Gove investigates Catholic school petition on gay marriage

Education secretary will investigate whether Catholic schools' gay marriage petition broke the rules

Guardian, Barry Neild, The Observer, Sunday 29 April 2012

The schools were encouraged to sign a petition against gay marriage.
Photograph: Mike Kemp/Getty Images/Rubberball

The education secretary, Michael Gove, is to examine claims that rules were breached when Catholic schools were asked to encourage their pupils to sign a national petition against gay marriage.

The Catholic Education Service (CES) wrote to nearly 400 British secondary schools to encourage support for the petition organised by Coalition for Marriage, a Christian campaign that has registered more than 47,000 signatures for its campaign.

A spokesman for the Department for Education said yesterday that it was looking into complaints that the request violated regulations concerning impartiality.

"Schools have a responsibility under law to ensure children are insulated from political activity and campaigning in the classroom," the spokesman said. "While faith schools, rightly, have the freedom to teach about sexual relations and marriage in the context of their own religion, that should not extend to political campaigning."

The investigation was welcomed by the British Humanist Association, which said the CES request broke the 1966 Education Act's rules on the political indoctrination of schoolchildren and balance. "Any gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender pupil at a school whose head declares that gay marriage and civil partnerships are unnatural is obviously going to feel discriminated against and trapped," said BHA's faith schools campaigner, Richy Thompson.

The CES, which acts for Catholic bishops, denied breaking any laws. It insisted that both its letter and the online petition were positive affirmations of marriage. "Catholic state schools have always been permitted by law to teach matters relating to sex and relationships education, including the importance of marriage, in accordance with the teaching of the Catholic church," it said.

"The Catholic church's view on the importance of marriage is a religious view, not a political one."

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