Today is the 30th anniversary of the enactment of section 28, a law banning the promotion of homosexuality passed by Thatcher’s government, which blighted my adolescence & that of many young gay people.
S.28 was a nasty bit of legislative queer-bashing, but it is sometimes forgotten that its origins were in the commendable efforts of local authorities, especially those ('loony left') in London, to provide non-homophobic education materials.
The Daily Mail, among others, led campaigns to ‘save the children’ from ‘sordid sex lessons’. One book at the centre of the storm was ‘Jenny Lives With Eric and Martin’, itself perfectly bland and even quite dull.
The then Education Secretary described it as “grossly offensive homosexual propaganda” as part of a jeremiad against left-wing local authorities. (The tension between left-wing local government & Westminster had long irked Thatcherites.)
Clause 28 was introduced by David Wilshire in the committee stage of the 1988 Local Government Bill. He produced a ‘dossier’ including educational materials and recruitment ads for local government gay support workers to bolster his claim.
The surrounding debates in both Lords and Commons make for difficult, appalling reading. 
A Commons Research Paper (00/47) makes clear there were also many in the Labour Party who shamefully welcomed the bill as well. (Cunningham was on the shadow front bench at the time, and is now a Lord.)
It should be said that not all MPs and Lords were on board with it. The Left of the Labour Party spoke perceptively and accurately about the clause’s likely effect. Here are Tony Benn and @HackneyAbbott:
Despite significant activism from gay groups, the clause passed. It undoubtedly had a chilling effect in schools, to the point where teachers simply *didn’t speak* about gay people, and were often worried about intervening on homophobic bullying.
I was in school when the 1997 Labour government was elected. The convulsions in the gutter press in the years between then and its repeal, and the equalisation of consent laws, were appalling. It filtered down to the playground, too.
I recall being in the back of my granddad’s cab one morning, reading The Sun, which was ‘his’ paper, reading some Littlejohn bile and effluvia about it all – and thinking ‘that’s me he’s talking about’. ‘I’m one of them’.
I was terrified and ashamed and tried desperately to keep silent about it and hide it. Section 28 contributed to that. It was only part of an atmosphere of silence and shame, but a real part. It was legislative queer-bashing.
S.28 was a green light to homophobes across the board. And its architects knew that. It did unbelievable psychological damage to thousands of young people. Shame is an injury with long-lasting effects.
It’s not just thirty years ago. David Cameron used s.28 to attack Blair extensively and repeatedly prior to his own election & voted against repeal in 2003.
You can read the repeal debate here, and look at the votes, too. Cameron, Fallon, Ken Clarke, IDS, Boris Johnson. Many still in office. api.parliament.uk/historic-hansa…
If we live in better times now, then much still remains to be done. But Section 28 was just one of the many things that produced in me an ineradicable hatred of the Tory Party. I would happily piss on the graves of its architects.
