With a Commons vote on section 28 coming up, it is time to think again about our endemic fear of anyone we think is different. Thankfully, we have changed since 1986, when section 28 was introduced (it’s actually section 2A of the Local Government Act 1986), instructing local education authorities that they must not promote homosexuality in schools.
It is time to move on from the mistaken idea that homosexuality can be promoted like a fashion for purple hair or nipple piercing. I prefer not to follow either of these fashions but I could if I wanted to. I cannot choose to be gay and no amount of inducement could convince me that I am and, likewise, if I was gay you could not convince me that I was not. Sexuality is not a fashion; it is an intrinsic part of our make up, as much as eye colour or the size of ears.
Most people realise that this is true. Yet local education authorities still have a legal responsibility to ensure that gay, lesbian and bisexual ‘lifestyles’ cannot be promoted in their schools.
What is a gay lifestyle? Many assume it involves outrageously camp behaviour and promiscuity. In reality, gay couples are just as boring as the rest of us, enjoying a bedtime cup of cocoa and a snuggle with the one we love; not just a tiring round of clubs and pubs to find sex partners for the night.
Even if this were not true, and gay couples are not as boring as the rest of us, so what? As adults, that is a matter for them.
However, it is what we say to our children that is the problem. In my experience, saying nothing at all rarely contributes to our understanding of the world. Children are not stupid – it is not right to allow them to be ignorant. Children will not stop asking questions just because we don’t want to supply the answers. They need appropriate information at the appropriate time.
Often, the right time is when the child asks. The amount of explanation given must depend on the age and experience of the child. It would be good to think that parents are well enough equipped to answer their children’s questions, but that isn’t always true.
Children deserve to know how to deal with their own feelings. They need to understand the difference between love and desire, how to develop sexual responsibility and how to look after their own sexual health. Local management of schools means that governors, rather than education authorities, are now responsible for sex education. Governors, teachers and parents can together decide the sex education curriculum for their school. Each governing body has a curriculum committee to make these decisions. They will continue to make them – whatever happens to section 28.
Schools are armed with advice from the departments of education and health about how to give guidance to children. Sexual health is important whether we are straight or gay. Adolescence is a time when we all go through turmoil and need support: this is especially true if we feel different. As teenagers, we all want to conform to our peers, so it can be particularly difficult to be gay. Homophobic bullying is common, and ignorance is not going to help either the victim or the bully. Teachers need to be free to help children who are struggling with growing up and who need honest, non-judgmental information. If we don’t inform them, we are failing them.
We should not fudge this issue. There is no need for a backstop clause to give comfort to the fearful. There is no need to insist on an over-bureaucratic process of balloting schools to decide the curriculum. There is simply a need to make redundant a clause which has never been used but which sends a message of outdated intolerance.