In the last of this series of posts about the Government’s new compulsory Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) programme, writer and researcher Belinda Brown exposes the myth of gay prejudice behind the promotion of LGBT treaching in schools.
GAY ‘marriage’, gay parenthood and even gay sexual practices are widely promoted in our culture and in our schools. Today’s ‘moral’ imperative is that the gay identity must be celebrated. But do we, as a society, feel we must go along with this agenda? What is our rationale?
Beyond idealistic and liberal notions of progress and social change, a key belief that persuades people to support this overt celebration is that gays and particularly gay-identifying school children suffer from bullying. It is treated as a fact.
Stonewall, the vociferous and powerfully influential LGBT lobby, has been at the forefront of shaping our thinking on this. Their 2017 School Report claimed that 45 per cent of LGBT pupils had experienced some form of bullying, and they repeatedly recycle this statistic to justify LGBT people getting more support. https://www.stonewall.org.uk/school-report-2017 But what does this statistic really show?
Place in the wider context of childhood bullying, a more rigorous longitudinal study found that 40 per cent of all Year 9 children (aged 13 and 14) had experienced some form of bullying, (p 17) indicating that bullying – which is particularly associated with special educational needs and truancy – is widespread regardless of gender or gender identification.
It is worth noting too that in the longitudinal study, ‘bullying’ was more strictly defined and focused on one year. Stonewall’s study cast its net as widely as possible counting verbal abuse, gossip, being ignored or isolated or receiving intimidating looks as evidence –forms of behaviour to which nearly all children are subjected to at some time. The longitudinal study used more limited definitions of bullying.
[Stonewall’s included verbal abuse, gossip, being ignored or isolated, intimidating looks, physical abuse, stealing or damaging belongings, death threats, sexual assault, threatened with a weapon. The Longitudinal survey included name calling, social exclusion and isolation, robbery, threats of violence, actual violence]
Had the longitudinal study had similarly extended its definition it may have shown that more than 40 per cent of children were affected.
This begins to raise questions about the reliability and validity of Stonewall’s conclusions. The concern that it is producing a story rather than reliable rigorous research is reinforced by other independent surveys. The 2016 Teacher Voice Omnibus Survey of practising teachers found that 91 per cent of respondents said that they rarely or never encountered transphobic bullying and four-fifths (81 per cent) had rarely or never seen homophobic or biphobic bullying. Only 13 per cent had seen it sometimes.
A Ditch the Label bullying survey of a sample of 10, 020 10-12 year olds in 2017 found that while more thanhalf of children had at some point been bullied, this was least likely to be because of their sexuality or gender expression. Fifty per cent were bullied for their appearance, 40 per cent for interests or hobbies, 19 per cent for high grades, 14 per cent for household income, 12 per cent for family issues made public, 10 per cent for race, 8 per cent for disability, 5 per cent for cultural identity, then 4 per cent for sexuality and only 3 per cent for gender expression.
If LGBT bullying claims are hyped up, if not mythical, what is going on? Why the need to exaggerate?
First there is the ideological drive to ‘smash heteronormativity’ (biological and social norm heterosexual relationships) which has been clearly articulated through numerous academic papers and reports and explained in recent posts by Caroline ffiske on TCW. This problem of ‘heteronormativity’ is described by its detractors as ‘the organisational structures in schools which support heterosexuality as normal and everything else as deviant’.[i]
However, since parents naturally ‘support’ or believe in the social and biological reality of ‘heteronormativity’, the lobbyists focus on victimisation and bullying as a way of raising sympathy to achieve their aims. The result is that ‘government policy and guidance tends to take an anti-homophobia – and more explicitly, anti-bullying – stance . . . a discourse we all tend to appropriate when we communicate with government bodies or with the general public through the popular media’.
There is also the widespread belief that we need to tackle such bullying as part of an equality agenda. But this is not the case. One example of how this came about is by teachers such as Andrew Moffat promoting their literature, for example his No Outsiders, as covering all inequalities including race and disability. Arguably this was done in order to camouflage his LGBT agenda (see this video at 32 minutes) rather than as a matter of necessity.
The Equalities Act protects pupils from discrimination and harassment which would affect them accessing appropriate education but it ‘does not extend to cover the actions of pupils beyond the responsibility a school already has for the actions of its pupils’.
The most telling explanation for how the myth of LGBT bullying has taken hold is money. Quite simply, huge sums of money have been authorised by Government and expended in the promotion of this cause, giving great weight to a ‘problem’ for the existience of which there is little evidence.
Between 2016 and 2019 the Government Equalities Office provided funding worth £3million to tackle homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying in schools. It has committed another million to ensure this programme can carry on.
This was in addition to £2.8million given to four organisations to tackle school bullying more generally. As LGBT bullying was included within their remit it is not clear why an extra £4million specifically for LGBT bullying was needed.
In July 2018, in response to the largest national survey of LGBT people in the world, the government committed £4.5million for the delivery of the LGBT Action Plan.
In November 2018 the government gave a further £1million to improve LGBT people’s health and social care. Another £600,000 was made available to community groups.
In June 2019 the Government announced a further £6million to help the introduction of RSE, of which LGBT indoctrination forms a significant part.
The LGBT Proud Trust appears to have been funded by a range of Government bodies to the tune of a couple of million pounds.
These findings are not comprehensive. Those leading the charge believe that these quantities of funding will bring about sufficient social change to undermine the basis of homophobia and establish a normative homosexual culture.
Ironically the idea that imposing this type of cultural change will reduce the homophobia that exists is not supported by the evidence. The reverse appears to be the case, that the massive push to affirm LGBT people in schools and society is having a contrary effect and may be reducing tolerance and pushing the numbers of hate crimes up. The evidence for this in the US is here, and for the UK, here.
But the most devastating consequence of this LGBT agenda is what they are teaching our children, which I will return to in a future post.
If you would like to stay in touch with campaigns to challenge RSE please go to https://www.schoolgatecampaign.org/ or https://parentpower.family/
Reference:
[i] Atkinson, Elizabeth et al (2009). No Outsiders: Researching approaches to sexualities equality in primary schools: Full Research Report ESRC End of Award Report, RES-62-23-0095. Swindon: ESRC
