According to the Telegraph, Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, has said that faith schools should be required to have anti-homophobic bullying policies in place.
Brilliant cross-post from The Young Mr Brown of the Marmalade Sandwich blog, following the comments made by Nick Clegg relating to faith schools.
Nick Clegg, faith schools, and bullying
According to the Telegraph, Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, has said that faith schools should be required to have anti-homophobic bullying policies in place. “If they’re suffering higher rates of homophobic bullying and violence then we need to put serious pressure on them. It needs
to be a requirement.”
So what are we to make of this? Well, let us note first of all that Mr. Clegg uses the word “if.” He is not sure about whether faith schools are suffering higher rates of homophobic bullying and violence. Are they? According to a report compiled by Stonewall in 2007, 75% of lesbian, gay and bisexual pupils attending faith schools claim to have experienced homophobic bullying, as opposed to 65% of LGB pupils generally. So perhaps they are. But who is to know? To claim to have been the victim of bullying is not the same thing as to have actually been bullied.
But Mr. Clegg’s suggested remedy leaves me somewhat concerned, for the following reasons.
1. He seems to believe that faith schools should be lumped together and singled out for serious pressure, despite the fact that 75% is not that much higher than 65%. Yet Mr. Clegg’s words would suggest to the casual observer that he thinks that faith schools have a significant problem that other schools do not have. Even if one accepts the findings of the Stonewall report at face value, it is probable that some faith schools do not have a significant bullying problem, and that some non-faith schools do. This business of lumping all faith schools together is a bit like the way some people say “If members of a certain ethnic group are considerably more likely to be involved in crime, then we need to target that ethnic group.” And I think that Mr. Clegg would not like that.
In passing, I might add that his approach reminds one of the approach of the government to home education. A review of 74 local authorities found that while 0.2% of children in the UK population were known to social services, the figure was 0.4% among those who were educated at home. The government’s response to these statistics has been to propose draconian and intrusive regulations for home educators.
2. The idea that the way to address the problem is to insist that schools have “anti-homophobic bullying policies” in place is depressing. Everyone has to have a policy in place for every eventuality. If a school has good leadership and good discipline, there is no need to have a policy in place, because bullying will be appropriately dealt with.
3. As a libertarian, I do not believe that it is the job of central government to insist that individual schools have any policies at all in place. This is simply not a central government function. (No doubt Mr. Clegg will be absolutely horrified by my saying this.)
4. And why this big concern about homophobic bullying? Why not simply be concerned about bullying per se? And of course the answer is because some people are obsessed with hate crime. As Tom Paine, over at The Last Ditch, says:
Why is the Left so obsessed with “hate speech” and “hate crime?” If I am injured, I want justice, whether my attacker was motivated by hate or merely indifferent to my plight. If my goods are stolen, I don’t care if the thief was driven by envy, hatred or greed. I just want my stuff back and the thief out of circulation.
If I am being bullied, does it really matter whether I am being bullied because of my expressed sexual preferences, or because the bully finds my voice irritating, or he doesn’t like the fact that I have different tastes in music from him, or whatever? Or course not. The problem is not homophobia – it is bullying.
Yes, I know that Mr. Clegg is a politician, and when he is being interviewed by Attitude magazine, he will be playing to the gallery and making a pitch for the LGBT vote. But I still find his words rather disappointing.
Edit: I also note that that Mr Clegg has apparently said that faith schools should be legally obliged to teach that homosexuality is “normal and harmless.”
Liberal Democrats? That is about as illiberal as it gets. “Stalin Democrats” would be a more accurate name. I’m sorry, but they have just joined the BNP and Labour in the “parties that I would not even consider voting for” category.