From: kellyc@ul.ie
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Homosexuality in Education - a campaign request
Date: 15 Sep 92 15:24:15 GMT
Organization: University of Limerick, Ireland


GLEN, the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network, are considering preparing 
a submission to the Irish government in response to the Green Paper on 
Education which was published some time ago.

It is not expected that such a response would work miracles, but it 
could be the start of a campaign that would in time produce results. 
This has been GLEN's experience in two other areas of lobbying.

The GLEN campaign to have Ireland's laws which criminalise gay male 
sex has resulted in a number of successes. The Law Reform Commission, 
a statutory body headed by a High Court Judge, reccommended a common 
age of consent for all sexual activity. All political parties in 
parliament agree that the law must be changed in response to the 
judgement of the European Court of Human Rights, although the Taoiseach 
has said that it is low on the list of priorities. 

The GLEN campaign on including sexual orientation in anti-discrimination 
legislation is begining to bear some fruit. The Civil Service, An Post, 
and Telecom Eireann have all included in their workplace codes of 
practice a statement that discrimination on the basis of sexual 
orientation is unacceptable. The Employment Equality Agency, another 
statutory body, announced some time ago that it had established that 
discrimination in employment on the basis of sexual orientation has 
occurred in Ireland. In addition, civil servants in the section in the 
Department of Labour who have responsibilty for draughting new 
legislation on discrimination in employment, have met with GLEN, and 
accepted that there are grounds for including sexual orientation in 
any updating of the law.

The successes to date are qualified. The law on gay male sex has not been 
reformed, and the debate about discrimination has not resulted in any 
legislative proposals - yet. 

It has been decided that a new team within GLEN should look at taking on 
the `education' brief. So folks, anybody care to help us by pointing us 
in the direction of suitable sources of information? Has anybody in your 
part of the world (at local, city, county, state, or country level) 
been through this kind of exercise with education authorities before? Have 
any educators or education experts published material which could be used 
to support a case for changes towards proper handling of homosexuality in 
the school curriculum? What about _argued_ resistance to such changes? 
For example did somebody effectively kill a proposal by citing an expert 
who opposed the idea, rather than, say, just see it die from popular 
opposition or large scale lobbying of decision makers?

I'm not asking you for detailed submissions - merely for suggestions as to 
where we could find useful material. If you have the two minutes to send a 
message saying that something was tried in X county Z sate in the US in 
1984 or 85, or that you heard/read about an article on this topic by Professor 
SoAndSo in YYY Magazine early last year, it would be appreciated. We can 
do some chasing once we have indicators of useful sources.

Many thanks

Cathal


---------------------------------------------
|     Cathal Kelly                             
|     Ollscoil Luimnigh (Uni. Limerick),    For the benefit of 
|     National Technological Park,          the non-Irish the
| IRL Limerick                              't' in 'Cathal' is       |
|                                           silent and the name      |
      (Ireland)                             is attached to the       |
                                            male of the species.     |
      kellyc@ul.ie                                                   | 
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