Scotland’s popular broadsheet, Scotland on Sunday, labelled the response to Brian Souter’s ferocious ‘Keep the Clause’ campaign “an insidious one”, fanning the flames with a sympathetic editorial: “Indeed Scotland has always cherished and admired independence of thought and action by its citizens. To suggest, as some commentators have, that we are a nation of anti-homosexual bigots is fatuous”. The paper nonetheless attacked gays for “vacuous and totemic flag-waving” and sneered at “Alexander’s personal crusade…” adding: “Let us be unequivocal here. If Scottish children were being given access to explicitly heterosexual imagery or ideas in the state education curriculum, similar concerns, voiced by the majority of voters in this country, would arise”. But this was fatuous. Children were not being offered pornography of any kind. That would have contravened teaching practice guidelines already in place and resulted in disciplinary action. The editorial opined: “Let us remind ourselves why the government in 1987 introduced Section 28. This was a response to the disturbingly graphic portrayals of homosexual activity which were appearing in teaching materials distributed throughout schools in some of London’s left-wing boroughs”. In another editorial on Section 28, Scotland on Sunday advised: “Donald Dewar and Wendy Alexander, the minister for communities, may come to regret their lamentable decision to make Section 28 a tub-thumping exercise in political correctness”. Brian Dempsey of Outright Scotland challenged the paper on their inaccurate reporting after the broadsheet described Section 28 as “the clause that forbids the promotion of homosexuality” in schools. Dempsey explained it was a law that forbade the promotion of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship. He also challenged their exaggerated description of “disturbingly graphic portrayals of homosexual activity… in teaching materials distributed throughout schools” and urged readers of the broadsheet to “have a look” at the book, Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin for themselves.
Along with his frequent articles in The Scottish Daily Mail, the totemic flag-waving political reactionary; right-wing, columnist Gerald Warner had a weekly column in Scotland on Sunday. Barely a week went by without him using it to allude to the subject of homosexuality. It offered him the chance to repeat the story on how communities minister Wendy Alexander had responded to her schoolfriend’s experience of being bullied at school. The story haunted her as the media consistently referred to repeal as her ‘personal campaign’. According to Warner, announcing the Executive’s intention to repeal Section 28, Alexander told her audience: “Tomorrow… the first phone call I will make will be to that schoolfriend to tell him... 20 years on, kids at that same school in Renfrewshire will have a better chance of growing up at ease with themselves and the world around them”. Warner scoffed. “Cue violins… pass round the Kleenex… Hollywood would love it. ‘(Say, is Tom Hanks available to play this Scottish guy that gets a hard time from the machos in the football team? How about Julia Roberts as this Alexander broad…?)’”
Regular readers, with an interest in the subject of homosexuality never had long to wait ploughing through one of Gerald Warner’s rants. In one column Warner declared: “Homofascism is now, aggressively and shamelessly, the ideology of the Scottish Executive and parliament…” Quite where this so-called ‘homofascism’ had been manifesting itself was unclear. In a column headed: “In the name of democracy it’s time to do the decent thing”, Warner hit out at the media supporting repeal. “Under the self-appointed leadership of loud-mouthed progressives occupying the commanding heights in the media, Scotland has drifted for the past few decades in a miasma of moral indifferentism…” His column rocked with an unshielded hate and loathing of homosexuality; unfettered by the absence of legal constraint. “The turning point…” he warned, “was when they came for the children. The attempt to repeal Section 28 is an aggression by homosexuals and fellow travellers against our children. It is as simple and wicked as that. Pressure groups want to proselytise in schools, to recruit adolescent boys at an age of confused identity, vulnerable to the false comfort offered by homosexual missionaries… The material directed at children is pornographic to the vilest degree…” Turning on Wendy Alexander’s slight lisp, he added: “The useful idiot fronting this offensive is Wendy Alexander, the thirty-something Minithter for Communitieth with the mindset of a 1980s student activist”.
Gerald Warner’s attacks on Wendy Alexander were frequently personal and embarrassingly macho. Another of his articles was headed: “Where are the visionaries to lead us out of the Wendy House?” He rounded on the “wee pretendy parliament…” and asked: “Why are we ruled by a gang of cooncillors (sic) and fat women from social work departments?” He suggested Wendy Alexander “interprets her portfolio as trampling upon the wishes of the community. As she stood at the lectern, shrilling, pouting and finger-wagging (two fingers would have sufficed to convey her message to the despised Scottish public), she personified the arrogance and hubris that characterises the Scottish Executive… Alexander is living testimony to the unwisdom of abolishing the ducking-stool”.
When confronted by Grampian Health Board’s recommendation that resources advocating monogamy and marriage as a solitary solution to HIV should be avoided, Gerald Warner flew into a rage. “These are the dark forces which will blight the next generation if a stand is not made against them. Every opinion survey registers massive opposition to this programme for the systematic corruption of the nation’s children”. He issued a sharp warning. “…This is not a democratic government… A head of steam is building up, of public resentment against the mendacious charlatanry both of the devolution settlement and of the strutting homosexual lobby. This mood will not now be reversed; the longer it is frustrated, the heavier the penalties that will be exacted from those twin enemies of Scottish decency”.
Religionists opposed to the repeal of Section 28 jumped on Pope John Paul II’s visit to the Holy Land to demonstrate how strong the links were between followers of Christianity and those of Islam and Judaism. Leaders of most religious factions shared the growing revolt against the adoption of gay rights. Il Papa’s expressions of forgiveness for some of the Catholic Church’s wrongdoings throughout history - excluding its treatment of gays, of course – signalled a new religious coalition bolstered by features in certain sections of the media from Asian commentators reflecting a new surge of ethnic militancy within their own communities who were voicing moral concern over the erosion of the traditional family. There were threats that more Asian children would be sent to Catholic schools and local MPs and MSPs supporting repeal might lose their seats at forthcoming elections. Michael Portillo, when he made a bid for the Tory leadership, suggested that, if elected, he would look at the issue of Section 28 again. Capitalising on the new bond of friendship between Conservatives and immigrant communities, Lord Tebbit, a former Tory party chairman told The Daily Mail: “If we are to become more inclusive to racial minorities, as we should, we must recognise that this is one of the few things that bind us together across all other lines. The black evangelical churches and the Islamic organisations all agree on the need for this law”.
Following the events of September 11 in the US, the hand of friendship was extended even further. Not just by British Prime Minister Tony Blair but also by the US State Department which spent $15m on TV advertising in an effort to portray the country as a nation that respected the Muslim faith. This was only the beginning.
Gerald Warner mocked the Pope’s expression of regret for the Catholic’s role in history that “led to the deaths of Jews by Christians at any time and in any place…” He wrote: “Being Catholic means always having to say sorry: about the Crusades, about the Inquisition, about Galileo; sorry for having been so insensitive as to contradict Luther and Calvin; for not rewriting history to slander Pius XII; above all, for continuing to promote - however mutely and incoherently - traditional moral values. Sorry about all that”. (Sorry, he wasn’t). “The Pope’s visit to the Holy Land has had the predictable outcome of demonstrating that appeasement fuels the appetite of the moral blackmailer…”
Warner scoffed at claims that the Catholic Church was silent in the face of the holocaust and insisted: “The innocence of the late Pope has been established beyond doubt: so far from being complicit in the murder of Jews, by his personal intervention he saved 860,000 potential victims”. Warner was particularly ruffled by the Pope’s apology for “sins that have injured the dignity of women”. He claimed the Church had “refused to support the degradation of women into mere units of economic productivity”. He added the Church had “upheld their right to the security and dignity of lifelong marriage… implored them not to poison their bodies with chemicals in pursuit of the imagined benefits of artificial infertility or of promiscuity and erosion of self-respect; above all, not to turn their wombs into abattoirs by resorting to abortion”.
There were deep concerns over the absence of any apology for the treatment of sexual minorities by the Catholic Church over the millennia. In 1988, an Italian gay man, Alfredo Ormando had set himself alight in St Peter’s Square in protest at the Church’s attitude to gays and later died from his injuries. Leader of the Italian gay rights group Arcigay, Franco Grillini hit out at John Paul II: “The Vatican is asking forgiveness for everyone except gay people, who have suffered the most at the hands of the Church”.
Attempts to repeal Section 28 united religionists of all persuasions. Brian Souter’s wife, Betty, a former social worker, also shared her husband’s deeply held religious convictions that bound them to the Church of the Nazarene. She was pictured looking rather dour in Scotland on Sunday; sitting bolt upright, dressed in black and looking away from the camera. Her 17-month-old son, Calum, one of four children, (the others were Amy, 10, Scott, 8, Fraser, 6) was pictured playing on the tartan carpet in her traditional Perth home. Betty’s interview began by applauding the Labour party for its commitment to “family values”. But, for this Scotswoman - who had met husband Brian at a religious holiday camp - Labour had now gone too far. “As a parent” she was “particularly concerned” with “quick divorces, legitimising illegitimacy…” - the Scottish Executive had just written the word ‘bastard’ out of the statute books - “abolition of the married couples’ allowance and the repeal of Section 28”. She added: “There is a phase which young people go through in which they may feel attracted to members of the same sex and which most grow out of. I am deeply concerned that young people passing through this phase may be exposed to influences which can be harmful to them and encourage them into lifestyle choices which they may regret in later life”. It was not the first time the Souters had mentioned the challenge of a ‘homosexual phase’. Betty’s solution was behind the imposing shadow of the church: Discipline, obstruction, censorship and, of course, the celebration of ‘family values’. “That young people can be influenced by their environment and nurtured into homosexual activity is a very real possibility which must be avoided”. She was convinced that Scotland’s parents carried her opinions unanimously. “I chose to send my children to a State school because I wanted them to live in an inclusive society and receive an open, cosmopolitan education. I do not see why I should be forced to consider private or Catholic education because of this politically correct government”. Her attack on human rights campaigner, Peter Tatchell was vitriolic. “The hysterical reaction from Peter Tatchell on this issue has only served to confirm my worst fears concerning a hidden agenda. I cannot understand why a 35-year-old English bachelor” - he was 48 at the time – “who shares his life with three other men” - but not in the traditional married context Betty couldn’t see her way round – “has such an interest in Scottish schoolchildren”. He had no ‘interest’ in Scottish schoolchildren at all, other than to ensure they had somewhere to turn if they thought they might be gay. “I believe that traditional marriage is the best environment in which children can be born and raised. I am entitled to this belief and I am entitled to teach my children these beliefs and values, and I don’t want same-sex relationships presented to my children as having the same moral value”. This was precisely why - with attitudes such as these doing the rounds - gay kids needed access to support in schools.
James Baker expressed his outrage over the interview in the letters’ page of the next edition of Scotland on Sunday: “There is a mass collusion amongst heterosexuals to deny that these atrocities are happening in good god-fearing heterosexual families. And there is no Section 28 equivalent to prevent teachers teaching about all that, they just collude in the silence. Perhaps it helps Mrs Souter’s purpose to draw our attentions away from such unpleasantness”.
In the same paper, L Richardson of St Andrews wrote: “I saw a phrase which read ‘In disagreement, fight fair - no name calling’. Christians are not to bear false witness against their neighbours - and that includes innuendo”.
Next issue: Murdoch’s press in Scotland
garry@scottishmediamonitor.com
www.scottishmediamonitor.com
