Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

Doing the right thing

This is wonderful. The TIE Campaign on Twitter:

It’s not perfect. Private schools are exempt. But if you aren’t LGBT and didn’t go to school in the era of Section 28, it’s hard to express just how incredibly big a deal this is.

The Daily Record, Scotland’s favourite newspaper. This nonsense, which is bad enough, was over Section 28 repeal in 2000: things were even more toxic in the 1980s.

When I went to school, 70% of people thought LGBT people were abominations. The Government, aided and abetted by the tabloids, deliberately fostered anti-gay prejudice of the “they are coming for your children” variety. I’ve written more about that era here.

Section 28 made it illegal for local authorities – who ran state schools – to “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.” By “promote”, the legislation meant “describe”. LGBT kids didn’t get proper sex and relationship education and many in-school support groups shut down fearing prosecution.

And now, we have our government vowing to protect LGBT kids and putting measures in place to do just that.

As David Jamieson reports for Commonspace: (the site’s been having some issues so it might not load)

Tie Campaign co-founder Jordan Daly said: “After three years of campaigning, we are delighted that LGBT-inclusive education will now become a reality in all of Scotland’s state schools.

“This means that all young people will learn about the LGBT community; their contributions to our society, the history of our equal rights movements, and the impact of homophobic, biphobic, and transphobic prejudice and bullying.

“The implementation of LGBT-inclusive education across all state schools is a world first, and in a time of global uncertainty, this sends a strong and clear message to LGBT young people that they are valued here in Scotland.

This will save lives. I love this country so much sometimes.

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