Main Edition
US
FR
Our collective view of sex, sexuality and the family has changed a great deal in the 36 years I have been alive. I was born to a single mother – still a source of shame in the early 1980s. At school, in Somerset, I can still hear the conspiratorial whispering of other children about the fact that I did not have a dad in the traditional sense.
To be gay would have been unthinkable. Indeed, ‘gay’ was the go-to insult thrown at any boy thought to be even slightly effeminate. Section 28 – a law enacted to prohibit the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality in schools – contributed to this oppressive climate. The notion that children had to be protected from the promotion of ‘gay lifestyles’ fed into a malicious conflation of homosexuality with paedophilia, as well as the erroneous concept of homosexuality as a frivolous choice (as opposed to an expression of love).
In fact, Section 28 legislation never directly affected schools, but rather local authorities, and local authorities had no influence over the teaching of sex and relationships education. But what Section 28 did was contribute to an atmosphere in which to be gay was to be perverted, weird and fundamentally abnormal.
There were no gay kids or teachers in my school. Of course, there were – statistically speaking there were lots of them – but everyone had to keep up appearances in order to appease those grey-suited ‘family values’ politicians who, at the time, seemed to be ubiquitous. (Though, as we gleaned from the newspapers that our parents read, it was those given to moralizing about sex that you had to watch out for).
During the 1990s, more liberal winds swept the land. Section 28 was abolished, the age of consent for gay people lowered to 16 and same-sex civil partnerships recognised by the law. Soon enough, politicians on both sides of the house were disowning their previous support for Section 28.
Yet debates around the promotion of homosexuality in schools have re-emerged in recent weeks. In a reprisal of some of the arguments of the past, Muslim parents have pulled hundreds of children out of a school in Birmingham in protest at what they see as the promotion of “homosexual lifestyles”. As a result, Parkfield community school in Saltley, Birmingham, has dropped its ‘No Outsiders’ lessons in which children from reception to year six were taught five sessions a year about homosexuality. The school, rated “outstanding” by Ofsted, is situated in a predominantly Muslim area.
Bigotry today has become adept at draping itself in the garb of victimhood. Thus the wilier parents at Parkfield school have been careful to direct their ire not at gay rights per se, but at the supposed age-appropriateness of sex and relationships lessons at Parkfield. “Stop exploiting children’s innocence”, read one of the signs at a recent protest.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
Subscribe