Update: James Gray suggests that the language described in The Telegraph story discussed below is ten years old and was introduced under the Labour government. The Telegraph’s claim, then, that these are “new rules” expressing renewed Tory support for marriage is inaccurate, if not wholly misleading. I still find the vagueness surrounding “appropriateness” and the “promotion” of marriage troubling for the reasons described below – though it seems to be a rather older problem.
Original post: The Telegraph reports that new academy schools will be required to sign up to “strict rules” for sex and relationship education:
Headteachers will be told that children must be “protected from inappropriate teaching materials and learn the nature of marriage and its importance for family life and for bringing up children”.
You can read the full Free Schools model funding agreement on the Department for Education’s website. As The Telegraph points out, the new rules are set out in clause 28 of the funding agreement – mirroring the location of Clause 28 of the 1988 Local Government Bill banned schools from “promoting” homosexuality as a “pretended family relationship”. It’s the experience of the 1988 Clause 28 (better known as Section 28) which should make us wary about such new, vaguely-phrased guidance. That’s not because it might shadow an unspoken homophobia – omitting the reference to “stable relationships” present in statutory SRE guidance – but because it creates a space of doubt where what we really need is clarity.
A large part of the original Section 28′s impact was in its chilling effect. The legislation did not create any new offence under which any local goverment body found to “promoting” homosexuality might be prosecuted. It did not set out any detail of what form alleged “promotion” might take1 or articulate what was meant by “pretended”. Nonetheless, local authorities, schools and teachers (as well as the large number of people who work with them) read between the lines: it was safer to avoid discussing or funding anything which might be suspected as breaching the law.
- As if all that stands between straight and gay is compelling advertising [↩]