There was a flood of opinion polls, the results of each one endorsing a particular paper’s editorial stance in the debate over the repeal of Section 28. Supporting ‘Keep the Clause’, Scotland on Sunday predictably waded into the fracas with the results of their poll. “Today’s ICM poll in this newspaper, echoing other tests of public opinion over the last few days, reinforces the fact that a clear majority of people in Scotland do not want to see Section 28 repealed”.

The Scottish News of the World stretched itself beyond the very narrow confines of its own representations of sexuality to declare: “Now we’ve polled the people who count - the kids themselves…” Without disclosing how many or even how they phrased the question, the paper boldly announced “three quarters of Scotland’s schoolkids believe that there is no place for gay lessons in the classroom”. Evidently drawn up by hand-wringing old hacks who believed gay sex was about to be ‘promoted’ in schools, The Scottish News of the World reported: “Kirsty Laird, 17, from Glasgow thinks Catholic schools and gay issues don’t mix. She said: ‘Religion at Notre Dame makes it hard for sexuality to be discussed - mainly because the teachers are embarrassed. If it comes up it’s quickly swept under the carpet but I’m not sure that promoting a gay lifestyle is the answer”. Only 10 youths of 16 and 17 appeared to have been polled. “Jamie McCaig and pal Tom May, both 17, are happy to keep Section 28”, the tabloid boasted. Jamie, from Newton Mearns, Renfrewshire, said: “The politicians went to school a long time ago, and are out of touch with what it is like now”. Tom said: “Sex is far more openly discussed, so there is no need to take it into school”. Robbie McCellan, 16, a fifth year student at Kelvinside Academy, said: “I don’t think that it would make any difference if Section 28 was abolished. It seems to me that the system works fine as it is”. Another Kelvinside Academy pupil, Ollie Shields, 16, from Cambuslang, added: “I agree with Robbie. Sexuality is not really something that I think should be dealt with in the classroom. It is a private matter, and our teachers would be too embarrassed to talk about it. The only time it has really been discussed is in the light of this recent controversy.”

The Scottish Mail printed the results of what they claimed was the “biggest and most comprehensive poll conducted on Section 28” finding “less than a third of Scots” wanted Section 28 repealed. “Only among voters aged 18-24 are there more who favour abolishing Section 28”. Scottish Opinion Limited’s results, also loudly trumpeted by The Daily Record, had The Scottish Daily Mail celebrating in bold on their front page: “SCOTLAND SAYS NO TO GAY SEX LAW ABOLITION”. Scottish Opinions claimed to have asked 1,104 members of the public the loaded and profoundly dishonest question: “Do you think the Scottish Executive is right to repeal Section 28 of the Local Government Act which prohibits the promotion of homosexuality in schools?” With the debate for repeal of Section 28 in England and Wales also looming in the House of Lords, The Scottish Daily Mail issued a stark warning to Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Cabinet colleagues in London. “They risk a similar wave of public revulsion in England over their determination to delete the law from the statute books”. Under the heading: “Voters support ban”, there was again praise from a host of predictable sources. A spokesman for the ‘Keep the Clause’ campaign cheered: “This is tremendous news. It confirms in the most comprehensive way that the majority of people in Scotland do not want the repeal…” Alan Smith, executive treasurer of the Scottish School Boards’ Association (SSBA) was convinced that “the hearts and minds of the majority of people are clearly in favour of keeping Section 28”. And a spokesman for Cardinal Winning believed that “once again scientific sampling proves that the silent majority of Scots have genuine fears about the policy”. Writing in The Scottish Daily Mail, right-wing columnist, Gerald Warner declared his opinions on the matter proved “beyond dispute”, begging: “Why are Scottish politicians contending frenziedly to secure the votes of the three per cent of the population that is homosexual, while ignoring the potential votes of the large majority?” However, had the opinion polls gone against him, as they did on one occasion, he could be altogether more circumspect. “Sophisticated psephological exercises, opinion polling and trawling of focus groups are still less reliable political guides than human instinct”, he said. The Scottish Daily Mail’s editorial decided; “the only honourable and democratic course for the Executive is to bow to the wishes of the people”. But what people? Their own poll showed massive gaps in the way different generations had responded. A majority of under-35s – Scotland’s future - predictably displayed more progressive attitudes to homosexuality and thought Section 28 should go.

Dismissed by The Daily Record as a “STITCH-UP”, a “shameless fix” and “clearly rigged by the gay lobby”, reporter Carlos Alba’s report on the Scottish Executive’s consultation exercise spat nails. “Forty gay groups and dozens of quangos - including the British Potato Council - were also asked for their views. But the public were frozen out”. The tabloid reported: “All 129 MSPs were consulted individually on the controversial plans, and Equal Opportunities and Local Government committees were also invited to respond. That meant that Labour MSPs Johann Lamont and Michael McMahon, who are on both committees, were asked for their opinion three times”. Not that would have made much difference: A week later, the former steelworker, Michael McMahon, the Catholic MSP for Hamilton North and Bellshill was serenaded in The Daily Record for being the first to publicly break ranks on Section 28. Communities’ minister Wendy Alexander MSP pointed out in The Sunday Herald: “80% of teachers who responded to our consultation about this are in favour of repeal. There have been more than 2,300 responses so far. We are being accused of not listening to public opinion but, in all, 85% of those who responded backed the repeal of Section 28 as humane, tolerant and right for the new Scotland”.

The Scottish Executive’s consultation process was altogether different from a poll, inviting individuals and organisations to put their case to MSPs over a period of six weeks. Missing the point, the dickey-bowed former religious correspondent, Tom Brown, in The Daily Record, declared the results “overwhelmingly against scrapping Section 28… So what was the point of the ‘consultation process’?” The Scottish Executive was not like Westminster where the whole theatre of democracy took place in the House of Commons. In Scotland, consultation can take place over many weeks involving different organisations. Not exactly tabloid material. Or was it? The Daily Record slid their balls across the abacus. “More than 40 gay groups were consulted including the Glasgow-based Bi-g-les group which came under fire last month for posting gay porn on the Net”. And “it later emerged that gay campaigners had mounted a campaign to distort the results”. The Executive’s consultation process came under intense scrutiny by the tabloids. There were some grounds for concern too, not least the haste in which the Executive confirmed its intention to repeal Section 28, just two working days after the close of the consultation process. On Friday, 21 January The Scottish Sun joined in, bellowing across its front page: “SO WHAT HAVE GAY LESSONS TO DO WITH THE PRICE OF SPUDS?” They wrote: “More than 6,000 copies of the Ethical Standards in Public Life Bill were sent out to groups last November… There were 2,300 responses”. The tabloid had been selecting some of the many groups who had been sent consultation papers: “The British Potato Council… The Deer Commission, ferry company Caledonian MacBrayne, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, the Welsh Office, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Arthritis Care Scotland and Alzheimer Scotland Action on Dementia”. Objections from individual members of the public were excluded from final figures. Donald Dewar tried to explain to the Executive the difficulties of consultation over such a sensitive issue and the weighting given to various types of opinion, for example teachers; members of the public, the Church and gay groups.

Two days after the Scottish Executive announced the results of its consultation process, The Kirsty Walk Show on BBC One Scotland commissioned a poll carried out by MORI that found 56 per cent in favour of repeal compared to only 29 per cent against. They also found only 15 per cent agreeing with Cardinal Winning’s claim that homosexuality was a perversion. 69 per cent did not. More surprisingly, it found fewer than half of the Catholic head teachers - 47 per cent - backed Winning’s views on homosexuality. The Herald’s political cartoon had a Catholic pontiff holding a small megaphone marked 25 per cent, bellowing: “Let the moral majority be heard!” Behind him, he was about to be swallowed up by an enormous megaphone marked 75%.

The Sunday Herald discovered it was as much about how a question was worded as anything else. Reporting on the MORI poll, they wrote: “While a huge majority of 83% are in favour of sex education including information on homosexuality, 60% remain opposed to the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality as defined by the controversial Section 28, which the government proposes to repeal. The contrasting results show how the debate on Section 28 is distorted by the language of the act which means local authorities cannot ‘promote the teaching of homosexuality’.” The poll also endorsed previous findings that 60 per cent disagreed with Winning’s interpretation of homosexuality as a perversion with only 32 per cent of Catholics supporting it. It was, of course, still alarming that a poll could show even one third of Scots agreeing with him, but as The Sunday Herald made clear in its editorial, “an alarmingly high 43% of Scots do not think that children should be taught the facts of life, including homosexuality”.

The Daily Record was determined to discredit any poll that disagreed with them. The tabloid scoffed: “A BBC poll… showed Scotland’s head teachers backed the repeal of Section 28. But only half of the country’s 300 secondary school heads took part in the survey carried out for The Kirsty Wark Show”. (This was a bit rich since The Daily Record claimed its poll asked only 940 out of a Scottish population of around eight million)! Grace Wallace demonstrated where a large proportion of the results were coming from; dismissing the results and penning a response to letters’ pages of The Scottish Daily Express. “The majority of head teachers in Scotland do not want the law repealed - surely somebody should listen to them…? The Bible clearly teaches that it is unnatural to practise homosexual acts”.

The Daily Record was impervious. “FACT: Every single poll of the subject finds that Scottish parents oppose repeal of Section 28 by a majority of two to one”. The influential businessman, Brian Souter expressed a touch of remorse for the First Minister but remained quite emphatic: “I feel sorry for Donald Dewar’s postie, - his back must be breaking but the message from the Scottish people is very clear… Either they please the very influential three per cent of citizens who find Section 28 offensive or risk the wrath of the other 97 per cent…”

The ‘Keep the Clause’ campaign set up a chat forum on its website. Unfortunately for them, the gay community magazine, The Pink Paper clicked on it to notice that the “vast majority of responses in the past two days have been pro-repeal, and openly gay-friendly. Of a total of 73 messages posted from 31 January to 2 February 2000, 57 were in support of repeal - with just 16 homophobic or anti-repeal”.

The whole poll business began to turn in on itself. Dr James M Wilson of Glasgow University’s Management Studies Department wrote to The Herald: “I seem to be missing a subtle distinction that Saturday’s Herald finds between one poll’s ‘80% endorsement’ and another’s ‘four out of five’. One warrants a front-page ‘Huge support for Cubie’ headline (the independent committee into student finance) while the other sinks to the last column of an inner-page continuation of a headlined ‘Souter faces backlash’ article. Seems to me that an 80% result ought to constitute the same level (huge or otherwise) of support regardless of the issue. I have for several years past taught a session on ‘How to Lie with Statistics’ to our MBA and management students. I do so appreciate such a good, bad example for teaching presentation. Thank you”.

Whilst the media wrestled with the findings of opinion polls, others were taking their opinions onto the streets. Reports began circulating amongst Scottish gays of incidents of name-calling, victimisation and queerbashing. For anyone whom, by dint of fate, was effeminate or openly gay, everything was about to change. For them, at least, Scotland was becoming a dark and dangerous place. As each day passed there were more newspaper stories; more barracking from columnists; more readers’ letters, more voices of outrage; each one more shrill than the last. The talk of the gay bars in Scotland at the time, and the fears of those who used them, was what were going to be the consequences of this unfolding campaign? There were rumours too: Someone had been verbally abused on a bus by a group of lads shouting ‘Keep the Clause’; some drunk had spat at someone outside the Glasgow gay pub, The Waterloo…

Memories of the Soho gay pub bombing by 23-year-old BNP supporter David Copeland the year before, in April 1999, were still fresh. Fuelled by right-wing extremism and insecurities about his own sexuality, he planted a nail-bomb in the busy Admiral Duncan pub in London’s Soho. In the carnage that ensued, three people were killed and over 80 injured with 13 sustaining serious injuries including two with traumatic amputation of limbs. So too were memories of the violent murder of 35-year-old Michael Doran less than five years before, during the summer of 1995 in Glasgow’s Queen’s Park. A gang of three lads and a 14-year-old girl were on a ‘queerbashing’ rampage, putting a hammer through one man’s head, beating another so badly he was unable to walk and, finally, murdering Michael Doran. Michael received 83 blows to his body. They stabbed him several times in the groin, stamped on his face until they had broken every bone in his head and left him in the bushes, choking to death in his own blood. With their clothes still bloodstained, the gang joined friends at a nearby party, bragging about what they had just done. 

Next issue: The Daily Record and ‘Brigadier’ Brown

The author has not received payment for compiling this history but welcomes donations to any of the following: Peter Tatchell Human Rights Fund www.tatchellrightsfund.org. Amnesty International www.amnesty.org.uk or Secular Society www.secularism.org.uk. 

garry@scottishmediamonitor.com