Straight men allegedly mock LGBT+ people after going to Cork gay club Chambers

A gay man details his experience with a group of straight men publicly insulting the LGBT+ community after they went to gay club Chambers.

People dancing inside chambers as it is lit blue and neon.

A group of straight men publicly mocked LGBT+ people on a bus after they went to the gay nightclub Chambers in Cork, as claimed by a gay man on Twitter.

Speaking to PinkNews, David Murray detailed how he overheard the group of men talking about the “amount of f****ts” they saw in the club. Murray further stated, “The one guy sitting closest to me seemed particularly disgusted by what he witnessed over the course of the night.”

In a Twitter thread, Murray described how he did not feel safe confronting the group as “about fifteen of them were sitting surrounding me at the front of the top deck of the bus, and they were all pissed and rowdy.”

One of the men “proudly” declared that he had recorded a video of two men kissing and sent it to his dad, as reported in the Twitter thread. Murray said to PinkNews, “They were all between laughter and horror about the night overall.”

Since writing the Twitter thread, people have been reaching out to share their own experience.

One Twitter user said, “I’ll never forget when I lived in Cork standing at the bar in Chambers & the two lads in front of me waiting for service said, ‘This place isn’t as bad as I thought it would be, there aren’t nearly as many f*ggots here as I expected’.”

Murray called out Chambers for accommodating anti-LGBT+ people at “the expense of LGBT people.” With a lack of spaces for LGBT+ people in Ireland, nightclubs can be the only place where a queer person can feel safe in expressing themselves. 

Due to the limited amount of dedicated spaces, it is vital for clubs to acknowledge the community they are catering to and be respectful of that. In Dublin, Grace Club has implemented the following policy: “If you identify as heterosexual, we kindly ask to question why you want to attend Grace.” 

Murray added that to be an inclusive space, there has to be a level of respect ingrained throughout the night. As Murray said, “It would greatly serve the LGBTQ+ community of Cork (and perhaps the wider Munster area upon success) if Chambers really understood and implemented the extra care, security and consideration required when creating what is meant to be a safe space for this particular community.”

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