A conference to take place in Dublin later this month will hear concerns over women’s rights, surrogacy, and alleged safeguarding failures within LGBT youth organisations.
‘LGB Interrupted’ will take place on 31 May, and has been organised by the campaign group ‘Not all Gays Ireland.’ The activist organisation previously raised concerns about Belong To youth meetings, claiming that attendees felt pressure to come out as non-binary or transgender.
The Irish advocacy group was founded to represent lesbian, gay, and bisexual people concerned about the erasure of same-sex attraction under gender identity ideology. It says that it will campaign for gay and lesbian rights, but not for transgender causes.
It says its mission is to “defend the rights of same-sex attracted people as a distinct protected group,” with the event to “bring together influential voices in the LGB community to discuss urgent issues such as the erosion of LGB rights, child safeguarding, free speech, and the impact of gender ideology.”
Keynote speaker for the conference will be Jaimee Michell, a lesbian activist and the founder of the US organisation Gays Against Groomers, a nonprofit she launched in June 2022. Mitchell has hit out at what she describes as “radical gender ideologies” —particularly the promotion of “gender-affirming care” for minors and the inclusion of sexualized content in children’s spaces, such as drag queen story hours. Mitchell says she believes that the gay community has “been co-opted and hijacked by ideological extremists.”
Mitchell, who describes herself as a right-wing lesbian, has previously spoken at the Moms for Liberty National Summit, and was invited to the White House for an executive order signing.
Another speaker at the event is Connie Shaw, a gender-critical student who was suspended from Leeds University Radio after posting an interview with a detransitioner. The British undergraduate student was barred from role overseeing shows like LGBTQ+ Hour after she expressed gender-critical views, according to free speech campaigners. The student of philosophy, ethics and religion, had been in charge of daytime radio however she was accused of breaching the student union’s code of conduct, over a blog post she had written last October.
The blog post was published on a Substack page run by Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan.
Also among speakers is Ritchie Herron, a gender ‘detransitioner’ from Newcastle, England, who says his medical gender transition from male to female was “a mistake” which he has sought to reverse. The 37-year-old civil servant underwent gender surgery in 2018, and is one of a growing number of patients who have come to regret undergoing medical interventions to change gender.
Sean Atkinson and Annaig Birdy of Not All Gays will speak at the event. Both activists have raised concerns about the State-funded organisation Belong To, having both attended youth meetings in the past. Ms Birdy previously spoke at a Let Women Speak rally in Dublin’s Merrion Square, which was headlined by UK activist Posie Parker. Mr Atkinson, meanwhile, previously hit out at the age gap at Belong To youth meetings, claiming that it was his experience that older members of the group would bring young people to nightclubs.
The activists met Ombudsman for Children Niall Muldoon to raise concerns about social pressures they say are put on teenagers and young adults to declare themselves trans or non-binary. Not All Gays have also written to Micheál Martin last year when he was Taoiseach to raise the alarm about Belong To, which received over €800,000 in state support in 2021.
In 2025, the group released a report detailing the risks it said were faced by LGB youth accessing adult dating apps — a report which was submitted to the European Union for action.
In a statement, Not All Gays Ireland said: “We were founded in 2023 in response to the increasing weaponisation of LGB identities to support policies and legislation that actively harm our rights and silence our voices — including Ireland’s proposed hate speech legislation, which would criminalise dissent and debate even within the wider LGBTQ community.
“Our formation also responds to disturbing developments in other areas, such as surrogacy legislation that commodifies women’s bodies, the uncritical promotion of medicalisation in LGBT youth groups, and the silencing of those who question these trends. We proudly advocate for child safeguarding, women’s sex-based rights, and free speech.”
The event later this month will also hear from Senator Sharon Keogan and Irish author and former International Editor of The Economist, Helen Joyce.
Senator Sharon Keogan, who has opposed Ireland’s surrogacy legislation, will speak on the issue of surrogacy, with the event billing “a discussion on the ethics and exploitation surrounding surrogacy practices, featuring women’s rights activists, key legislators and advocates for children born through surrogacy.”