Section 28 and Britain's Battle for LGBT+ Education

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.7 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 20 February 2022

⏱️ 27 minutes

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Summary

Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 was a controversial amendment to the UK's Local Government Act 1986, enacted on 24 May 1988 and repealed on 21 June 2000 in Scotland, and on 18 November 2003 in the rest of the UK by section 122 of the Local Government Act 2003. The amendment stated that a local authority "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".

Paul Baker, Professor of English Language at Lancaster University, joins Dan on the podcast in celebration of LGBT+ History Month. They discuss the background to the Act, how the press fanned the flames and what politicians said during debates, how protestors fought back to bring about the repeal of the law in the 2000s, and its eventual legacy.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, everybody. Welcome to Dan Snow's History at February here in the UK is LGBT plus history
0:08.8	month and today we're going to talk about some gay history. When I talk to Paul Baker,
0:14.3	he is professor of English language at Langkist University's written history book about
0:18.4	the British government's attempts in the 80s and 90s to stop people talking about gayness
0:23.0	to discourage homosexuality by banning teachers talking about it. It's pretty bonkers. It was of
0:31.4	course just the latest of a long line of ways in which the government came up with ways to
0:36.2	discourage people from homosexuality, which is ironic for anyone who knows anything about the
0:41.2	people that have wielded power in this country, but I was over the last 500 years. Anyway,
0:46.3	there was a buggery act in 1533, King Henry VIII. So took the issue of sodomy from
0:52.6	church courts and made it a state issue. That act made sodomy punishable by death. The
1:00.9	Victorians obviously didn't miss a trick there. They criminalised gross indecency between males.
1:05.1	That was what got Oscar Wilde sent to prison in 1895. It wasn't until the middle of the 20th
1:11.4	century that Britain started to have a long hard luck at whether it was wise to penalise,
1:17.0	persecute and prosecute a section of its own population. It was a crime of falling in love and
1:24.2	having sex with another consenting adult. While homosexuality was decolonised in 1967, in the 1980s,
1:32.4	section 28 was introduced. It was an amendment to enact the UK local government at 1986. And it
1:40.8	stated that local authorities shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with
1:45.9	the intention of promoting homosexuality or promote the teaching in any maintained school of the
1:51.5	acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship. Paul Baker comes on to tell us
1:58.0	how that all went down, how it was eventually repealed. Now I didn't quite have the consequences
2:02.2	that the lawmaker's intended. You'll be hearing all about that. If you wish to listen to other
2:06.4	podcasts from Dance on History, you can do so without the ads. History hit TV. It's our
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