‘Keep the Clause’ meetings were organised up and down Scotland to strengthen the backlash against repeal. Socially conservative, industrial towns were targeted. In a meeting organised in a hotel in Clydebank, local political activist, Bill Lydon stood up in his sky-blue knitted pullover and introduced ‘Keep the Clause’s Hugh, Pat and Ross to a round of polite applause. “I’m going to give you all the facts that have been withheld from you”, he began proudly. A woman from the local school board nodded enthusiastically in his direction, adding in a loud whisper: “We’re gonnae hear some hot air, th’ night!” ‘Keep the Clause’ had attracted 30-or-so goodly church folk, along with Sister Mary running her eyes down a ‘Keep the Clause’ leaflet and packed them into a room at the Radnor Hotel in Clydebank. With the refusal by the Electoral Reform Society to organise ‘Keep the Clause’s referendum, Chairman Bill Lydon announced they were here because the “gay lobby” were getting their own way too much. Bill thought there ought to have been a referendum, but thanks to those “powerful pink people” and the “strong gay membership on the Electorial Reform committee… We can’t”! (There was much tutting). Referring to MP, Stephen Twigg, Bill named the man he thought responsible: “It’s “Mr Twiggy!” (Laughs). Sweeping aside all doubt, Pat Rowlink stood up in his black shirt and promised a referendum. “Within three or four days! he stormed. There were mutters of approval. “Everyone is going to get their say”!
Des McNulty, the local MSP wasn’t able to make it, so he sent a letter to be read out. Bill was disgusted. “It was a fudge”, so he wasn’t going to read it. If there were any withheld ‘facts’ to be dispensed on this night; this wasn’t one of them. It sparked trouble in the second row. A fiery woman from the Scottish Socialist Party got up to leave. “I’m not interested in your opinion. Des McNulty wrote that letter for everyone to hear and I wanted to hear it!” She finally got her way too. Des McNulty supported repeal and promised strong guidelines. Someone suggested the Dutch system of sex education. A woman spun round in her chair and spat: “And the world’s highest abortion rate too!” A man shouted: “They legalise sodomy of children! We don’t want fornicators in Scotland! The Scottish majority won’t have it!” The ‘moral majority’ got their way. There was a vote and only four people showed their hands in support of repeal. Bob stood up and waved his fist in the air in defiance at ‘New Labour’ and shouted again: “THE PEOPLE WILL HAVE THEIR SAY”! There was a thunderous applause. Coffee and biscuits piled up on a table by the door stopped them spilling out onto the streets to riot. Before I left, someone called Bob asked if I would be voting in the referendum. I told him as a gay man, my human rights were not up for negotiation. Bob smiled, shook my hand politely and assured me I would burn in Hell.
Where once, as the darling of the Scottish Trade Union Congress (STUC), Brian Souter had stood up and addressed the hall, now he was being targeted by them as “a threat to democracy”. The STUC document stated: “Misinformation has been disseminated by the Keep the Clause campaign and certain unscrupulous sections of the media. This has led to an unprecedented rise in the number of homophobic attacks and harassment being reported and experienced by our gay and lesbian communities”. Jack Irvine quickly dismissed the statement as “the work of a small clique of politically correct officials”.
On Monday, 17 April 2000, and in preparation for the vote that day by delegates of the STUC, Hamish Macdonell reported in The Scottish Daily Mail how a new poll had revealed 60 per cent of union members were opposed to the repeal of Section 28: “How union chiefs ignored poll over Section 28 repeal”. Most members of the teachers’ Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) and public health workers union Unison were in favour of repeal. The biggest majority against repeal came from the Amalgamated Electrical and Engineering Union with 85 per cent.
Producing only reports in support of Section 28 for The Scottish Daily Mail, Hamish Macdonell then declared a “blow to the Scottish Executive” when the Equality Network’s Tim Hopkins, addressing a fringe meeting at the STUC “admitted for the first time yesterday they have lost the battle for public opinion and the people of Scotland do not support the repeal of Section 28”. Macdonell insisted that such an “admission” from “a leader of the gay lobby” was a “clear indication the Executive is fighting a losing battle”. ‘Keep the Clause’ described it an “amazing revelation”. Far from it, since so called “gay leaders” were under no illusion that the results of a referendum – such as the one financed by Brian Souter - was not likely to show support for the repeal of Section 28.
Rowena Arshad, an equal opportunities officer told delegates Section 28 was “grotesque” and unprecedented in law since the days of Nazi Germany while The Record editorialised on Donald Dewar’s speech: “He sniffed at the ‘rhetoric’ about support for family life. What is wrong with supporting family life?” Jim Friel, president of the printers’ union, the GPMU charged Brian Souter with being an “anti-trade union bigot” and said church leaders should be ashamed of lining up with those “who would not look out of place alongside the rednecks of Tennessee”. The STUC pledged to call for legislation prohibiting incitement to hatred in a bid to prevent the future persecution of minority groups.
After the debate at the STUC, not a single hand was raised in support of retaining Section 28. Jack Irvine was less than satisfied with this and was reported challenging Bill Spiers, the general secretary of the STUC: “I didn’t ask how the nodding dogs at your congress voted. I asked what percentage of your members are in favour of repeal”. Irvine e-mailed Spiers to call him a “New Labour luvvie” and questioned his left-wing credentials. Bill Spiers publicly accused Jack Irvine of using “aggressive” and “childish” tactics. Gerald Warner called the STUC in Scotland on Sunday a bunch of “gratified knuckletrailers” full of “Neanderthal prejudices”.
Elsewhere, Bishop Holloway told the National Youth Assembly that over the past six months he had been ashamed to be a Scottish Christian and at a press conference in Edinburgh City Chambers, Tim Hopkins of the Equality Network issued statements from Save the Children Scotland, Childline Scotland and the Edinburgh Voluntary Organisations Council, all backing repeal.
When 60-year-old Clive Soley, chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party remarked that pensioners were more likely to vote conservative and were often racist, it was coupled with remarks by Peter Mandelson, chair of the election planning committee, who suggested there was no mileage to be had from chasing pensioners’ votes. Tom ‘Brigadier’ Brown challenged the “gaffe that could cost Labour dear” and sought to exploit the apparent abandonment of their vote. “It reeks of the smugness and calculating opportunism of the New Labour pipsqueaks… So the elderly are offended when the Governments at Westminster and in Edinburgh seem more concerned with homosexual rights. While there is so much undone for the old, they have every right to get bitter at the sense of priorities that puts gay and lesbian issues at the top of the agenda”. Donald Dewar hit back, calling it a “prejudiced” second-hand account of a Labour strategy meeting. He reeled off a list of reforms including the winter fuel allowance for OAPs saying: “The idea that we are writing off old age pensioners is grotesque and totally untrue. We are not writing them off, we are writing them in and writing them in big”. The Record sneered: “He was eight pages into his speech before he got any applause”.
The Record was more than pleased to print a letter from Steven P Took from Paisley who wrote: “The price of the Scottish Parliament, the Repeal of Section 28, Govan shipyards, the admission of 30,000 refugees, and now they’re calling OAPs racist. I don’t know who I’ll be voting for come the next election, but it definitely won’t be Labour”.
At the same time as fanning the flames of fury against homosexuals, The Record found “trusting” 18-year-old Kevin Stevenson to tell his story under the headline: “…MY RETREAT INTO HELL”. Stevenson claimed abuse at the hands of Tsering Tashi, or Timothy Mannox in the Samye-Ling Tibetan monastery in Dumfriesshire when he was 16. “Within a year Kevin’s life lay in tatters, his confidence shattered by the cruelty and hypocrisy of the very people he had placed his faith in”. When confronted, Timothy Mannox explained: “I wouldn’t deny it. There was physical contact. We were intimate because we were sleeping in the same area” but felt it was “a bit heavy” to call his advances a sexual assault. That was not how The Record saw it and continued to report Kevin Stevenson as having been “assaulted”. Stevenson claimed that Tashi lay naked beside him, saying: “He asked if I knew what spoons meant then he pulled me over behind him, and pulled my arm around his waist. Then he asked me if I knew what forks meant and pulled me on top of him so he was lying on his back and I was lying on top of him facing him”. (In Buddhism, monks frequently circumscribe the rules governing celibacy by penetrating between the legs). Prominently displayed at the foot of the story, The Record begged: “HAVE YOU A STORY… about a retreat which turned into a hell at the Samye Ling Buddhist centre or any monastery? If so, call us on 0141 242 3251”. Perhaps not quite the sexual orientation they were hoping for, a story was soon forthcoming. Record reporter Vivienne Aitken reported: “MONK JAILED FOR ABUSING GIRL, 14”. There was no mention of what Tenzin Chonjoe, 30 had actually done. Only the words of Daniel Travers, prosecuting: “The girl lay down on a bed with her feet up against the wall and he put his head on her stomach. After the assault, the girl got up and went outside. She was very shocked”. In his defence, Margaret Payne said: “He said he was just giving the girl a massage which was acceptable in his culture but he now realises the English are more restrained and less trusting”. Chonjoe was sentenced to three months and placed on the sex offenders’ register.
By Thursday, 20 April, the Scottish Parliament Local Government Committee had published its Stage One report on the Ethical Standards in Public Life Bill, which included the repeal of Section 28, and presented to the rest of Parliament the general principles of the Bill based on the evidence committees had taken during March. There was unanimous agreement to proceed in repealing Section 28 before the Scottish Parliament prepared to debate the general principles of the Bill, and vote on whether it should proceed. The only dissenting voice was one Tory member on the Committee, Keith Harding MSP. He was backed, amongst others, by most of Scotland’s main national newspapers: The Record, The Scottish Daily Mail, The Scottish Sun and Scotland on Sunday. Jack Irvine huffed in The Record. “If the Parliament and its committee poodles do not listen to the views of Scotland’s parents then Keep the Clause will not only continue its campaign but dramatically accelerate its activities”. In The Herald, Irvine said the Committee “positively salivated over the gay rights group Stonewall and the spurious links they drew between Section 28 and homophobic bullying…” The Herald warned the debate had “reached new levels of bitterness”.
The Record claimed “Donald Dewar is now facing an internal revolt by his own MSPs over Section 28” after The Record’s Carlos Alba was told that ten Labour MSPs wanted guidelines to state that marriage should be promoted as an ideal in sex education classes. Another nameless MSP, supposedly worried about a backlash from his constituents, cried: “When people stop talking to you altogether you know that you are doing something wrong”. The tabloid advised: “If they are backed by the Tories and the SNP, they would squeeze through by a single vote, inflicting the first defeat on the Executive”. The Record had “learned” that ‘marriage’ was included on the original draft that Dewar took to a meeting of the Labour group. “But he was persuaded to drop it following pressure from a number of backbenchers - including Kate McLean, Rhoda Grant and Johann Lamont - who believed it would discriminate against single mothers”. The Record’s editorial described the Executive as “under siege” and insisted: “Donald Dewar cannot go on kidding himself any longer. He is now being told from all sides that his attitude on Section 28 is wrong”. The so-called “rebellion” of course, “delighted” a “spokesman” for the Catholics who declared: “All Christian people will be very pleased”.
In their edition of Saturday, 22 April, a 57-year-old Ann Gloag, Brian Souter’s sister, bedecked in expensive jewellery and pushing boxes containing “120,000 reasons” why children should not be “taught about homosexual lifestyle issues” was pictured in The Record “making her first public appearance since the funeral of her 28-year-old son Jonathan who committed suicide” in September 1999. She was joined by a “pram protest” of 100 Christian activists, described by The Record as “concerned mothers” with their “children at the front” marching up to the Scottish Executive on the Mound. Unfortunately, being Good Friday, the Scottish Executive was closed. Using the ‘I’m not normally the sort of person who would do this kind of thing’ line adopted by parents depicted on the ‘Keep the Clause’ billboards, Ann Gloag begged: “I don’t usually do this kind of thing so I’m like many of the people here. They are mothers and grandmothers with their children and grandchildren. These aren’t the demonstrating type but they feel so strongly that they are willing to march. We chose Good Friday because it is a day when families are together”. Wearing ‘Keep the Clause’ slogans and carrying placards, Gloag pushed her daughter Pam’s one-year-old son Ross Macmillan in a buggy while his older sister Ashleigh, five, walked alongside. Over what was now widely believed to be “sexually explicit material entering the classroom”, Anne Stewart, a mother-of-three begged: “The vast majority of people - and everybody I know - is not homophobic… It’s about protecting our children. I’ve had a glimpse of the material and it appals me. It’s a form of child abuse, robbing children of their childhood. Some of the material is aimed at primary school children. It’s a sad day when that sort of stuff is being forced upon them”. Out of sight in The Record’s photo was Ayub Khan’s Multi-Faith Coalition that had otherwise failed to gain much support from the Asian community. “Feelings against this Bill is so strong that it has united Sikhs and Hindus”, he crowed. The Record’s editorial was aimed at the Executive: “Surely, they cannot ignore a Good Friday procession… The First Minister’s own consultation process was a flop which was hi-jacked by the gay minority - but 120,000 signatures is REAL consultation…” The Record demanded Dewar “should lend an ear now - before a national referendum proves how wrong he is”. The Herald noted how Jack Irvine, present throughout and carefully orchestrating the march, blocked access to Ann Gloag by newspapers unsympathetic to ‘Keep the Clause’.
There were few benefits to scapegoating gays for the protection of children other than to let sexual offenders and predators off the hook. Gay men have never been the only source of predatory sexual assaults on children. Such narratives service moral panic; they don’t contribute to answers. ‘Perverts’ or paedophiles have been eagerly absorbed by the media, be it a pathological loner or networks of male ‘outsiders’ utilising digital images and networks to bring otherwise externalised threats into the otherwise safe refuge of childhood, the home or schools of ‘innocents’. Such an unyielding belief of an external threat may bind the demonstrators, but it concealed the over-riding fact that children are most vulnerable to sexual exploitation in the family home at the hands of parents, carers, siblings, relatives or someone they already know. It also concealed the primary locus of most violence; most sexual pain and dysfunction: The family. And just as the family, as a unit, can be so good at collusion and denial in instances of abuse, so too was that front - united in assault behind ignorance or misinformation - painfully misguided.
