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| Some Section 28 protesters (S) |
Let's play a game. It's called "Guess the Policy". Here's the clues: What was introduced by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government in 1988, was created because "the promotion of homosexuality in schools undermines marriage", and featured this elegant rebuke from Sir Ian Mckellen (whose speech notes can be found here):
"The truth is that homosexuality cannot be taught any more than it can be caught. If heterosexuality could be promoted, there would be no homosexuals, no bisexuals. Everywhere in the media, in the church, in the teaching of literature, language, art and politics, heterosexuality is daily, hourly promoted. I still haven't been persuaded. "
It is, as you may have guessed from the title, Section 28, which was (thankfully) repealed on the 18th November 2003.
After a long and arduous political process (which was so extensive, and frankly pretty boring, I won’t go into it here), despite numerous attempts to stop, delay, or compromise on it by LGBT organisations and political allies, Clause 28 was added to the Local Government Bill. Once that Bill was enacted on 24 May 1988, it came to be known as Section 28.
Section 28, for those who don’t know, was worded as thus:
28. - 2A (1) A local authority shall not -(a) intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality;(b) promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship(2) Nothing in subsection (1) above shall be taken to prohibit the doing of anything for the purpose of treating or preventing the spread of disease.
Notice here the ambiguity in the Section – it is that ambiguity that is possibly the most damaging part of this law.
You see, the law prohibits but at no point does it make “promotion” of homosexuality a criminal offense, and therefore no prosecution was ever brought under this provision. However, it did mean that many LGBT student support groups in schools and colleges across the country were closed down due to fears that they were made illegal by the Act.
Section 28 left schools without appropriate resources to deal with homophobic bullies, or even whether it was legal for them to intervene – many teachers were concerned that by stopping anti-LGBT sentiment they would, inadvertently or otherwise, be “promoting” homosexuality, which would have been directly going against the first point of the law. Because of this, some teachers appeared to either feel more free to express their own anti-LGBT sentiment or felt that it was necessary to reinforce the Section (and therefore avoid any potential repercussions) by adopting or voicing views that denounced homosexuality, even when they may just feel neutral on the matter. For those who still think that Section 28 was only to protect the children, that sentiment is easily countered by this heart-breaking letter, written by Diana Galletly on her site here (warning for mentions of suicide):
"I realised I wasn't straight a few days before my seventeenth birthday. A few weeks later I fell in love with a teacher at my school, who, rumour had it, was not straight. As it turned out she was straight, and happily married, but by the time I found that out I was already in love. Shortly after that, she banned hugging on school premises, as it "might lead to lesbianism". This statement devastated me, as I never expected such intolerant and bigoted words to come from her mouth. That night, I took 100 paracetamol to bed with me, and made a pact that if I woke up in the night I would take them, and if I didn't, I wouldn't. I didn't wake up, and I didn't take the paracetamol, but at times there seemed little reason not to. Nowadays, I realise that her words probably had the force of Section 28 behind them, rather than any personal antipathy towards gays of her own, but that would have been little comfort at seventeen."
Not only did Section 28 affect schools and colleges across the country, it was also understood to mean that public libraries were forbidden from displaying “gay propaganda”. Words chosen carefully there – it was very similar, although not as extensive, to Russia’s current law banning distribution of "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations" among minors. After the Act was passed, many libraries were forced to remove books that seemingly violated the law, including textbooks, LGBT fiction, and even a resource guide about homosexuality called “Positive Images”, which presented evidence that some notable figures in British history were not as straight as the government would like them to be.
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| Stonewall, now the largest LGB organisation in Europe was one of the charities that was created in the wake of Section 28 |
After repeated attempts to repeal the Section (twice in 2000, and then again successfully in 2003), New Clause 1 (titled "Repeal of prohibition on promotion of homosexuality", and later known as Section 122) of the Local Government Bill 2003 was passed on 18th November 2003. Edward Davey, the Liberal Democrat politician who introduced the Clause, said that “In a liberal democracy, the need to protect minorities properly sometimes means that protection cannot be achieved through the ballot box and that some things are not appropriate for a vote."
Ultimately it's impossible to say how badly LGBT communities in the UK were affected by Section 28. It's almost certainly the cause for many suicides in the time between its introduction and its repeal. Its stirring of public resentment against LGBT people, and it's implied governmental acceptance of homophobia, were possibly part of the reason why institutional homophobia and transphobia in the Metropolitan Police either hampered or completely blocked the capture of murderers of LGBT people in the 90s. It's the reason why Stonewall recently found that some schools continue to have language like that used in Section 28 in their policies (source here), and it's highly likely that these policies have been used to overlook homophobic and transphobic bullying in schools.
For more information on Section 28, here is the Wikipedia page. Campaigners, including Schools OUT and Stonewall, both of which were formed or grew more active in direct response to Section 28, are encouraging as many people as possible to wear pink on Monday 18th November to commemorate ten years since the abolition of Section 28.
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