(a very short history by Tim Hopkins & Christopher Clannachan)
21st June 2025 marks the 25th anniversary of the Scottish Parliament abolishing (repealing) “section 28”. Section 28 was the law, introduced by the Thatcher government in 1988, that banned “the promotion of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”.
The campaign for repeal, 25 years ago, was hard-fought. The Scottish Parliament had only opened a few months before, and it was the first really controversial thing the Parliament did. But repeal opened the door to many other positive changes for LGBTQ people in Scotland over the next two decades.
How did section 28 come about, and what was involved in repealing it?
Before 1967, any sexual activity between men was a crime in the UK. In 1967 the law was changed in England and Wales to decriminalise sexual acts in private between men aged over 21. But not in Scotland, thanks in no small part to very conservative elements in the Church of Scotland.
In 1981, Scotland caught up with that change in the law. But some men continued to be prosecuted after that, if one or both was under 21, or if it was not in private. Prosecution could be for as little as kissing in public.
Meanwhile though, society was changing. More and more LGB people were coming out. By the mid-1980s, TV shows like Eastenders included gay characters (it took a while longer for lesbians to be included). Films like My Beautiful Laundrette were widely praised.
Perhaps it is not surprising then that there was a backlash, from small-c and large-C conservatives. HIV / AIDS gave them a further excuse to attack gay and bi men. And the other element of a toxic combination was the political opportunism of Margaret Thatcher’s government, attacking Labour-run local councils who had introduced sexual orientation equality policies.
So in 1987, shortly after winning her third general election, Margaret Thatcher famously told the Tory party conference that “Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay”.
Two months later, on 8th December 1987, what was first called clause 27 (later, clause 28) was announced. A new law that would ban “the promotion of homosexuality” across England, Scotland and Wales.
The Guardian, 8th December 1987
One of us writing this piece (Tim) saw that newspaper report, and discussed it the same day with the three people who ran the Blue Moon Café in the Edinburgh Lesbian and Gay Centre in Broughton St. We agreed that something needed to be done. We spoke with the then national gay rights organisation in Scotland, Scottish Homosexual Rights Group, but they said they had no capacity to act until late in January.
We felt that was way too slow, and so a group of around 10 of us got together to start a new campaign. Because we were taking action (unlike the established organisation SHRG at that point!), we called ourselves Scottish Homosexual Action Group, or SHAG for short.
We organised what was probably the first demo against the clause anywhere in Britain – tagging on to a march for Scottish democracy in December 1987.
The first demo against clause 28, in Edinburgh in December 1987
As an example of what we were up against, here’s a report of comments made that same month by James Anderton, the chief constable of Manchester Police:
Today newspaper, 30th December 1987
Shortly after that we organised an anti clause 28 demo on the Mound in Edinburgh, which several hundred people attended. Michael Cashman, the Eastenders actor and campaigner (who at that time played one of the first openly gay characters on UK TV), came up from London.
Five of the members of SHAG, plus Michael Cashman, after the demo
We joined the huge Never Going Underground demo against clause 28 in Manchester on 20th February, and the Stop the Clause demo in London on 30th April:
The SHAG banner on the London Stop the Clause march, 30th April 1988
The Edinburgh Bisexual Group banner on the London Stop the Clause march
But despite all this campaigning and much more, clause 28 was approved by the Tory majority in Parliament, and came into effect on May 24th 1988, changing its name to section 28.
Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988
SHAG were determined not to let that go without further protest, so we organised the Lark in the Park (the first Pride-like festival in Scotland), in Princes St Gardens in Edinburgh, on May 28th 1988.
Ticket for the Lark in the Park, 28th May 1988
Ian McKellen speaking at the Lark in the Park, 28th May 1988
In a strictly legal sense, section 28 didn’t do much. It was only applied in court once, in 2000 in Glasgow (right before it was abolished), by some anti-LGBTQ campaigners trying to stop grants from the city council to LGBTQ and HIV organisations. The case was dropped when the section was repealed.
But from 1988 to 2000, section 28 had a huge chilling effect on the overall situation for LGBTQ people. The law said officially that our identity was unacceptable, and our relationships were a pretence. The effect was particularly bad in schools, where section 28 effectively stopped any positive representation of LGBTQ people, and made it impossible for most teachers to come out.
But the campaign against section 28 had galvanised thousands of LGBTQ people to protest and act. New campaign and lobby groups were founded, and activism got a huge boost.
So throughout the 1990’s, organisations were calling for the abolition of section 28. The Equality Network was founded in 1997 as a new LGBTQ equality organisation for Scotland, and supported the establishment of the Scottish Parliament. In 1999, in the run up to the first Scottish Parliament elections, we issued an LGBT manifesto, with repeal of section 28 high up on our list of priorities.
Extract from the Equality Network’s manifesto for the first Scottish Parliament election, May 1999
The Scottish Parliament officially opened on 1st July 1999. After the Parliament’s summer break, we started lobbying in earnest for repeal of section 28. On 29th October 1999 the Communities Minister, Wendy Alexander, announced that section 28 would be abolished in Scotland, by a bill called the Ethical Standards in Public Life (Scotland) Bill, expected to pass by summer 2000.
The Scotsman front page, 29th October 1999
Some of the media welcomed repeal. But a few weeks later, conservative elements in the churches got together and launched a campaign to stop repeal. That involved the Catholic Church, the Free Church, and parts of the Church of Scotland and the Episcopal Church.
Sunday Herald front page, 12th December 1999
Most outspoken against repeal was Cardinal Thomas Winning, head of the Catholic Church in Scotland:
The Times front page, 18th January 2000
Scotland on Sunday, 23rd January 2000
Then, one of the richest people in Scotland, bus tycoon Brian Souter, announced that he was launching and funding a campaign to stop the repeal of section 28, which he called the “Keep the Clause” campaign.
He spent £500,000 buying up billboard sites all over Scotland to advertise his campaign – you could hardly turn a corner in Scotland without being confronted by a huge Keep the Clause sign. The Daily Record, under the editorship of Martin Clarke, strongly supported the Keep the Clause campaign, featuring it on the front page day after day. And there were full-page Keep the Clause adverts in all the other papers.
Keep the Clause billboards like this were all over Scotland during February and March 2000
Full page ad in the Sunday Express, 30th January 2000
But the Equality Network and other LGBTQ groups continued to make the reasoned case for repeal. Our side of the debate was winning where it mattered.
On 10th February 2000, a motion by the Tories in the Scottish Parliament, opposing the repeal of section 28, was defeated by 88 votes to 18.
At the start of March, the Scottish Executive announced that three quarters of those who had responded to the Executive’s public consultation about repeal were in support of abolishing section 28.
The Herald, 2nd March 2000
That didn’t stop Brian Souter though, who then announced that he would organise a private “referendum” about section 28. Using a copy of the electoral roll that was two years out of date, he sent ballot papers to every address in Scotland. But it was shambolic – lots of people never received ballot papers, and one person reported to the press that he’d received 24 copies!
The poll was widely considered a farce, and LGBTQ organisations ran a “bin the ballot” campaign advising people not to respond at all.
As a result, only people who were opposed to repeal responded in significant numbers, resulting a big majority against repeal. But the turnout was so low, and the poll arrangements so flawed, that it was in effect irrelevant.
The Herald reports the results of Brian Souter’s “referendum”, 31st May 2000
The same day, the Herald described the “referendum” as “flawed and tawdry”:
The Herald editorial page, 31st May 2000
By then, MSPs had looked at the facts and had made up their minds.
The final vote, on 21st June 2000, was 99 votes in favour of repeal and 17 votes (all Tories) against.
The Sun, 22nd June 2000
We celebrated outside the Parliament (which at that time met in the General Assembly Hall on the Mound):
Celebrating the repeal of section 28, outside the Scottish Parliament on the Mound, 21st June 2000 (photo: The Herald)
Cardinal Winning had been widely criticised for the language he had used during the campaign – calling LGBTQ people “perverts” and comparing LGBTQ equality campaigners to Nazis. Brian Souter spent a total of almost £2 million on the Keep the Clause campaign. But their campaigns had failed to stop repeal.
However, the Keep the Clause campaign did have some big effects. It was a really unpleasant experience for LGBTQ people, with relentless daily attacks in parts of the press, and on billboards all over the country.
And the vehemence of the Keep the Clause campaign took most people by surprise. It would be accurate to say that the Scottish Executive’s willingness to move forward on LGBTQ equality measures was dented for a few years, but by 2006 had restarted.
If the Keep the Clause campaign had succeeded in bullying MSPs into backing down from repeal, LGBTQ equality would have been hugely set back in Scotland, and so would other liberal measures in the new Parliament. So it really was a watershed moment for the Parliament – democracy and evidence, versus money and parts of the religious establishment, and democracy and evidence won out.
[At the same time as all this was happening in Scotland, the House of Lords blocked an attempt by Tony Blair’s government to repeal section 28 in England and Wales. It took until 2003 for the section to be repealed there.]
A Scotland without section 28 is a better Scotland, and the benefits of repeal were both symbolic and tangible. The repeal signalled a new era in Scotland towards a more LGBTQ inclusive society where we would not be treated like second-class citizens but instead should be treated with dignity and respect.
Repeal meant that schools and teachers were no longer bound by this harmful legislation – or its chilling effect – and could provide a more inclusive education. It also paved the way for future progress for LGBTQ people in Scotland, including around hate crime laws, equal marriage, and others.
Most significantly for young people, in November 2018 the Scottish Government accepted the recommendations of the Time for Inclusive Education (TIE – link opens in new tab) report, to embed LGBT inclusive education across Scotland’s schools. As the TIE campaigners said at the time, the destructive legacy of section 28 had been ended.
MSPs show their support for the TIE campaign for LGBT Inclusive Education (photo: TIE)
At Equality Network, we are proud to have staff of all age ranges, some of whom attended school before, during or after the enactment of section 28. Our Policy and Campaigns Officer, Christopher, was fortunate to attend school after the repeal:
“Thankfully, I do not remember this era because on the day of repeal of section 28, I was 3 years old. I’m grateful to the campaigners who fought tirelessly for the repeal, which meant that I was able to go to school without a dangerous law in place that treated me like a second-class citizen. Every child deserves the best start in life, regardless of who they are.
“Fast forward to my mid-20s, I led a Pride workshop for an LGBTQ+ group in a secondary school, which comprised teachers wearing rainbow lanyards, students of various identities, and their allies. Together, we explored queer role models and learned about our shared history. As someone born somewhat in the middle of being too young to feel the full effects of Section 28, but too old to feel the future benefits of repeal, it was bittersweet but comforting to see tangible progress.”
Equality Network spoke to a secondary school English teacher working in Scotland today who told us about the benefits of students being able to be open about their identity. They told us that:
“I’ve seen how much of a positive impact it can have on young people to be able to talk openly about their identity and to learn about the lived experience of others. When students feel safe to be themselves and to learn about different experiences, our school communities are more empathetic and respectful of others.
“Being able to openly acknowledge the contributions of LGBTQI+ people in the world also allows pupils to feel represented and included in their learning. Getting rid of Section 28 gave us the freedom to teach honestly and support all young people’s wellbeing, which benefits everyone.”
It would be nice to think that something like the introduction of section 28, and the need to spend more than a decade trying to get rid of it, could never happen again.
But that’s not true. Just like Margaret Thatcher’s homophobic outburst to the Tory conference in 1987, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak made similar comments to the Tory conference in 2023. But the target was trans people instead of LGB people:
“We shouldn’t get bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want to be. They can’t. A man is a man. A woman is a woman. And that’s just common sense.”
The same kind of dog-whistle, for the same political purposes. And attacks on trans people in the press are now as frequent and unpleasant as attacks on LGB people were in the 1980s.
At the end of 2022, the Scottish Parliament passed the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, by 86 votes to 39. The bill would have made it simpler for trans people to get legal gender recognition, bringing Scotland into line with many other countries in Europe and elsewhere. It had been developed and consulted on for years, and debated at length by MSPs. But the bill was then blocked by the UK Government, who claimed that it would adversely affect their responsibilities. Since then there has been a change of UK government, but no change in the blocking of the GRR Bill.
The current UK Labour government might not pass a directly anti-trans version of section 28, but the recent Supreme Court judgment could be just as bad. It reverses part of the clear intention of the UK Parliament in 2004 when it passed the original Gender Recognition Act. It remains to be seen what all the effects of the Supreme Court’s judgment will be, and there’s likely to be further court cases to question and clarify that. But it could end up being far worse for trans people than section 28 was for LGB people.
And that can only be put right by the UK government and parliament changing the law, because the Equality Act is not devolved to the Scottish Parliament. Do we think the current UK government will do that any time soon? We could unfortunately have as big and as long a battle on our hands as we had to repeal section 28.
But just like section 28, we will win in the end.
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Equality Network is a national lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) equality and human rights charity.
The Equality Network is a registered Scottish charity: SC037852, and a company limited by guarantee: SC220213.
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