Nick Clegg calls for faith schools to focus on homophobic bullying
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has said that faith schools must focus on homophobic bullying.
In an interview with gay magazine Attitude, he said his party would make it a requirement for faith schools to teach that homosexuality is normal.
He also said that gay couples in civil partnerships should be able to call themselves married, making him the most progressive of the three main party leaders on the issue.
PinkNews.co.uk is currently asking readers to submit questions to Clegg on gay and other issues.
On gay marriage, he told the magazine: “If we don’t want to discriminate, why do we make differences in language? Language is a hugely important signifier of how we segment society and how you seek to create differences between people. Since we don’t want to make differences on this and the law has moved a great deal to do that, we should be linguistically the same too.”
Clegg also said he would change the law to allow gay men to give blood. He also promised to guarantee genuine asylum seekers persecuted for their sexuality refuge in the UK.
In the interview, he attacked Tory leader David Cameron for being a “confection”.
Cameron was attacked by gay groups over his party’s European alliances with the Polish Law and Justice party, which has been accused of homophobia and anti-semitism.
Clegg said: “I don’t really know what he believes in. I don’t know what his convictions are and the reason is because they keep changing – and they seem to change for convenience.
“So when it mattered, when people went through the lobby to vote on Section 28, his convictions were on the wrong side. Suddenly they’ve changed and we get an apology!”
Satisfied with Clegg’s answers on gay issues? If you have any more questions for the Lib Dem leader, email [email protected] with ‘Nick Clegg’ in the subject line.
