Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Section 28: The Anti-Gay Law That Sparked A Movement

Episode Date: November 24, 2023

The 1980s have a lot to answer for - spandex, for one.It also saw the first new anti-gay law in Britain for over a century.Against the backdrop of the HIV epidemic, and increasing homophobia across the media and politics, the law Section 28 was passed in 1988, which stopped the "promotion of homosexuality" in schools and local authorities across Britain.What did this even mean? Who did it affect? And what was the response from the gay community?This month marks 20 years since Section 28 was finally repealed, and in this special episode we’ll look back to the damage it caused and the defiance from those who opposed and helped overturn it - marking it as the most successful civil rights movement in modern British history. Joining Kate are a few special guests who were on the picket lines, in the classrooms and making headlines to draw public attention to the cause: Paul Baker, whose book, Outrageous, The Story of Section 28 and Britain’s Battle for LGBT Education, is available now.Catherine Lee MBE, whose book, Pretended, Schools and Section 28: Historical, Cultural and Personal Perspectives, is available now. Paul Fairweather, who worked for Manchester City Council in the 1980s, and continues to support the LGBTQ+ community at the George House Trust, which provides HIV support, advice and advocacy services. Peter Tatchell, human rights campaigner, who continues his tireless work for equality and human rights continues with the Peter Tatchell foundation. You can find out more and donate to here. This episode was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Archive courtesy of: BBC, Fox 5 New York, LGBT+marketing, Richard Johnson, Direct Action, Nick Lansley.Don’t miss out on the best offer in history! Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts.Sign up to History Hit at historyhit.com/subscribe using code BLACKFRIDAYPOD at checkout, for $1/£1 per month for 4 months and you’ll get nearly £30 off our normal monthly price over your first 4 months. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. I am here, as I always will be at the top of the show, to make sure that you are safe and snugly and not upset by anything that you might hear in this podcast. This is your fair do's warning.

This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adultery things, covering a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult. Two. Actually, this is quite a serious fair-doos warning because we are covering the history of Section 28 and the history of HIV and AIDS, which means this episode is going to include offensive words that were used at the time and we have left in for reasons of historical accuracy and importance. Right on with the show. The 1980s were a time of some wonderful things,

spandex, Wham, and the Goonies to name but three. But, It was also a dark time for many, particularly those within the gay community. A mystery disease known as the gay plague has become an epidemic unprecedented in the history of American medicine. It is a matter of fact that some homosexuals are inclined to force their attentions upon children. With homophobia normalized across politics and the media, a moral panic erupted around of all things, a children's book. A book which portrayed same-sex pair. A tiny number of parents were outraged that such a book could potentially reach the hands of children. The media had a field day and an increasingly right-wing government sensed an opportunity to score political points.

Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay. In 1988, a law known as Section 28 was passed, which banned character and schools in the UK from promoting homosexuality and quote the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship. What did that even mean? Who did it affect? And what was the response to such a homophobic law? This month marks 20 years since Section 28 was finally repealed and in this special episode we'll look back to the damage it caused and the defiance from those who opposed and helped to overturn it, marking it as the most successful civil rights movement in modern British history. We were creating mayhem. Good mayhem for good reasons.

I think there was a sense that something important was happening. The world was a dangerous place for those of us that were lesbian and gay and particularly those of us that were teachers. It was the first new anti-LGB plus law in Britain for a century. Joining me are a few special guests who are on the picket lines in the classrooms and making headlines to draw public attention to the cause. First, I talk to Paul Baker, author of Outrageous, The Story of Section 28 and Britain's Battle for LGBT Education. For anyone listening that's kind of like, I don't know what that is,

or perhaps they've heard of it, but they're not quite sure, what is it? What was Section 28? So it was a bit of a law which came to pass in May 24th, 1988. So basically it was kind of don't say gay law and it stopped teachers, headmasters and things like that talking about sexuality. And then it was homosexuality in particular in schools. It's so weird. Like was it just at schools this thing was playing out or was it in the workplace as well? Was it just like nobody say gay? No, it was mainly schools. And it was about funding as well. So a lot of, say, theatre groups that kind of relied on council funding and if they put on plays

that had a sexuality theme, they all got their funding cut. and so of them had to disband. And libraries weren't supposed to kind of stock books as well. That mentioned sexuality in the children's section, things like that too. As crazy as this all seems, or maybe not, given recent debates on sexuality in schools, I wanted to find out what the context was that allowed for Section 28 to be written into law. For LGBT plus people, living through the 1980s was a very painful and, at times frightening experience. My name is Peter Tatchell. I'm director of the Human Rights

Organization, the Peter Tatchell Foundation, and I was involved in the campaign against Section 28 in the 1980s and through to its final repeal in 2003. In the 1980s, many labor-controlled local authorities enacted policies to support local LGBT-plus communities. This included funding for local LGBT plus groups, the provision of council premises for them to meet on, and for the hosting of LGBT plus themed plays and films, and the stocking of LGBT plus themed books in public libraries. There were a couple of books in particular that acted as a catalyst for what became a nationwide moral panic. Paul Baker. It was a perfect storm for a kind of moral panic around gay people. and then usually when you have a moral panic, you get children involved in it.

They don't get a voice in it, but there's a lot of talk about them and how to protect them best. So children became the focus of this. Children's books were talked about an awful lot in these debates. There's a very famous one called Jenny Liz with Eric and Martin, which was the kind of main one. But the one I've brought in is called The Playbook for Kids About Sex. So it was one of the books that got talked about in Parliament, and I think it was Baroness Knight. Baroness Knight was a Conservative Party member, and one of the main supporters of Section 28.

Heard here in an interview she did with the BBC in the 1980s, watched by millions. Her words held a lot of influence. Our major concern has been that small children, some as young as five, when they start school, have actually had homosexuality thrust at them. There has been a promotional exercise on very young children indeed. When I was doing research to write my book,

outrageous. I remember thinking I need to get hold of this book and find out about it, but I was quite worried about it. I thought, God, is this book going to get me into trouble? Yes. By the police, is there going to be a sting? And I remember we had some friends coming around with the toddler, and I had to promise my husband that I'd hide this book in the bedroom so that no one would see it when they came around. Anyway, it came and I kind of excitedly looked through it, trying to find this page which showed homosexuality and how it was done. And I will find it. I will show it here it is. So I don't think you saw this. But this is the. This is the page.

This is the page that the offence of page. What do you think? Describe what you can see. Wow. Okay. So on the left hand side, it's a thing about partners, about your partner's a boy or a girl. And on the right hand side, we've got six little boxes, each one with an illustration in it.

And the right says heterosexual, then the middle one, homosexual, homosexual, lesbian, then bisexual, bisexual, bisexual. What do the gay ones do? They're not having sex, are they? They're buying pot plants. They are. Unless that's some kind of strange kind of way of having gay sex that I don't know about. They're holding hands and buying pot plants. Shocking. At a time when 75% of the British public thought that homosexuality was always or mostly wrong,

there were clearly political points to be won. Peter Tatchell. The Conservatives saw this as a good way to undermine. Labor by appealing to homophobic voters. So it was that twin combination of homophobia and political opportunism and manipulation. Add into the mix the growing fear and scapegoating of the LGBTQ plus community around the growing HIV virus and homophobia was literally writ large in newspapers and ever present in the public discourse. The moral panic was reaching a boiling point. The media in this country, particularly but not exclusively, the tabloid red-top press,

had a field day against the LGBT-plus community with sensational outings of public figures and with bigoted headlines, like, for example, attacking gay clergy with the headline, puffs in the pulpit. Another attack was against LGBT-plus people serving in the armed forces, The headline was Poofters on Parade. These were in national newspapers. So you can imagine just how tough it was being LGB-R-T in the 1980s. Predictably, the political discourse was following suit. We had the Conservative Government of Margaret Thatcher do two consecutive campaigns, one for the restoration of, quote, family values and another for, quote, are returned to Victorian values. Both of those campaigns extolled a very traditional orthodox morality

where there was no place for LGBT plus people. They culminated in the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at the 1987 Conservative Party conference attacking the right to be gay, suggesting, in fact, there was no such right. Thatcher's speech was full of the kind of divisive language we are all too familiar with today. Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay. Paul Baker. She talked about how children are being taught the inalienable right to be gay.

She refers to anti-racist mathematics at one point as well on classrooms. And in the inner cities where youngsters must have a decent education if they are to have a better future, that opportunity is all too often. and snatched from them by hard left education authorities and extremist teachers. She got this massive standing ovation that went on for about, I don't know, two days, it seems, at the conference in Blackpool. And then they passed Section 28 a few months later. I think at a time they thought that was the best way to protect kids.

So don't make them gain the first place. And then they won't have gay sex. And then they won't become actually be positive. And then they'll live these kind of happy lives and be normal. Except they weren't. They were living these frightened lives and pretending something. times as well, which was ironic considering the law mentioned pretend families, but it was kind of creating pretend heterosexuals, which is really sad.

The law stated that a local authority, quote, shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality or promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship. end quote. Clear? I'll let you be the judge. And so on the 24th of May, 1988, Section 28 was written into law. I remember on my 16th birthday, May the 23rd, the news came on 6 o'clock news on BBC 1. Good evening the headlines at 6 o'clock in the House of Lords. A vote is taking place now on a challenge to the poll text. I remember, as most people, you know, who are gay, did. The lesbians, all the, On the 6 o'clock news, I remember being home from school and as I lived with a group of other brand new teachers and I remember hearing the scuffles and Sue Lawley and Nicholas Wichell and my friend say to me, someone just say Section 28?

...convolution involving undercover police and alleged football hooligans has collapsed. No evidence was offered. Also tonight, Glasnos gives us a... Protesters had broken into the BBC studio during a live news bulletin. Although it was too late to stop the law being passed, it brought the protest movement to a national audience. My name is Professor Catherine Lee. I am Pro-Vice Chancellor and Dean at Anglia Ruskin University in the east of England. And I am Professor of Inclusive Education and Leadership. And I'm a teacher by background and I talk for every single year of Section 28. it was a scary time and, you know, the wording of Section 28.

I think the reason why that created such fear and uncertainty was the fact that the wording was so protracted and we weren't sure what it meant. So we didn't know how to not promote homosexuality. We didn't know what it would mean for us if we were outed at school or we came out at school. and I'm, you know, our school workplace. So it silenced us all. And, you know, I for one was a shadow of my kind of authentic self in the staff rooms and classrooms. I actually found the staff room when I was a teacher more challenging than the classrooms

because, you know, people would say to me, what did you do at the weekend? Who are you going on holiday with? Who did you live with? I just got very adept, I suppose, at being too safe. sentences ahead of the conversation and flipping things and giving nothing away. And people would say to me, you know, you're a very private person. I wasn't. I was just a deer in the headlights in case somebody would say something to me and I'd be outed at school or I'd accidentally out myself.

It was only after leaving the profession that Catherine saw the toll of living this double life. You know, teaching is a really demanding job. You can't have an off day. and I didn't realize until I left teaching, actually, in 2010, how much of my energy had been expelled in kind of managing that intersection of my professional and personal self, managing that bit of making sure I didn't take my authentic gay self to school. You didn't let anybody know that you were gay. It was a really very, very risky thing to do. Catherine's experience wasn't uncommon, with this climate of fear affecting LGBTQ plus and straight teachers alike on a daily basis.

Her diaries from that time called Pretended have been published and provide a historical account of what it was like as a member of the gay community teaching under Section 28. I've called my book Pretended with reference to that line in Section 28 that our relationships were pretended, a pretended family relationship. But actually pretending was my M.O., if you like, throughout my time I pretended to live on my own, but actually I lived with my partner. I pretended to have boyfriends and, you know, getting the pronouns right as you're talking about. And I pretended to be too busy to listen to young people in my school if I thought they were going to tell me that they might be about to tell me they were gay. And the thing perhaps I'm most ashamed of looking back is I pretended not to listen when I clearly could see that young people were having a difficult time at school because of their perceived sexual identity. And that's something I struggle to live with today even. You know, that times where I could see that students really needed some support, really needed somebody to talk to.

and I just looked the other way and I wasn't there for them. One incident in particular stands out from Catherine's diary on a night out with friends in Liverpool where she was teaching. Those clubs and pubs that we used to go downstairs to that were dark and dirty and dingy with beer soap carpets, they became the only place where we could authentically be ourselves and authentically live a safe place. and if we were fortunate enough to be able to live with our partners

or just live with people that were also gay, then our homes. But the world was a dangerous place for those of us that were lesbian and gay and particularly those of us that were teachers. It was the beginning of December or something like that. It was a dark night. And my girlfriend and I, my girlfriend was also a PE teacher. And we didn't really want to go out. We were really, really tired.

But we got two friends thing with. who wanted to go out in Liverpool, so we dragged ourselves out and looked left and right before we went into the bar. We just got our beard and the four of us were standing round and the music was so loud we couldn't hear each other so that we were doing that sort of thing where you stand there and grin at each other. And we were wondering whether there was any chance we were going to get on the pool table because we loved playing pool. And I could feel, I could sense somebody watching our group. I looked over and I saw somebody from my netball team at school with somebody else I didn't know, just looking over at our group. And I didn't know what to do.

But she'd seen me and she'd seen that. I'd seen her. So I think I'd remember my bottle of beer almost just sort of raising it in her direction to sort of almost say cheers or hello or something. And then I thought I can't touch my partner in any way because that would just be terrible. So I'm trying to sort of not get too close to us so it looks like we're together, but let her know that one of my students is in the bar and we really have to go. So I let her know. Our friends were like, oh, we've only just arrived.

What the heck? And we went straight back up the stairs and got in the first taxi and went home. and I was absolutely distraught. I was terrified. So I fully expected on Monday morning when I got into school that the head teacher and none would be waiting for me and I'd been caught out. And that would have been the end of my career

that I've just spent four years training for and I didn't know what on earth I'd say to my parents. That didn't happen, quite the opposite. I had a group for cross-country on the Monday and some of the six-form students used to come out and help us, the PE staff, and this young person came to see me and said, Miss, I'm really sorry that I spoil your night on Saturday night, and then burst into tears and said, I think I might be gay.

I don't know what to do. I just wanted to see what it was like in a club. And I was really off with her and rude with her and said, you know, I don't think you're gay. Don't go down there. It's not a very nice place to be. It's full of people who are not very nice. What a way to betray my friends and myself. Yeah.

And as far as I know, she never told anybody, or certainly nobody spoke to me at school. And I avoided her like the plague just at a time when she probably really needed a role model. Yeah, it's hard to reflect, to reflect on that. And I hope, I don't know whether she knows about Section 28. I don't know whether any of my former students do necessarily, but if they do, I hope they, I hope they forgive me for not being a role model. You know, I've been out of teaching now for 13 years. And I probably

think about it most weeks. While gay teachers were forced to live a double life and live with the great emotional and psychological strain that brought, this new law affected the gay community in other ways too. Peter Tatchell. Perversely, Margaret Thatcher's Section 28 was a reinvigoration of the LGBT plus community in Britain. Section 28 was the first new anti-LGBT Plus law in Britain for a century and the first law that explicitly targeted both gay and lesbian people. It brought gay men and lesbians together. It made us stronger. It resulted, in fact, in many cases, lesbians leading the fight against Section 28.

They were really galvanized. It brought many people who'd previously never been involved in activism out onto the streets. Up and down the country, communities were organising. We absolutely weren't allowed to campaign against the government of the day to change public policy. So what we were doing as paid council officers was basically breaking the law. My name's Paul Fairweather. I was involved in the Northwest Campaign for lesbian and gay equality, which organised the march in 1988 against Section 28. From 1985, I was working as one of three.

two gay men's officers from Manchester City Council. We had two lesbian officers and two gay male officers. So we had four permanent full-time staff working on lesbian and gay shoes, which was very unusual in the mid-1980s. So we had huge public meetings. We could use the town hall for free. So every Wednesday evening, we had a huge meeting with probably over 100 people to organise the campaign.

And that involved a whole new generation of young activists. It involved lesbians and gay men working together for the first time. But the Conservative councillors at the time found out what we were doing and went to the Manchester Even news about it. We were very hostile. And we had a sort of an attic campaign where we used to do all the campaigning. And we actually had to go in at night and just remove all evidence of that campaign. Because we had to deny because it would have been very clearly against the law.

And for us as local government officers, we clearly shouldn't have been doing that. Paul was organising a huge march through Manchester in opposition to Section 28 and remembers the length he went to to drum up support. Before the march, we went around to the gay bars and clubs, stopped with music and talked about the possible implications in terms of shutting down gay pubs and clubs. Would there be any gay books in the library? Would only be able to send in schools?

We were really unclear about the impact of this, but it was clearly a sustained attack against what had been happening in a number of councils in the early part of the 1980s. I think there was a sense that something important was happening, there was going to be a big demonstration in Manchester. So it was important that people from the gay scene, the gay public organisation, just people on the gay scene, actually got involved and came on the demonstration. For Catherine, however, being a teacher made protesting complicated.

I remember there was a coach trip organised over Manchester where there was going to be a big demonstration against Section 28. Lots of people that I knew were going, but those of us that were teachers couldn't go. You know, might we be seen marching by somebody? Might someone take photos? Might the TV cameras be there? So I'm so grateful to all those people that did protest, but I didn't feel that I could protest as a teacher. So there's that sense that I wasn't a very good teacher, and I wasn't a very good gay either. You know, it's kind of like I'm trying to straddle these two completely different worlds. Well, Catherine didn't feel like she could be there for understandable reasons, many were able to do so. Tens of thousands from all walks of life,

making it at that time the largest LGBTQ plus demonstration in British history. It culminated in crowds gathering outside Manchester City Hall with performances from Tom Robinson singing, Glad to Be Gay. And the newly out actor Sir Ian McKellen addressing the crowd. who are affected by this new law. Clause 28 is in parts designed to keep us in our place. But it didn't work with me. This new law, this clause 28 is in itself, to coin a phrase, an unnatural act, and it should be made illegal.

Section 28 led to the formation of two major organisations, one of which Ian McKellen was a co-founder of called Stonewall, a lobbying group which would meet with MPs and slowly and politely try to affect change. Paul Baker. Not everybody agreed with them, I think. Some people thought they were too slow or they were too respectable or they were kind of buying into their system

rather than trying to tear it down and change it. The second organisation was outrage, formed by Peter Tatchell amongst others. If Stonewall was the good cop, Outrage was the bad cop. We were creating mayhem. Good mayhem for good reasons. We saw protest as a way of getting LGBT plus issues on the news agenda,

thereby raising public awareness and putting people in power under pressure. And so off the back of outrage protests, we got lots of interviews in the national press, TV and radio. and through those interviews, not only put the government under pressure, but conscientise the public about the scale of homophobic discrimination. I remember we had a big, what we called a homo-promo outside Conservative of Central Office in Westminster, where we challenged the Conservative government with slogans like, don't knock it until you've tried it. The resulting coverage created a national conversation, putting MPs who favoured Section 28 under increasing pressure, causing some to change tact and challenge it.

But whilst Outrage's tactics were effective, they could also be controversial, which some feared would undermine the cause. Outrage pursued a policy of mostly threatening to out public figures who were abusing their power and influence. to harm the LGBT plus community. So in 1994, we did actually name 10 Anglican bishops and call on them to tell the truth about their sexuality because they were preaching from their pulpits that we should all tell the truth. But they weren't telling the truth about their sexuality.

They were faking it, covering it up, but at the same time, colluding with a church that said that homosexuality, was inferior to heterosexuality and that therefore the law should discriminate against our community. So we weren't targeting them because they were gay and in the closet, but because their public homophobia was contradicted by their private homosexuality. It didn't stop with the church. Politicians were on their list of targets too and they wrote to 20 MPs urging them to come out as

LGBTQ plus. We said it was the right thing to do, that it was not right for them as LGBT plus people to vote for anti-gay laws, to support discrimination, to support police harassment while they themselves were secretly LGBT. Peter reiterated that outrage never named the MPs. It was an effort to ask them to do the right thing. And fair play, it was largely successful with some of those MPs now voting in favour of equal rights and the bishops no longer commenting against equality publicly. People can criticise the tactic, but it worked. It worked when other things failed and as a result of it working, we help protect LGBT of us people from harm being caused. From outrage's point of view, both tactics were necessary, a two-pronged attack on the common

enemy that was this law, which therefore increased their chances of success. very cunning indeed. Stonewall was on the inside lobbying Parliament and government ministers. That was necessary and important. Outrage was on the outside, rattling the cage of the establishment, calling out homophobes and bigots in Parliament and elsewhere. Outrage were the suffragettes and Stonewall were the suffragists. You needed both in order to win women's franchise and the same with LGBT plus rights, you needed a stonewall and outrage to win LGBT plus law reform. As the years rolled on under Section 28, the breadth of its damage was becoming apparent. This was a law which created feelings of fear, shame and widespread unease. A law which in the

15 years that it stood, not one person was prosecuted. Let that sink it. here's Paul Baker. I think it created a generation of people who didn't get the support they needed and the information they needed. So obviously not everybody is going to have the same experience of it, but I think it created people who are maybe lessities with themselves, with that generation, less happy with themselves. It's like dropping a stone in a pond and you get these ripples throughout your life.

And so maybe people who didn't do as well educationally as they could have done because they didn't feel safe at school and they didn't go to school as much, and that played true quite a bit in my last couple of years, for example, because of bullying and things like that. I think it created people who then went on maybe to find it difficult to form relationships in the same way, loving relationships, maybe didn't have information about safe sex, and so they put themselves in danger,

and then maybe that resulted in health issues for them later as well. Maybe people who just decided, well, I'm not even going to be gay, and then they get married. And again, after the book came out, I had quite a lot of letters from people saying, I'm only just coming out now. Peter Tatchell. The damage cannot be underestimated.

A terrible, terrible price was paid by young LGBT plus kids in schools during that 15-year period. They were left high and dry. Bullying, teasing and hate crime in schools and around schools was, in many cases, de facto tolerated. And that meant that. that that generation of young LGBT plus kids had much higher levels of anxiety, depression, even suicidal thoughts. It meant that young straight kids got no positive information about LGBT plus issues or people. So their prejudices were never challenged. It meant that they were by default, affirmed in their homophobia, bifobia and transphobia.

Of course, as we've heard, teachers and other members of local authorities were no exception to the damage either, Catherine Lee. It's been tough. Since leaving teaching and moving into higher education, I feel as though I've spent the second part of my career atoning for the first. Working with schools in the east of England where our university space, we set up the UK. case first, LGBT-specific leadership program for teachers who want to be head teachers, and I'm trying to create those role models in school that I didn't feel able to be as

myself. Each time I now go into a school and see them celebrating Pride or LGBT History Month and see rainbows. I don't know. That's like a shot in the arm for me. Paul Fairweather. I've quite often talked to a lot of people about the history of Section 28 and it's important for it. So I think it's important that people remember that as a very significant attack on the gay community and also a really vital response from people. Peter Tatchell. It's important to remember Section 28 today, even though it is now history, because it was the first new anti-LGB Plus law in Britain for a century. It meant great harm was done. But it's also important to remember that it galvan.

our community. It brought us together. It made us stronger. It reinvigorated and expanded LGBT plus campaigning on a scale never before seen in Britain. As a seasoned activist, Peter knows better than most that it's never a time to rest on your laurels or dwell too long on the progress made. What was that old saying about history never repeats itself but rhymes. We are witnessing today a revival of the spirit of Section 28 with the government's attempt to crack down on LGBT plus issues in schools, particularly but not exclusively, trans issues. These are all reruns of what Section 28 was like. Paul Fairweather. I think it's really important that we learn from our history, that we don't get complacent.

and the whole issue around the trans community and attacks on trans people about, again, talking to young people, I think, you know, things can actually go backwards and forwards. And across the world from don't say gay in Florida to no gay zones in Poland, there's a huge attack across the world, across our communities, and that to some extent that is happening in this country in terms of changing attitudes, you know, we thought the things were getting better, but things to automatically get better. One of the advantages, there's not many, but one of the advantages have been around for a long time, is that you see things go in cycles.

And I do worry that we have another right-wing government, and we're still waiting for the guidance for schools on trans and non-binary students. It's been delayed twice already. There's been a suggestion that it may be in breach of the Equality Act. I think we've got to call this out. And, you know, I feel as though I've failed a whole generation of young people throughout my time as a teacher. Let's not let our government fail another generation of young people by not providing the much needed support for trans and non-binary young people in schools. I think we've got to learn from Section 28.

It's damage spanned generations and its scars are still felt today. But the way that it galvanised the LGBTIQ plus community and strengthen their resolve can be celebrated. As Paul Baker puts it. I think they underestimated as well, quite ironically, that the amount of opposition that there was, it made people who were not political, political. And ironically, them going on these big protest marchers

and getting involved in politics meeting each other, there was more gay sex, I think, as a result of that, because they ended up copping off and falling in love. which is quite lovely, I think. A huge thank you to all of the guests in this episode. Paul Baker's book, Outrageous, the story of Section 28 and Britain's Battle for LGBT Education, is available in every good bookshop.

As is Catherine Lee, MBE's book, Pretended, Schools and Section 28, historical, cultural and personal perspectives. Also, a huge thank you to Paul Fairweather and for the work he continues to do for the LGBTQ plus community with the George House Trust, which provides HIV support, advice and advocacy services. And to Peter Tatchell, whose tireless work for equality and human rights continues with his foundation. You can find out more and donate to it at peter tatchell Foundation.org.

If you like what you heard, please don't forget to like review and follow along, wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you wanted to explore a subject or maybe you'd just had a glass or two of Vino and fancy saying hello, you can now email us at betwixt at history hit.com. This podcast was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.