Sex education will help gay children

As a gay child, and in common with many gay children, I was terrifi for most of my school life. My earliest sexual encounters which all occurred before the age of consent were unsafe and I constantly felt that I could somehow be in trouble for who I was.

If I did receive any sex education that seemed relevant, though appall to me, it came in the form of an almost annual scandal the suspension and expulsion of a couple of boys unfortunate enough to be caught in some forbidden clinch. We were either invisible or bullied by our peer and those in authority, denied information about ourselve and denied the right for our sexuality to be just one of the many thing that made us who we were.

Of course, this was almost 25 years ago for me and many positive change have swept through society since then. We have an equal age of consent, anti-hate crime laws and more positive role models. I am deeply heartened that the government has finally done the decent thing and attempted to make proper sex education available to all schoolchildren and that this will now include information about homosexuality and civil partnerships.

This is not just about tackling the ever rising HIV figures. It is good because it is right. It is right that children should be allowed to come of age comfortably into their sexuality, it is right that every child be valued and nurtured, it is right that they should be given the information with which to protect themselves, it is right that they should grow up free from bullying based on a fundamental part of their personalities. It is right that they should grow up free from shame and fully equipped to enter healthily into the adult world of romantic relationships.

My pleasure at this big step forward is tempered by some predictable frustration that there is, as usual, a religious get-out clause.

Schools will be allowed to teach the subject "in line with the context, values and ethos of the school". More than a quarter of all schools in the UK are faith schools. This adds up to a lot of children who will potentially be denied these basic rights. This is a lot of children to be told that the best they can hope for is the call to chastity.

I was chilled to read a statement from the Catholic Education Service for England and Wales which said: "We are comforted in the knowledge that our schools and colleges will do an exceptional job in providing sex and relationships education, set within the teachings of the Catholic church." So does this mean that (in taxpayer-funded time) they will still be able to describe homosexuals (as well as masturbation) as "intrinsically disordered" and deny honest information about contraception and safer sex?

It is time to say no to that. We must have a rational set of fact-based resources for all children regardless of their faith backgrounds taught in schools, funded by the taxpayers. Let the churches say whatever they want within the confines of their own pulpits, but leave the indoctrination there.

Gay people are often, laughably, accused by their detractors of driving a "homosexual agenda". But if there is such an agenda let it be that no child will be left feeling bad, scared or ignorant about their natural psycho sexual make-up.