Same sex rights are a reality

Sir, – Otto Inglis (Letters, November 13) opposes schools teaching about gay rights because he sees them as a moral issue and therefore a matter for parents rather than schools.

While it is possible to take moral issue with gay rights, they are themselves a legal reality. To teach that in Scotland homosexual couples can legally have sex, marry and raise children is not to offer moral opinions but simply to state facts.

Sex education cannot have a more important function than helping children to protect themselves, when they become sexually active, from life-threatening infections. Schools owe this duty of care as much to homosexual as to heterosexual pupils, and cannot fulfil it equitably without delivering accurate information about homosexual sex, the risks involved and the preventative measures available.

The government’s plans do not, as Mr Inglis alleges, “prevent people from teaching their own children their own beliefs”.

If people want to tell any gay children they might have that gay sex is evil and will lead them to Hell, they will still be free to do so regardless of legal and medical facts taught in schools.

Likewise, any parents who wish to tell their daughters that women should not enjoy the same rights as men are not silenced by what schools might teach about actual legal sex equality.

Robert Canning. Secular Scotland, Broughton Street, Edinburgh.