Goodbye, Clause 28

Sec­tion 28, that pre­pos­ter­ous and offen­sive chunk of leg­is­la­tion ban­ning ‘promotion’ of homo­sex­u­al­ity in schools, is to be repealed on Novem­ber 18th, when the Local Gov­ern­ment Bill comes into effect. The BBC has a report but, for what­ever reason, this sig­nif­i­cant change to the law in Eng­land and Wales hasn’t gar­nered much atten­tion elsewhere.

It’s worth noting that Labour’s pre­vi­ous efforts to do away with the Clause were blocked in the Lords - thanks to the late, vile Baroness Young - and a last ditch attempt by her suc­ces­sor in the Tory’s unof­fi­cial cam­paign to pro­mote homo­pho­bia, Baroness Blatch, to make the repeal depen­dent on grant­ing par­ents the right to vet schools’ sex edu­ca­tion mate­ri­als failed last July, in a close-​run vote. The point being that the Labour gov­ern­ment are doing next-​to-​nothing to rid us of an unelected upper cham­ber, so we can look for­ward to future reforms being ham­pered by peers who answer to no one and in no way rep­re­sent the people of Britain. Great.

Posted at 1pm on 20/09/03 by Jack Mottram to the politics category.
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