16/02/2023
LGBTQIA+ newswire Pink News reports that a petition started by an Algerian man who was once based in London, trying to get the government to abolish LGBTQIA+ inclusion in Relationships Education in schools, has fallen flat on its face. The government clarified the official guidance for schools in a lengthy statement in response to the petition, which was signed by nearly two hundred thousand arch-homophobes and professional hate groups. The Department for Education told Pink News, “The statutory guidance states that all pupils should receive teaching on LGBT content during their school years. Secondary schools should include LGBT content in their teaching. Primary schools are strongly encouraged and enabled, when teaching about different types of family, to include families with same sex parents.” Researchers found that the originator of the petition was a shadowy figure called Faris Rahmani. They also revealed that the anti-LGBT+ petition was fraudulent, containing many signatures from outside the UK, including from the Vatican City, Egypt and Brazil, which all struggle with their own homophobia and transphobia. Even so, activist Thomas Willett tweeted that the community needs to mobilise now to stop the homophobes and hate groups from causing further problems. He said “It’s happening now. A petition to remove LGBT content from the education curriculum. To all those who deny the homophobia arising from the trans moral panic: WAKE UP. They want Section 28 all over again. When our trans siblings suffer, the entire LGBTQ+ community suffers.” However, another twitter user remarked that “Even two hundred thousand in a country of seventy million is not a catastrophe. The haters are a small group”.
