAA has often bragged about its bottom-up democratic structure, whereby a member of any club can pilot a motion that can go all the way to national Congress and change a rule or policy. The association is currently circulating nationwide questionnaires on playing rules and amateur status, as a means to garner members’ views on these topics.
You can guarantee this, though: nobody at ground level will get a say on the gender issues outlined here. The corporate GAA, entangled in servile compliance with the EDI agenda of state, NGOs and commerce, has been rapidly transitioning away from the old Cumann Lúthchleas Gael to something unrecognisable. Anyone wishing to challenge these practically undebated and frankly undemocratic changes is more likely to be slapped with a suspension for discriminatory language.
‘GAA – Where We All Belong’. That’s the association’s official ‘inclusivity’ motto since 2019.
‘No Going Back’? The way things are going, the GAA might as well adopt the trans tagline for years to come.
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NOTE: In order to give the author the freedom to discuss the issues arising in this piece, the Editor has granted their request to remain anonymous.