Queer Kids and Culture Wars: The Tories and the Return of Section 28

By Sarah Thompson-Cook

After a recent cinema visit to see Benediction (the Siegfried Sassoon biopic), I felt overcome with anger and grief. I was never particularly into poetry at school, but I did enjoy reading the war poets for my GCSE English Lit, which included Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. We studied not only their poetry but their lives too. What had led these two soldiers to channel their anti-war sentiments into verse? One crucial detail, however, was withheld. Sassoon was openly gay within his own social circle and was very fond of Wilfred Owen (also rumoured to be gay, but pages of his diaries were destroyed following his death). Why did I not know any of this until recently? The answer lies in Section 28 of the Local Government Act, introduced in 1988 under Thatcher.

Local authorities were banned from ‘promoting homosexuality’, and schools could not teach ‘the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’. I went to school between 1982 and 1996. In other words, Section 28 cast its shadow over most of my formative years. There were no known prosecutions resulting from Section 28, but this did not limit the damage it caused, not only for queer people like me but also queer teachers who felt forced to stay in the closet. The gutter press of the 80s were not kind to us (particularly during the AIDS crisis), and this vile legislation reinforced the rhetoric that we were broken, deviant and not to be trusted around children.

Being a queer kid in the 80s and 90s was tough. I had virtually no representation in mainstream media. When Eastenders featured a very brief kiss between two men, headlines such as ‘EastBenders’ appeared unapologetically. The Beth Jordache kiss in Brookside caused a similar furore. The only mention I recall of queer people in teen magazines was in the problem pages, a desperate teenager seeking reassurance that their feelings might be ‘just a phase’.

Sex education was poor for everyone, but there was zero mention of queer sexuality. My Religious Education teacher used homophobic slurs frequently – this went unchallenged. Section 28 also made teachers scared of tackling homophobic bullying or supporting students struggling with their sexuality. Indeed, I got fed the line, ‘it’s just a phase’ when I spoke about questioning my sexuality in sixth form.

When Freddie Mercury died, I remember some awful homophobic jokes being shared in the classroom during Home Economics. One of my teachers openly challenged this, told the class not to use such discriminatory language, and assured us that there was perfectly OK to be gay or bisexual. I didn’t realise until years later how brave this was, how she risked being called into the headmaster’s office for potentially breaking a law that was so open to interpretation that it left many teaching in fear.

It took years for me to come out properly. Thanks to Section 28 and my lack of role models in the media, I thought my queerness was some sort of extended phase. I believed I would grow out of it and live a ‘normal’ heterosexual existence. If anything, I became queerer and angrier, having no right to marry or be treated equally at work as a young adult. Even the age of consent for men who have sex with men wasn’t equal until 2001. Prior to this, there was no legal age of consent for women having sex with women. It was almost as if queer women didn’t exist.

Section 28 was finally scrapped in 2003; I thought we had moved on to more progressive times. But the Tory leadership campaign makes the return of Section 28 a very real threat. Rishi Sunak has pledged to get rid of ‘woke nonsense’ and gender-neutral language, and to shield children from ‘inappropriate material’. Other government figures have called for trans women to be banned from competing in sports, with many sporting bodies executing such bans. Suddenly we’re told we should be scared that the person in the next toilet cubicle might not have the same genitalia as us and that this poses an existential threat to our safety.

The press have lapped it all up and intensified the so-called culture war, which hasn’t stopped at attacking trans and non-binary people but spilt out into hatred towards the entire LGBTQIA+ community. We have protesters trying to disrupt drag queen story time in libraries, holding up banners openly calling drag queens paedophiles and ‘groomers’. Section 28 began trending on social media, with many calling for its return and the removal of any mention of the existence of LGBTQIA+ people from the curriculum. Teaching about heterosexual identity is deemed OK, but queer identity is deemed overtly sexual and not age appropriate.

The USA has seen similar legislation to Section 28 popping up, including Florida’s ‘Don’t say gay’ bill. Librarians have walked out of their jobs across the country because they are tired of efforts to censor what books they have available to borrowers. Books like Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson are found on banned lists for glorifying premarital sex; the book is actually about a girl’s experience of sexual assault and fear of speaking up. Even Heartstopper, the super wholesome graphic novel about teen love, makes it onto some lists. Censorship is happening in the deluded hope that removing queer representation erases queer people. It does not.

Growing up, I just wanted to love and be loved but was made to feel dirty, ashamed, and broken for being queer. The thought of a Section 28 reboot is incomprehensible to me. It was mis-sold then as a way of erasing us; maybe if our existence wasn’t acknowledged in school, we would disappear. Thatcher was angry that kids were growing up believing they had ‘an inalienable right to be gay’. Despite her efforts, many of us grew up queer. Angry. We fought back.

I imagine a queer girl like me in the near future, growing up feeling broken like I did, with no teachers able to tell her that she’s OK just as she is. I imagine no LGBTQIA+ books in the school library and no education to tell her how to be safe when she does eventually become sexually active. The homophobic slurs and bullying are unchallenged because teachers fear prosecution for ‘promoting’ her feelings and identity as normal. Her queer teachers go back into the closet or leave teaching out of fear, and she is left without role models.

This girl may go into adulthood proud and fighting, or she may struggle with suicidal thoughts as she tries to figure out her place in a society that she has learned doesn’t want her to exist. We need to stay angry and keep fighting so that no queer kid ever feels like they can’t be who they are.