Friday, September 12, 2008

The latest edition of Attitude features a number of celebrities, gay and straight, who are lending their support to Stonewall's Education for All campaign. In an interview for Pink News, Matthew Todd, the editor of Attitude explains why stamping out homophobic bullying is so important. He says:

If you are being bullied for being overweight or because of your ethnicity then you can go to a teacher or your parents, who will hopefully condemn the bullying and try and give you some affirmation.

If you are gay it’s often hard to tell anyone, and at worst you will hear teachers themselves being homophobic. It enrages me.


CBBC's Bullying message board filters out all references to homophobic bullying (blog 29 July 2008), although filtering of messages with words such as 'gay' and 'lesbian' is denied by the BBC itself.

There are a few good signs however such as Newsround's inclusion of the topic on one of its teachers' PSHE website pages, which will hopefully be followed through into reports during Anti-Bullying Week in November. This year's theme for anti-bullying week is 'Being Different, Belonging Together'.

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