Stand Up, Speak Out says LGBT Youth Scotland

Shh! Silence Helps Homophobia – that’s the message of LGBT Youth Scotland in a new campaign aimed at schools, colleges and universities across the country.

The group, Scotland’s largest youth and community organisation for LGBTI young people, is using crowdfunding to sponsor a campaign to to tackle homophobia in education.

Launched at the first National Youth Summit on 23rd August in Edinburgh, the campaign is launched following recent Crown Office statistics on Hate Crime show Scotland has more to do in tackling incidents against LGBTI people. Crimes against lesbian, gay and bisexual people showed an increase last year of over 20% on the previous year, worrying still was the near doubling of crime against transgender people.

“Homophobia often goes unchallenged, as people are unsure or afraid to name it” says Chief Executive, Fergus McMillan. “As a result, many people either choose to ignore a homophobic incident altogether or deal with the situation without mentioning the real issue – homophobia. This campaign aims to highlight the importance of naming homophobia and giving a clear message that it is never acceptable.”

At the heart of the campaign is a video produced by Fife LGBTI youth group, “Flavours of Fife”, which is now nominated for Scottish Creative Awards ‘Best Online Film’ title. The video demonstrates that many young people experience homophobia every day but action to tackle it starts with each of us. The video is hugely popular online, with over 33,000 YouTube hits.

You can view the short film here:

LGBT Youth Scotland hope to raise enough funds to continue their work which helps make our educational establishments welcoming and safe for all young people.

You can visit their fundraising page by clicking on this link – Shh! Silence Helps Homophobia