Once millionaire, Brian Souter had expressed his concern - all £500,000 of it - the Catholic Education Commission unveiled a new document on sex education. For the first time they recommended that older children could discuss homosexuality. Glasgow’s Evening Times reminded readers that the Church still considered homosexuality “depraved” and that it was “a trial” which could be helped by counselling. Despite this, the tabloid insisted, that along with the Union of Catholic Mothers, “gay activists welcomed the Church’s move”! Helen Curry, secretary of the Glasgow Diocesan Union of Catholic Mothers told The Evening Times that the Catholic Church should be giving “guidelines on the modern times…” She presumed: “If it is coming from the Catholic education system, weighing heavily on morality, I cannot see how it could be objectionable”.
With the recommendation that children in Catholic schools could discuss homosexuality, The Scottish Daily Mail rolled up its sleeves in defiance against the impending repeal of Section 28 by reporting the recruitment of children into the campaign in a string of events “by all the main Christian denomination churches and youth groups such as the Scouts and the Boys Brigade”. If effeminate boys or tomboys hadn’t curbed their behaviour now; they would soon have to.
Whilst any ‘discussion’ of homosexuality thrived in the school playground, it proved more difficult for the Catholic Church. Its presence within their ranks had been so heavily concealed; many had already died through risk-taking or ignorance. Nick Jackson of the London Ecumenical AIDS Trust working in the Diocese of Southwark claimed there had been a ‘sanitising’ of the death certificates of priests following revelations that many gay priests had died of AIDS.
In a letter to Scotland on Sunday Dave Berry from Edinburgh wrote: “The supporters of the clause make such a fuss about what schools might teach in sex lessons. If this is genuinely their concern then they are entirely missing the point of repeal. Section 28 does not say anything about which topics may be discussed in sex lessons, or which techniques may be used to discuss them. In fact it is so vague that it hardly specifies anything at all. It is primarily a statement of prejudice, and the law of a modern society should not include such prejudice. The supporters of the clause are also keen on ‘family values’. But this phrase doesn’t seem to mean loving the members of your family, regardless of their sexuality. Instead, it seems to mean forcing everyone to live the same way, even if this means living a lie”.
According to The Mail, Souter “decided to make his stand after being shown shocking images of children being sexually abused on the Internet site run by a collection of gay groups who have said they would like to have a role in the education system”. He told The Mail: “I have seen that material and, as a human being, I have been disgusted…” His actions were said to have alarmed the more liberal boss of Virgin Trains, Richard Branson, whose company was now 49 per cent owned by Stagecoach.
Souter insisted; “this is not homophobic”, (Scottish editions of The Daily Telegraph) and pleaded: “We’ve got homosexual friends, I’ve had people with HIV in my house”, (The Daily Record) and “I respect their rights…” (The Scottish Sun). Not everybody was impressed. His mildly camp demeanour, irregular dress sense and penchant for red Kickers shoes became a target for journalists. TV footage of a loner, skipping lightly across a car park at a Bank of Scotland awards ceremony before taking cover in his car earned him derision from gays suspicious of his motives. On the launch of his fleet of open-topped tour buses through New York, PR columnist for The Scotsman, Piers D’éere, wrote: “He dresses appallingly, giggles like a girlie, and mouths off cheerily about everything from gay marriage to low emission engines”.
Red shoes or not; Brian Souter was no friend of Dorothy!
Under the heading: “Protect our kids”, Brian Souter was given more publicity in The Scottish Sun to explain why he launched his “gay crusade”. Reporter Kenny McAlpine wrote: “Souter, 45, has been offered backing by political groups in America, British trade unions and a number of ‘disillusioned’ Labour MPs and MSPs”. Souter claimed the reaction to his campaign “had been phenomenal. We have been contacted from parties in America backing the stance… We have also been offered money but we will check the sincerity and the background of the backers before we make a decision”. The report added: “Mr Souter… has handed over his £1million to The Scottish School Boards’ Association who are battling against the Government to keep the ban in force. SSBA treasurer Alan Smith said: ‘We’re acting to protect children and we should be allowed to use our democratic right for a debate on the issue from Scotland’s new listening Government”. The story was juxtaposed with one of retired Lieutenant General Sir Michael Gow, 76, who blasted moves to lift the ban on gays serving in the military and ordered them to be given their own regiment. “If we have to have homosexuals why not put them together. The Germans had Stomach Battalions where a soldier with a tummy complaint was put into a battalion with others who had a similar ailment. Something similar might be worked out for gays”.
Scotland’s Sunday Herald warned: “The London press have started asking the question: ‘Are Scots the most repressed nation in Europe?’ This is a view that we must challenge or else be prepared to live with for decades”. Journalist and broadcaster Iain Macwhirter summed it up: “Here was an opportunity to strike back at the homosexualists, the ‘slobbering queers’ as they’ve been described by Jack Irvine of the PR firm Media House. Souter provided the cash, Cardinal Winning the legitimacy, and The Daily Record the publicity. The ‘Keep the Clause’ campaign was born”.
After the Prime Minister Tony Blair gave his full backing to the repeal of Section 28, The Scottish Sun declared it would “lead to homosexuality being promoted in schools” and revealed Souter’s intention to spend his last penny on the campaign. Souter told the Murdoch-owned tabloid: “If I have to use all my money and go and live in a council house I will”.
Brian Souter enjoyed the support of two of Scotland’s most popular Glasgow-based, red-top tabloids, The Scottish Sun, (edited by Bruce Waddell), based at Kinning Park and The Daily Record, (edited by Martin Clarke), at Anderston Quay, along Glasgow’s Broomielaw. “As a married couple with four children, my wife and I welcomed New Labour’s commitment to the family…” Souter told the press. However, the Rt Rev Michael Hare Duke, Bishop of St Andrews, Dunkeld and Dunblane in the Episcopal Church in Scotland was one religionist not willing to play ball when he advised The Scotsman: “If we begin with the Bible, the slogan ‘family values’ rings hollow as a prescription for social conduct… Jesus explicitly told (his disciples) ‘Anyone who comes to me without hating father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes and his own life too, cannot be my disciple’ (Luke 14, 26)”. The Daily Record editor, Martin Clarke generously gave Souter space to exercise his opinion in an essay entitled: “The majority have rights too, Mr Dewar”. Souter filled it with his concerns for a beleaguered “majority”.
In his essay, Brian Souter gave away something of himself. A kid who had been poked fun of at school for his “face full of plooks”. Now he was a man challenged by a society he claimed “chipped away at the foundations of our traditional values”. These were values that Souter trusted; personal values that had been a lifetime’s investment for a small boy struggling to emulate his strong father. This was a successful man, a family man and essentially, a heterosexual man. But Souter rarely expressed his need for such values in the singular, demonstrated by the highlighted remarks from his essay: “We have watched with dismay… The people of Scotland have a right… Important values as far as the people are concerned… We have no shortage of volunteers who are… desperate to show their support… determined, like us, to make this Government listen to the voice of the man in the street… The Scottish people are not in the mood… This pressure is coming from parents and grandparents with a lifetime of experience… Passionately felt opinion from ordinary men and women… The message from the Scottish people is very clear… My principal reasons for getting involved are the concerns expressed by friends and family, all of whom are ordinary people in similar positions to ourselves…” At the same time as the essay was published, news reports revealed a dramatic rise in male suicides in Scotland, a proportion of which, of course, were a result of confusion over sexual orientation. Souter insisted: “The ‘Gay is OK’ message should not be directed at teenagers who are coming to terms with their gender and may be confused for a period of time”. But one in nine of all suicides of young Scots men in 1984 had risen to one in four in 1998, just ten years later. Suicides were now more than the combined total of deaths from road accidents and drugs.
Catholic Church spokesman Monsignor Tom Connolly told Glasgow’s Evening Times, Mr Souter “reflects a fear that is clearly shared by parents across Scotland”. As the Church became ever more strident, The Sunday Herald predicted this would be “one of the biggest divisions between Church and State in recent history”.
Scotland was a devout country. Religious tourism was estimated to be worth anything between £80m and £100m with visitors travelling to such sites as St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, the Orphir Round Kirk in Orkney, the Pictish memorials in Shetland and the island of Iona. Home Secretary, Jack Straw had already expressed his fear that religious fundamentalism might exert an undue influence on the Scottish parliament in a Cabinet committee which began hammering out devolution policies in 1997. It gave birth to a curious anomaly where health and home affairs were devolved to the Scottish parliament yet the issue of abortion remained a reserved power of Westminster.
As Souter rallied his troops, his ally, the Christian Institute installed itself in Edinburgh. Their PO address turned out to be 15, Northbank Street in Edinburgh; the headquarters of the Free Presbyterian Church (the notorious ‘Wee Frees’).
Those supporting the retention of Section 28 would miss no opportunity to promote the message that Section 28 had to stay. Even BBC Radio Scotland’s early morning news programme, interrupted daily by religious proselytizing in its Thought for the Day, became a target for some religionists to press home their message. On the issue of Section 28, Bishop of Motherwell, Joseph Devine begged for “tolerance” before insisting: “Let the people have their say”. To help them, he went about gathering a petition in support of the retention of Section 28 from local churchgoers. As president of the Catholic Education Commission, Devine continued to provoke controversy by insisting, in 2005, backed by the church’s blueprint for schools – A Charter for Catholic Schools - that homosexual teachers should have their promotion opportunities limited and be barred from working in Catholic schools. He made the headlines in Scotland, once again, in 2008 after claiming at a lecture that the gay community were aligning themselves with victims of the Holocaust to make it appear they were under persecution. He warned his audience there was a “huge and well-orchestrated conspiracy” taking place and “we ignore the gay community at our peril”. Asked how parents should handle homosexuality, he advised that he “would not tolerate that behaviour” and finished by telling his audience he was looking for a fight.
Gays didn’t need to align themselves with victims of the Holocaust: They were victims. Although the statutory criminalisation of homosexuals in Germany by Section 175 of the penal code had existed since 1871 and only repealed in 1994, it was under the Third Reich that the law was enforced with the formation of the Reich Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion which led to the persecution, castration murder and experimentation of homosexuals. Although Section 175 was almost repealed in the preceding Weimar regime, Sexualwissenschaft, the science of sex was branded a ‘Jewish science’ and its Jewish exponents were forced into exile. During the Berlin Olympics of 1936 the Gestapo began systematically raiding gay bars and closing down the dozens of gay publications. The number of homosexuals sentenced by Nazi judges between 1933 and 1945 was roughly fifty thousand and from internal documents of the Nazi leadership, some five thousand were deported to concentration camps. After liberation, gays were judged to have been properly imprisoned once it was understood Section 175 of the penal code was not introduced by the Nazis. Their time in concentration camps was treated as a criminal record and revealed to employers. To add insult to injury, whilst former SS guards were allowed to declare their time in the camps in calculating their pensions; gay inmates had their time deducted.
Bishop Devine’s views were challenged on BBC Scotland News, (which wrongly suggested a majority had supported the retention of Section 28). The somewhat camp bishop was shown shrugging his shoulders and pointing to the sky, begging: “Don’t shoot the messenger... Don’t blame me… It’s Him”.
Sarah-Kate Templeton, The Sunday Herald’s religious affairs correspondent wondered at religionists’ “unprecedented campaign” against “promoting homosexuality” in schools. Mrs Ann Allen from the Church of Scotland’s powerful Board of Social Responsibility claimed to have 80 per cent of their members onboard vindicating her concerns over the promotion of “the homosexual practice”. Rev Bill Wallace, former convenor of the Board told The Scotsman: “Genital sexual acts should be within the marriage bond and nowhere else”. The Sunday Times Scotland pointed out that Souter would be “joined by representatives from the Muslim and Jewish communities”. (The Scottish Council of Jewish Communities, in fact, supported repeal along with many Muslims and ex-Muslims). Templeton’s article had Labour councillor, Bashir Maan explaining “most Muslims will send their children to Catholic schools if Section 28 is repealed… People like me have been trying to say stay together but this leaves me defenceless”. The Daily Mail gave over a two-page spread to the Muslim Council of Britain’s Secretary General, Iqbal Sacranie. But was this really the picture? Muslims were already attending Catholic schools in large numbers, not necessarily because Catholic education advocated the retention of Section 28, but because – for one thing - they wanted to send their daughters to same-sex schools. Such an alliance was a marriage of convenience. As president of the Catholic Education Commission, Bishop Joseph Devine was to tell the press, long after the Section 28 debate had died down: “Around 80 per cent of the pupils attending St Albert’s Roman Catholic Primary School in Pollockshields, Glasgow are Muslim. It’s a Catholic school in name only. It is a complete absurdity. What I would like is for the education authority to create a school for Muslim children”. The Herald columnist Ms Anvar Khan was shocked by Muslims she saw standing incongruously with what seemed a discriminatory campaign and wrote: “The gang’s getting bigger”. Sufficiently satisfied with the way the campaign had been gathering momentum, Cardinal Winning was moved to declare: “It is heartening to see Christians from so many denominations coming together on this”.
In Birmingham, more than 60 people took part in a candlelit vigil on the steps of the Town Hall in protest at the imposition of Section 28 in the UK. The local newspaper promptly claimed Section 28 had been breached since the council had loaned them a sound system. A similar vigil in Lincoln was photographed by a small group of British National Party members.
The gay community in Scotland, on the other hand, took the campaign very quietly with no high profile demonstrations to justify the ‘militant’ label lavishly applied by certain sections of the press. Tim Hopkins of Scotland’s Equality Network began to play a lead role in campaigning against the well-funded efforts of Brian Souter’s ‘Keep the Clause’ campaign, but the quiet, unassuming Englishman was largely unknown to tabloid readers. Much of the press focused instead on the already vilified Lond-based human rights campaigner and gay activist, Peter Tatchell. The Scottish Daily Mail wrote: “The leader of militant gay campaigners Outrage, said: (Brian Souter) ‘is behaving like the business leaders in the Deep South of America who funded the Fifties campaign to maintain racial segregation. I hope commuters, trade unionists, churches, politicians and companies that support gay human rights will boycott Stagecoach’.” The Mail added: “The Scottish School Boards’ Association which is set to front the campaign was bombarded by abusive and threatening phone calls from pro-homosexual groups yesterday. But the backlash among homosexuals against Mr Souter’s £500,000 donation was overwhelmed by opposition from the silent majority of people who oppose the government’s decision…” The Mail added: “The backlash from the gay lobby took a sinister turn as it emerged that Ann Hill, the chief executive of SSBA, had received abusive and threatening phone calls from militant gay rights campaigners”.
Next Issue: Dennis Goldie and the fall of Falkirk
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garry@scottishmediamonitor.com
