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CHAPTER 1: Well, It Could Have Happened...
The Sunday Globe
THE WEEK IN THE MEDIA
SECTION 28 GOES BANG IN BASINGSTOKE
It has now been nine days since a 16-year old school student’s emotional plea for understanding began resonating from the assembly hall of a Basingstoke comprehensive school. Having recently won a local journalism competition, the teenager used his acceptance speech to ‘come out’ to staff, parents and fellow students, and followed up with some heart-felt words on the suffering he and others like him had to endure. ‘It’s only love’ he proclaimed, before leaving the stage to a belated but rapturous standing ovation.
The next morning the Basingstoke Gazette ran the story on the front page. Having been in attendance to present the competition prize, the editor ‘felt a sense of obligation’ to take the message beyond the limits of the school. Beyond the school it went. By Sunday morning the three leading broadsheets had included an article on the events, with The Observer claiming this could herald the start of a ‘national revolt’ against Section 28, a clause which ‘promotes bigotry and inspires hatred’. Bold words, one might say, but as the discussion developed during the course of the week, they didn’t appear to be too far from the truth.
Monday saw the crossover to the medium of television, when an angry caller to ITV’s This Morning demanded that the members of staff who had joined in the applause at the ceremony be disciplined for having violated Section 28. This extreme view opened the proverbial floodgates, with the station’s switchboard being inundated with calls from people arguing for the repeal of the Section, claiming it had caused nothing but misery to thousands of youngsters across the country. A teacher from Glasgow highlighted how, despite Brian Souter’s best efforts, the repeal of the Section had gone ahead in Scotland, allowing the staff at her school to begin dispelling the myths and misrepresentations that surround homosexuals. A father from Bristol criticised the government for not having forced the repeal in England through in the last parliament, further lengthening his son’s suffering at the hands of bullies, while a lifeguard from Yorkshire described how she was constantly hounded by local schoolchildren who called her a ‘dirty dyke’ and ‘lesbo bitch’.
However, the most memorable moment came when Clare Rayner found herself dealing with a suicidal young teenage male. Claiming he was constantly being beaten up, that all his clothes, books and other items were being defaced with homophobic sentiments, that he had been stripped naked and thrown in a pond, all because he ‘acts a bit gay’, had made him want to end his life. He said there were some pills in the bathroom, and he just wanted to know if he should take them. While Ms Rayner did her best to calm the lad, Judy Finnegan left the set having been overcome with emotion from this latest call. At this point, the continued presence of this debate in the headline news was assured.
Tuesday morning saw the battleground switch back to the newspapers, but this time entering the world of the tabloids. Lorraine Kelly seemed to lose her sweetness-and-smiles composure in The Sun as she lambasted the ‘prejudicial nature of this clause’, while in the same paper Richard Littlejohn blasted the ‘anti-family values’ that were being presented across the media by 'degenerate over-tolerant hacks'. A similar lack of unity was observed in all the other tabloids, but it was The Mirror’s call for the debate to move into the Commons that struck a chord with many. The minions of Stonewall came out in force, demanding that the government begin proceedings for the repeal of Section 28, while Baroness Young gathered her troops for a right-wing counter-attack.
Meanwhile, the local papers of Hampshire were trying to get the scoop of the week, namely an interview with the troubled student whose speech had triggered the media frenzy. Camping outside the boy’s house, journalists and photographers became increasingly frustrated by the lack of a sighting, but the actions of another student elsewhere in the town provided them with fresh material to flog to the national press.
John Dixon, the 18-year old son of the highly successful Pimlico-based lawyer Raymond Dixon and his wife Joyce, disappeared from the family home on Sunday night with over $3000 of his father’s money in hand. Sightings at Basingstoke station and on the concourse at Waterloo suggested he was accompanied by Hampshire’s celebrity student, who cannot be named because of his age. Subsequent reports from a hotel in north London confirmed that Dixon was with the student, and that the boy’s parents had also been seen visiting. Though Raymond and Joyce Dixon had not reported the £3000 as stolen, the reports set off a simultaneous search by police and tabloid journalists, all of whom wished to interview both Dixon and the student on various matters. Though no police spokesperson was forthcoming on the exact details, many in the press reasoned that supposed statutory rape of the underage student by John Dixon would be one of the issues on the agenda.
The antics of the two teenagers kept the tabloid press busy during Wednesday and Thursday, but a late-night announcement by the Prime Minister that Section 28 would be discussed during Friday’s session in the Commons brought the earlier debate back onto the front pages. Sure enough, during the course of Friday a lengthy and heated debate got underway in Parliament, though many MPs were arguing that the speed with which the issue had gotten into the chamber was unconstitutional and merely in response to media pressure. Nevertheless, by the end of the day Lib Dem Basingstoke MP Gordon Fletcher had presented a hastily-concocted Bill to the Commons calling for the repeal of Section 28. Rumours circulating in the Palace of Westminster suggested that other MPs were aiming for a Bill lowering the age of consent for homosexual relationships to 16, the current age of consent for heterosexual intercourse.
And so to Saturday. The broadsheets led on a mixture of the latest suicide bomb in Israel, which this week struck a café in Eilat, and the events in Parliament from the day before. The Sun and the Mirror continued their Section 28 debates, whilst the News of the World presented another celebrity plastic surgery story. For the record, the Daily Star suggested that the Basingstoke student was last seen eloping with Steven Gately to a Steps concert. Scintillating stuff.
The week ahead is sure to present nothing other than an anti-climax to the whole issue. Even if this latest round of attempts to equalise the treatment of ‘gays and straights’ in English schools is successful, it will be some time before the Bill becomes an Act, and even longer before the staff and students of the country’s comprehensives can undo the inherent prejudice that obviously exists. By then the compassionate words of the Basingstoke student will sure to have been forgotten, and Middle England may still join Baroness Young in resisting the onset of this latest ‘threat to the institution of family’.
Meanwhile the whereabouts of John Dixon and his companion will, in all likelihood, soon become known to the police. Tabloid editors’ hunger for the chase will diminish sooner than you can say ‘Britney In Crop-Top Shocker’, and it will be up to the families concerned to work on their ‘issues’. Let’s just hope they get left in peace.
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This is written as though the events took place before the age of consent for homosexuals in the UK was equalised with that of heterosexuals (something that still applied when Get Real was released). For those of you from outside the UK who may not be familiar with the horror that is Section 28, it is a clause in an Act of law that prevents teachers in state schools from promoting homosexual relationships as 'normal'. It effectively ties the hands of school staff when they are faced with homophobia and gay-bashing in the playground, and thus leads to a great deal of pain and suffering for youths who are beginning to come to terms with their sexuality. It also prevents teachers with homophobic attitudes from being disciplined for further inciting hatred in the classroom. The Section was repealed in Scotland by the newly-devolved Scottish parliament, despite widespread campaigns against such a course of action led by Stagecoach chairman Brian Souter (booooo to Stagecoach, though as a staunch environmentalist I would not condone a boycott of their services, as that practically rules out bus and train travel in half of the UK!). The Labour government failed to get the repeal far enough through the complicated processes in the UK parliament in London (yet another reason why England needs its own equivalent of the Edinburgh assembly), and has not included it in the manifesto for this term of office.
For the few people who have never seen her riding past on her broomstick at night, Baroness Young is a leading right-wing member of the House of Lords (the British upper chamber of parliament) who dresses her racism and homophobia up as maintaining Christian morals and preserving the sanctity of family life. In short, she talks shit.
Lorraine Kelly is a rather sweet and charming presenter on morning television. Richard Littlejohn is a prat (who I was unfortunate enough to have to meet on several occasions, as his equally bigoted son was in my class at secondary school).
The Daily Star is our slightly tamer equivalent of The National Enquirer. If ever you want to know what definitely hasn't happened in the world, pick up a copy and have a read (I use the last term loosely!).
Right, that's enough of a rant for now.
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