Garry Otton

Massive black billboard posters with blood-red letters spelling out the words: KEEP THE CLAUSE quickly appeared all over Scotland in what was claimed to be the biggest advertising campaign in Scottish history. A friend of the Souters, mother of two, Ruth Clarkson from Perthshire was just one of six people used in the new billboards. She was pictured with the quote: “This Government doesn’t care what we parents think”. She told The Record her friends “didn’t see me as the type of person who would get involved in something like this. I’ve got loads of friends who are gay and lesbian. I’m not homophobic…” Another “mother of two”, Marie Fraser from Inverness was quoted on a similar huge billboard: “My son could be asked to take part in homosexual role playing in school. That horrifies me”. A “grandmother of three”, Sheena Grant of Inverness, looking down from her poster said: “Clause 28 protects my grandchildren, I don’t believe guidelines will”. Another “mother of two”, Flora Junor from Milngavie’s quote read: “I believe in discussing homosexuality in schools, but scrapping Clause 28 is a step too far”. As attacks on gays increased, homophobia became more vocal. In Scottish school playgrounds and amongst children, the catchphrase, ‘‘Keep the Clause’’ ceded other forms of abuse. It was heard everywhere. Award-winning columnist, Muriel Gray wrote in The Sunday Herald: “For the first time in my life I feel frightened and insecure in my own country. I no longer have the confidence that the lunatic fringe will stay there. I walk my children to school past nauseating posters that regardless of being scorned by the decent majority, may nevertheless have some impact that will affect our future”. Gay switchboards claimed threats of suicide had almost doubled. The Record juxtaposed the story of ‘Keep the Clause’s new poster campaign with the headline: “Fury at plan to give gays status of married couples”. The Executive were planning to introduce measures that would allow a gay tenant to inherit a tenancy when their partner died and legal control over affairs should their partner suffer head injury or mental illness. A spokesman for the Catholic Church predictably announced: “We are against laws that give an impression that a homosexual relationship is equal to that of a heterosexual married couple because that promotes the acceptability of a homosexual lifestyle”.

Ben Matthews wrote to The Scotsman to say: “Once a week, I take an evening bus through Morningside, in Edinburgh; lately, a group of young teenagers, who are also on this route, have identified me as being gay. This results in me being surrounded by the group of them, verbally harassed, and my space being invaded in an aggressive and threatening manner… If this is their behaviour to a stranger on a bus, it is easy to imagine what life must be like for any gay student who is at school with these bullies”.

John Roberts, co-ordinator at The Steve Retson Project, which was based at the time at Glasgow’s Royal Infirmary, providing counselling, support, health education, safer sex information and treatment for sexually transmitted infections for gay men hit out at the posters in Stuart Brown’s Report to the East of Scotland Repeal Section 28 Group. “We’ve seen a number of people who have come through the Project who have been forced to face their sexuality because of this ‘Keep the Clause’ – all those billboards, the publicity surrounding Section 28… If you’re happy with your sexuality, as most of us are, it’s not a problem, but if you’re just coming to terms with your sexuality, this is a complete nightmare. Horrendous! You’ve got 16 or 17-year-olds seeing the posters on the way home from school and then they’re seeing it on the news. It’s just very difficult for them. And they have to confront this every single day”. Roberts described a typical case: “We had one young guy come along. He had been to his GP because he was suffering from depression and it turned out that it was all about this. It was just getting too much for him. He was in Lanarkshire, and Lanarkshire is a difficult place to be growing up gay to begin with. His doctor managed to get him to see a psychologist, for want of a better word. The psychologist asked him ‘have you had sex with women yet?’  He said ‘no’.  She said ‘well that’s a bit like saying you don’t like chocolate cake without tasting it!’ Incredible! It just didn’t help him at all. The end result was the guy went on medication.  He’s okay now.  He’s done a lot of counselling with us”. Roberts added: “It’s on the TV every single night and if you’re 16, 17 or 18-years-old and going to school – that’s how old this lad was - and you’re seeing billboards that basically send out a signal that says ‘gay men are perverts’, however tactfully they try to put it, because that’s basically the underlying message: ‘Being gay is bad’. There have been loads of cases like this. As a Project, we generally meet folk from 28 to 35-years-old, but these last three months we’ve seen a lot of young people coming in to speak to our counsellors. It’s gone up by about 25%. It’s the teenagers that are coming in. Lots of schoolkids, that’s the interesting thing”.

In a collection of testimonials compiled by Ali Jarvis for Stonewall, Caused by the Clause, a young man from the north-east of Scotland wrote: “I found the whole experience of starting each day and seeing what was essentially my life judged in certain tabloid papers to be demoralising and saddening. I didn’t know who these ‘Keep the Clause’ campaigners were with their hatred and angry letter-writing campaigns and found myself looking with fear at everyone with whom I came into contact. Was it the lady in the shop where I bought my paper? Was it the young guy next to me on the bus? They felt like a faceless threat all around me”.

In another testimonial, a young Glasgow female wrote: “Passing the billboards with Souter’s campaign against repealing the clause had a severe impact on me, making me feel that somehow I had less of a right to dignity and respect than any heterosexual”.

A lesbian parent wrote: “Our daughter was going away for a weekend with her youth group. The children were all meeting up at the local train station for their outward journey. There were about ten 10 – 12-year-olds and various parental figures waiting to put them on the train with their leader. On the advertising hoarding on the platform opposite was a huge ‘Keep the Clause’ poster, hard to ignore but we all struggled to do so. I felt awful; felt I had to justify my parental rights and even suitability. I felt awful for my partner, our daughter, the other parents and the other children in the group. Nobody said anything pertaining to the poster…”

A gay man wrote to Stonewall to say: “Living in a small village in the north-east of Scotland and never reading a newspaper, I initially felt relatively untouched by this campaign. Only seeing events in the central belt on TV I felt I was in a part of the country that was taking the moral high ground and not lowering itself into the mire. No one around me was talking about this issue. Unfortunately I was wrong and was to be left aghast when circling a major roundabout in Aberdeen. There, in glorious bigoted technicolour, was a ‘Keep the Clause’ billboard poster of a mother proclaiming her fears for her son at school if the clause was not kept. I suddenly found myself wondering how many people could be influenced by this propaganda and what effect it may have on the attitude of parents to gays. I felt angry that this poster might make someone hate me, and make me afraid to be open about my sexuality in the future. Some days later, while circling the same roundabout, my spirits were lifted. Somone had thrown a pot of pink paint over the poster and painted the word ‘bigots’ in the bottom corner”.

In another contribution for Caused by the Clause, a gay person remembered: “Each morning I was awoken by the alarm clock and instantly sick with apprehension as almost every day there seemed to be another hate-filled comment from the ‘Keep the Clause’ media machine to kick off my morning. Every helpful comment from the Scottish Executive or from our own campaigning groups seemed almost life-saving and helped calm the feeling of depression and nausea I felt daily”.

Ali Jarvis who had collected the personal testimonials for Stonewall’s Caused by the Clause was concerned that the public were making decisions and taking sides based on misinformation. “As it was, the poster campaign was perceived to hinge on ‘triggers’ that were deliberately emotive and whilst probably stopping short of outright lies, certainly implied some things that were far from true in order to provoke maximum public ‘outrage’”.

Anaesthetised to the media’s catalogue of lies, misrepresentation, distortion and repression of many aspects of lawful sexuality, it was the treatment of gays in the Scottish media that begged the sort of provisions in law against incitement to hatred that had already been established in other European countries. The vile rhetoric and shameful publicity ignited by the repeal, perpetrated by the religious right, moral campaigners and certain sections of the press was now out of control. Had Scotland been the Netherlands, the newspapers would have, by now, most likely been covering the arrest of a few tabloid editors, religious leaders and a handful of other individuals.

Section 28 had nothing to do with the protection of children. If that were indeed the case, campaigners might have demanded the adoption of the Dutch system of sexual education. Here, the only thing children are ‘saved’ from is sexual ignorance, boasting, as they do, a teenage pregnancy rate some seven times lower than Scotland’s. They also had a lower incidence of sexual disease, and - as studies proved - their youngsters actually starting to have sex later. This has been confirmed in a report by the United Nations agency, UNICEF which reported that in the Netherlands, which also has the world's lowest abortion rate, a sharp reduction in unwanted teenage pregnancies was caused by “the combination of a relatively inclusive society with more open attitudes towards sex and sex education, including contraception”. In the US and UK, which have developed the world's highest teenage pregnancy rates, “contraceptive advice and services may be formally available, but in a ‘closed’ atmosphere of embarrassment and secrecy”.

Muriel Gray wrote in The Sunday Herald: “I’m going back more than ten years here. It was a party in London and an amused, urban home counties chap was challenging a discussion between a gathering of five Scots, including myself, concerning our lust for devolved power. ‘You know what will happen, don’t you?’ he laughed merrily. ‘You lot will just end up fighting like children, the tabloids will run the country and the churches will turn you into a new Northern Ireland’. Five voices rose to a shout of outrage and indignation. Didn’t this imbecile understand anything about the realities of our country? Didn’t he realise how much more civilised, tolerant and self-evidently libertarian we were? Ha! Obviously not. For your information, choked one of us haughtily, poking a finger at his chest, the churches have no more power than they do in England, and as for the tabloids, in comparison to the disgusting, evil English Sun, The Daily Record is a model of populist decency. I remember nodding proudly at that one, before moving huffily back to the free bar and some tiny pastry things with bacon. The fact that the chap being shouted at was Peter Mandelson is only of mild historical interest”.

The Daily Record resorted to begging in its editorial of 19 February, 2000 to back the “three heavyweight” Scottish ministers pressing for statutory guidelines. The tabloid “understood” they were the Enterprise Minister Henry McLeish, Finance Minister Jack McConnell and Parliamentary Minister Tom McCabe who regularly attended Catholic mass. When MSP Malcolm Chisholm stood up to criticise the cabinet ministers for leading the apparent u-turn over Section 28, he was greeted with ‘whooping cheers’ from other MSPs. Wendy Alexander had sat quietly while the split had emerged at a cabinet meeting at Bute House on Tuesday, 15 February. The Record held out a withered olive branch: “It would reinforce the First Minister’s reputation as a caring and humane leader in tune with the soul of Scotland. It would allow the ambitious Wendy a chance to repair some of the damage this affair has done to her promising career… But let us be clear: Scottish parents will not accept a fudge. At the very least the legal guidelines MUST make it clear that schools cannot present homosexuality as a viable alternative to traditional, heterosexual family life. That is NOT negotiable”. The Executive found itself under intense pressure. The results of the SSBA’s survey - not of just its own 1,700 members, but all 2,400 boards in Scotland - was thought to favour keeping the clause and North Lanarkshire Council, a Labour heartland, had also voted in favour of keeping the clause, at least until there were better safeguards. Along with letters already sent to Scotland’s head teachers, Education Minister Sam Galbraith was now considering another letter of reassurance to every parent in Scotland. The Scottish Express began to sound like The Record addressing the “finger-wagging school of government”, suggesting: “It’s never too late to listen, First Minister… The Executive believed they could dump the law banning the promotion of homosexuality in schools with impunity. We told them this could not be achieved… Donald Dewar should take more notice of the three realists in his ministerial team, rather than listen to the shrill political correctness issuing from a few zealots”. Alan Cochrane, in Scottish editions of The Daily Telegraph advised: “The simplest course for the Executive would be to get rid of the offending piece of legislation and bring in guidelines to more or less do the same thing, that is ban the promotion of homosexuality”.

The Record went to the trouble of organising another survey by Scottish Opinions Limited who interviewed 576 adults from Ayr by phone and found almost half – 42 per cent – of potential voters in the forthcoming by-election said Section 28 was going to affect where they put their cross. With the public presumably following their opinions, the tabloid warned: “It is not too late”. And it wasn’t too late for the SNP’s Alex Salmond who seized the opportunity ahead of the Ayr by-election and Labour Ministers leaking news of a split in their ranks, to suggest for the first time that he wanted statutory guidelines to replace Section 28. (Considering he led the nationalist party and Scotland was in the unique position of having no national curriculum or statutory guidelines, many thought the SNP leader should have been defending that position, not selling it down the river. This wasn’t the first time the SNP let Scotland down on issues that went to the very heart of nationalism. Whilst the SNP continued to make loud noises about its right to make legislation for Scotland, equalising the age of consent was also too much of a hot potato for Alex Salmond. In “very much a one-off”, Alex Salmond begged Westminster to do it for them, even though it was a devolved issue and the Scottish Executive was entitled to do it!)

During ‘Scottish Questions’ in the House of Commons on 23 February, English Tory MP Desmond Swain claimed that the Section 28 row north of the border only supported the claim by US televangelist Pat Robertson, that Scotland was a “dark land” over-run by homosexuals. Columnist Ron Ferguson in The Herald warned: “Pat Robertson is alive and well and wearing a kilt in what he calls our ‘dark land’.” But a crack had appeared in the wall. Sensing a shift after the parliament’s “arrogant decision” to repeal Section 28, The Record triumphantly announced a “CAVE-IN” on its front page. Donald Dewar was apparently throwing his weight behind “plans to give parents legal powers to stop gay sex lessons in Scots schools”. Instead of compromising Scotland’s position of having non-statutory guidelines, a new legally binding clause was going to be added to the Ethical Standards in Public Life Bill. But, as The Scottish Mail correctly forecast: “The war is far from over”. There was a crisis in the cabinet over the wording. After three days the sub-committee still couldn’t come up with a form of wording to suite both sides of the divide. Amidst threats of resignations and a potential split in the Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition; it was clear that collective responsibility could not be relied upon. The issue of gay sexuality was effectively threatening to tear apart devolution in Scotland. The Scottish Mail accused the Lib-Dems of “sabotage”. The Record tore into MSP, Susan Deacon for “leading a Lib-Dem revolt over Section 28”. Their editorial spat: “We will not be fobbed off with a fudge or some feel-good phrases talking about happy families and stable relationships. We fail to see why Susan Deacon should be allowed such influence since her brief is health, not education or local government. We do not know what kind of politically-correct world she lives in, but it is well-known that she has not bothered with marriage as her own family arrangement… She only made it as a Labour candidate on appeal and, on her performance so far, she would be no great loss… (The Liberal Democrats) like Susan Deacon, are out of touch. They should be ignored – just as they tried to ignore the Scottish people”. Journalist Ron MacKenna’s report was just as nasty. “It is Deacon’s opposition that is causing the biggest problem. She has attacked her colleagues for even considering giving in to public opinion. The rookie minister… has struggled badly and has blundered regularly. She was suspected of leaking details from last week’s crunch cabinet meeting… Her relationship with BBC political producer John Boothman has also caused eyebrows to be raised…”

Ministers who had backed repeal of Section 28 through thick and thin were understandably upset to find the goalposts being moved the moment their back was turned. It wasn’t just the form of words that was holding up publication of the Bill containing repeal of Section 28. The presiding officer, Lord Steel had yet to sign a certificate of legislative competence. His office claimed that he had done it four days ago. The Scotsman sighed: “It is as well that Scotland’s minorities do not depend entirely on the Scottish executive for their defence”.

The Scottish Express’s editorial cried indignantly: “…(Donald Dewar) refuses to say exactly what he means by a ‘stable family life’. Is he talking only about the traditional, married family, or not…? We predicted such a shambles at the very beginning. It gives us no satisfaction to say we were right”.

On Thursday, 24 February, the same day Jack Irvine announced he was giving up his weekly column in The Scottish Mirror to concentrate on ‘Keep the Clause’, there were extraordinary scenes at Holyrood as Tom McCabe moved round the Chamber speaking to his own Labour backbenchers and Lib-Dem MSPs, clinching a deal that would accept Donald Dewar’s replacement clause in the Bill on “the value of stable family life”. The First Minister’s timetable was shifted around before issuing an emergency statement on the matter. After he had made it, condemnation from the Catholic Church was swift. Cardinal Winning gasped: “Stable family life is not defined and therefore could be interpreted to include homosexual or lesbian domestic arrangements”. Gerald Warner in Scotland on Sunday went one step further, announcing the “formal ending of democracy in Scotland”. Journalists like Alf Young in The Herald, waiting for the media onslaught, warned: “It is time the gauleiters of Anderston Quay, who printed their presumptuous ultimatum over the page from ‘Amanda grins and bares it’ and opposite ‘Love Cheat Husband Has A Dram Cheek Too’, were told they are not the custodians of Scotland’s morals, nor the democratically-accountable arbiters of what should – or should not – be enshrined in law. It’s time The Daily Record was summarily disabused of the notion that it either runs the Labour Party or dictates Scottish public opinion”. They weren’t listening. The Record’s front page bawled: “DEWAR BOTTLES OUT ON GAY SEX DEAL”. The Scottish Sun cried: “INSULT” and The Scottish Mail shrieked: “NO DEAL”. The Record attacked Donald Dewar and asked: “Is he really the man for the job?” The capacious, ranting editorial accused him of allowing “the politically-correct amateurs he’s foolishly appointed to his cabinet…” including the “fanatical” Susan Deacon and “the pro-gay commissars in his Executive crucial days to rally their forces and prevent any meaningful climbdown”. Brian Souter told The Record: “We have to ask ourselves, who have the Government been listening to – gay pressure groups or Scottish families?” Jack Irvine dismissed the Bill as “clearly written to placate the militant gay rights lobby”.

As Donald Dewar toured the Ayr constituency in preparation for the by-election, a “source” told The Record: “Donald’s canvassing consisted of him being chased up closes by old ladies furious at what he was trying to do with Clause 28. He got the picture”.

As the by-election in Ayrshire approached, The Ayrshire Post’s front page carried the story of an Internet stalking case involving a 49-year-old man and Ayr Sheriff Court was shown police photographs of graffiti spelling out the words ‘lesbians’ and ‘whorehouse’ on the walls of the home of Nicola Ferguson.

In The Record there were pictures of a man sticking up a thumb, saluting a woman collecting signatures for ‘Keep the Clause’ and another of a woman, smiling as she signed the petition on the streets of the west coast town of Ayr. The Scottish Sun pictured a crying two-year-old baby Logan Hunter in his pram holding up a ‘Keep the Clause’ leaflet and advised schoolkids who were “taught two gay parents are as good as a married mum and dad is an insult to every mum and dad in Scotland”. The Daily Mail included a report by Daniel Jeffreys on a new biography by Tom King on music chief, David Geffen, called The Operator. Entitled “The Rise of the Velvet Mafia” Jeffreys’ feature put a spin on Hollywood’s “ugly secrets”. The article portrayed one of the films produced in Geffen’s studios, American Beauty, “as a caustic and dark attack on heterosexual family life”. Jeffreys declared: “Last year’s Oscars had Gods And Monsters with Ian McKellen and Brendan Fraser, which pushed the notion that gay soldiers are the truest heroes in battle”. He remarked that Geffen’s parties at Fire Island, a gay resort in the state of New York, was a “place the Velvet Mafia meet to indulge in extraordinary bacchanals”. He recalled a time when “they had little power in the movie business and not even a fraction of the political clout they have today” and added how the book “allegedly reveals that Geffen and his fellow gays were determined to get their revenge on the heterosexual establishment…” Jeffreys’ remarks echoed the sort of anti-Semitic remarks that once claimed Jews controlled the movies.

By Saturday, 26 February, police were called in to investigate a gay men’s health website after a complaint “from a member of the public”. English Tory MP Nick Johnston demonstrated his outrage on the pages of Scottish editions of The Daily Telegraph: “If this was a genuine site to educate people about the risks of HIV I would welcome it, but it is not. This site does raise questions with the planned repeal of Section 28, about the availability of this sort of material in the classroom”. Johnston had contacted Scottish Lord Advocate; Colin Boyd QC who advised him it was a matter for the police.

Glasgow’s Strathclyde Lesbian and Gay Switchboard received approximately 6,000 calls in 1999 and noted that during that year the number of calls had risen by 24%. Their co-ordinator said in Stuart Brown’s Report to the East of Scotland Repeal Section 28 Group: “This increase of 24% is not normal. It’s not just people getting ‘the winter blues’, or part of any normal seasonal increase. Many callers are specifically mentioning the (Keep the Clause) poster campaign”. Without releasing it directly to the press, Glasgow’s Strathclyde Lesbian and Gay Switchboard sent a statement to MSPs on the call logs and evaluation of caller statistics they had assessed for the three months to February 2000. They added: “Many callers are expressing fear and intimidation regarding the level of the media reporting in connection with the repeal of Section 28 (Section 2a) and in particular with the advertising campaign being run by the Keep the Clause organisation. In many cases callers are expressing feelings of increased isolation and exclusion from mainstream society. Callers are thinking carefully before coming out to family, friends and work colleagues given the reactions to the current debate. Some callers are regretting having ‘come out’. Some callers express thoughts of suicide”.

The Grampian Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Switchboard which covered the Highlands noted a similar increase since the campaign had started but wouldn’t at first be drawn on the cause.

An outreach worker for Reachout Highland, engaged in offering safer sex advice and distributing condoms in areas where men were meeting men, recounted a potentially dangerous incident in Stuart Brown’s Report to the East of Scotland Repeal Section 28 Group. “We were being verbally abused by a crowd of people, men and women. We felt that it was going to escalate. To avoid a very, very nasty situation we had to leave very quickly. It was a homophobic incident – connected to the work we were doing and us being gay men”. His boss Jacqui Brown added: “We’ve been doing outreach work for the last two years and this is the first time that such abuse has escalated to the level that staff had felt unsafe, so unsafe that they couldn’t do their work. I can’t help feeling it’s all to do with the Keep the Clause campaign”.

The following day there was an incident in Inverness when two gay teenagers were attacked. A man in his 40s had grabbed one of them by the crotch; then punched him in the throat. The Reachout Highland outreach worker reported in Stuart Brown’s Report to the East of Scotland Repeal Section 28 Group: “The lads were really shaken up when they came into our office. It’s a very serious incident and really bizarre that myself and another worker should have an incident and then, all of a sudden, there’s another one the next day”.

Next: Part 24 – Tony Blair heads for Scotland

garry@garryotton.com