I find it absolutely facinating that those here who have rallied against tolerance and equity of homosexuality would also be big fans of Allan Jones. That said, I wish Allan was a big fan of his true self too.

I think when you belong to the majority, it’s very easy to overlook the difficulties faced by minorities, and to see their claims for protection as an imposition. It’s very easy to interpret homosexuals’ demands for protection as heterophobia.

This is precisely why programs are needed in schools to raise awareness of what it feels like to belong to a minority.

There aren’t gangs of homosexual thugs roaming around beating heterosexuals to a pulp http://snipurl.com/ztfz, so of course heterosexuals don’t know what it feels like to be under threat because of their sexuality. No-one sprays anti-straight graffiti on heterosexuals’ cars, so they don’t find out what it’s like to spend Sunday morning scraping Saturday night’s hate mail off the windscreen.

And one of the worst things about homophobia is the fact that is experienced disproportionately by young people. In 2003 a NSW Attorney General’s Department study found that 56% of respondents had been victims of homophobic attacks or harassment in the previous twelve months, and only 15% said that they had never been victimised (http://www.lawlink.nsw.gov.au/lawlink/cpd/ll_cpd.nsf/pages/CPD_glbt_publications). The study found that young people 16 – 19 years old were over-represented among victims of recent abuse.

It’s easy to talk about heterophobia when you live in a safe heterosexual world. Imagine that your fourteen-year-old son is being bullied at school because some other kids have decided that he’s a faggot. Think about how you’d feel in that situation, and then say that you think that anti-homophobia lessons shouldn’t be part of the curriculum.

w, Well put. I pity any son or daughter- be they gay or hetro or bi, whatever - of the posters you refer too. May they grow up and develop their own and not their parent's narrow minded views of the world around them

I have but one hope / prayer for Leigh, and others like him. And that is, that one of his children turns out to be homosexual. I'm sure his extreme views (because, Leigh, they are extreme - and what's more, they are extremely offensive) would change overnight if such a revelation were to happen.

It happened to Dick Cheney.

I think the exercise was presented to educate and groom a child and therefore it shouldn’t' have been about homosexuality. We want to set examples that are in our children's and societies best interest!

And yes, I accept that there are people that are gay, and yes I believe that they should be able to be identified as a couple and be able to get access to benefits. BUT I don't think that we should HAVE TO PRETEND that the couple is exactly the same as a man and a woman, or be accused of discrimination, as clearly it is not. The union of a man and a woman is the only union that can produce a child.

The essay should have just asked the kids to imagine they are disadvantaged and allow the student to pick their own disadvantage on which to write on.

They have to stop telling our children what to think and putting ideas in their heads.

The DET does really stupid things. They made my daughter, Year 9 in a Selective School, walk around for a week carrying a boiled egg that they had to pretend was a baby to give them an idea of what it was like to have a baby. My daughter said that the majority of girls actually made baskets and clothes for their egg and they talked to it as if it was alive and they loved it. If it was supposed to deter girls from wanting to have a baby it didn’t work and it was so stupid my daughter couldn’t do it. The humiliation of walking around in public with an egg, pretending it was a baby, when she was only 14, was embarrassing. She didn't do it and she wrote a report waffling on and trying her best not to say what she thought of the exercise but failing miserably.

If my daughter had of been asked to do that essay she would have done the same thing.

She wouldn't care that she got low marks, she couldn't do it.

Leigh,
Congratulations at least someone here is talking sense. The constant raising of these types of issues only polarises people, and people who reject this type of behaviour as totally unnatural will never accept such practises as normal.

I spent this last weekend with a group of 34 men and one graceous fellow was still single at 44 who in societies eyes they would consider having gay attitudes. His family consists of disabled children he has taken into his large home that he gives care to as a nurse.