The result of this online vote does not say much for levels of social tolerance in South Tyneside. It suggests that homosexuality and transsexuality are perceived as distasteful, even corrupting, subjects from which young people should be kept away.
There is a misguided and negative, but none the less strongly-held, belief among some people that learning about homosexuality can turn children into homosexuals, as though gay and, for that matter, transsexual people are not really human beings at all.

Challenging this kind of thinking in the classroom would reap enormous benefits in terms of fostering equality and diversity, not least by reassuring young people growing up gay and trans-gender that their experiences, while different from those of their heterosexual peers, are nothing to be ashamed of.

Geordie culture is notoriously macho. That was a reason why the gay poet James Kirkup, from South Shields, longed to move abroad.

It is absurd to want to keep discussions of homosexuality and transsexuality out of our classrooms when sex between men has been a legal reality in Britain for the last 40 years, when civil partnerships have been recognised for three years, when the question of gay clergy threatens the existence of the Church of England, and when – just the other week – the first transsexual parent has given birth.

Mike,
Address withheld.