29 June 2017
Believe Me
Eddie Izzard and LGBT teaching.
By Lynda Goetz
Gender and sexuality are, these days, something of a minefield. Whenever I hear the term LGBT, I am ashamed to say I cannot help thinking BLT, which is clearly a frivolous and inappropriate response to a serious subject. However, for those of us who have more than a few decades under the belt, the pace of change in terms of attitudes, responses and legislation in this area has been somewhat dramatic and, as I pointed out in an article earlier this year The Future of Civil Partnerships, it is only 50 years since homosexuality was legalised in this country. Since that time, however, the UK has led in redefining relationships, marriage and gender recognition.
This week Eddie Izzard’s autobiography Believe Me is ‘Book of The Week’ on Radio 4 and he can be heard reading from an abridged version in clear, carefully enunciated tones at 9.45 in the mornings, or, of course, on iPlayer. In it he tells, inter alia, how he slowly came out as ‘Trans’ and of the courage it took to step out of the house he was sharing in Islington with medical students many years ago and go to a help group nearby ‘wearing make-up and a dress’. In the same week, we hear of a private Orthodox Jewish school (also in North London) for girls aged three to eight which has failed three Ofsted inspections because it does not teach pupils about homosexuality or gender reassignment, even though the school was otherwise praised for “good subject knowledge and high quality classroom resources”. It could face closure as a result. Is this right?
According to a spokesperson from the campaign group Christians on Education, the decision to fail the school on these grounds showed that “the Equality Act is actually hierarchical with sexual orientation and gender reassignment at the apex of the Act”. The Act referred to is the Equality Act 2010, a piece of legislation which essentially brought together existing anti-discrimination legislation. Is it correct to say that sexual orientation and gender reassignment is at the apex of the Act? Almost certainly not, but it is true that the minority groups involved in the LGBT movement are, like many minority groups, noisy and vociferous. They are ‘punching above their weight’ in terms of the impact they are having on the way society is conducted. A number of religious groups are having difficulties with this.
Discussing the subject with a group of friends, it was interesting to consider the different viewpoints. None of them have small children, nor have they got to the point of having grandchildren. They have or have had quite varied careers and could all be considered Christian, although with varying intensities of attachment to the Church. A couple of them were not convinced that children as young as three needed to have this information ‘thrust down their throats’, but the one who is a teacher was very insistent that ‘age appropriate’ information was important from early on and that we do have a duty in modern society to make children as young as three aware that even if they personally feel very happy and secure in knowing who they are, not everyone has this luxury.
This is a very tempting argument, but should it take precedence over the cultural and religious ideas of the group into which that child is born? This becomes perhaps slightly more difficult. Is it the duty of the state to inculcate its population with a set of doctrines, however right the majority (or perhaps only the vociferous minority) consider those views to be? We are, or used to be, a Christian country. However, we have allowed, even encouraged, other religions to exist and flourish alongside that religion. Many are unhappy with being forced to bow to and assimilate moralities with which they feel they cannot agree. Should they be forced to bring up their children learning attitudes with which they disagree or is it the child’s right to have all the information available so that they are free to make an informed choice of their own in due course?
The inspectors who visited the Vishnitz (or Vizhnitz) Girls School last month concluded that the fact that students are not taught explicitly about issues such as sexual orientation “restricts pupils spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and does not promote equality of opportunity in ways that take account of differing lifestyles”. Vizhnitz is the Yiddish name of a town which was originally in Austria but is now in the Ukraine. It is where Rabbi Menachem Mendel Heger, the founder of the Hasidic dynasty, now known as Vizhnitz, was buried. The Hasidic communities are all, by their very nature, inward-looking. Is it the State’s duty to force them to look outwards so that their young members can, as Eddie Izzard says they can, carve out their ‘own small slice of freedom of expression’ or should they be allowed to carve out their own community lifestyle within the society in which they live?
This is very much a problem of our age. Hitherto, we have, to a large extent, abided by the principle of ‘live and let live’, but when situations like the Trojan Horse schools in Birmingham have seen those who wish to undermine our society and promote their own take advantage of our freedoms then perhaps, ironically, we do have to become more doctrinaire in order to allow those freedoms to continue.
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