the shiny side

Response to Opera North

Opera North has issued a response to the criticisms levelled at them for cancelling an arts project for children over inclusion of a gay character. http://operanorth.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/opera-norths-focus-on-bridlington/

At Stonewall’s Education for All conference last Friday there was a particular focus on issues surrounding sexuality in primary education. Sexuality, and in this instance gay male sexuality in particular, is not something which can be conveniently ticked off a list of PSHE provision when the school deigns it to be appropriate. Gay people are these children’s relatives, role models, community leaders and yes, teachers. They are not scary and children do not need to be in year 5 to appreciate that sometimes men like men and that there is nothing wrong with that. Of these 300 children some will one day realise that they are gay – what a shame that instead of experiencing an art project which presents a gay character to them at a young age they are being taught one principal lesson – what you are should be hidden and there is not even a place in art for it.

In the days of the rancid Section 28 (voted for by David Cameron in 2003 when all right minded people wanted it stricken from the statute books) teachers risked disciplinary action and even prosecution for telling children that homosexuality was acceptable. Schools became agents of government oppression and propaganda when they should have been catering to the needs of young people. It is still the case that 75% of young LGBT people have never been taught about people like them within their statutory education. So where are they supposed to learn about Harvey Milk? About the Stonewall Riots, about Alan Turing, the father of computer science,  being persecuted by the police in the 1950s, about the OutRage! protests? There are landmarks in the history of British Civil Rights which are being ignored when some of those involved (Edwina Currie who brought the first, and defeated, bill to equalise the age of consent for example) are still alive and in the public eye, when there is still new ground being broken every day for LGBT rights. Shouldn’t young people have the opportunity to learn about these events, which are actually shaping their lives?

Primary school children learn about families from the age of four. They have a right to learn about families like theirs, and about all kinds of people. How complex will their questions be if a character in ‘Beached’ is gay? Either they will accept the character without batting an eyelid or they will ask ‘what does gay mean?’. And a teacher, who has trained for four years at least to carry out this role, couldn’t answer that question outside of a prescribed timetable for when children are supposed to learn things?

The response from Opera North is simple misdirection and cowardice. If our art organisations are censoring and preventing art projects from going ahead because of gay themes, then who is going to protect the rights of our children to learn about difference and acceptance? What benefit was the repeal of Section 28 if publicly funded organisations such as a Opera North are going to deal in silence and suppression of difference?