When I tell teachers in my LGBT+ inclusive staff training that during the 1990s I was genuinely scared of losing my job if I talked about anything related to LGBT+ most of them are shocked and amazed. But it is the truth.
I started teaching in 1995, when Section 28 was firmly embedded in schools. Section 28 was a UK law introduced in 1988 by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government. Mrs Thatcher was concerned that: “Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay.”
Although the wording of the law stated that we could not “intentionally promote homosexuality” or “promote the teaching … of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”, the end result was that in practice most of us were too worried to talk about anything related to LGBT+.
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