£20k handout for teens’ book with love story of transsexuals

TAXPAYERS have paid almost £20,000 for a book containing a transsexual love story aimed at children as young as 14.

The Scottish Book Trust is distributing the work – Secrets and Confessions – in secondary schools and public places, including libraries, to ‘reflect the experience’ of gay people and transsexuals.

The charity was given £19,500 by taxpayer-funded arts quango Creative Scotland to produce 150,000 copies of the book, which contains a story called The Confession by author and playwright Jo Clifford.

In it Jo – formerly John – Clifford,

‘It is unsuitable for 14-year-olds’

a 59-year-old ex-bus conductor, describes her experiences of trying to start a relationship with a woman as a young man confused about gender identity.

Clifford was previously at the centre of controversy after staging a play – Jesus, Queen of Heaven – in which Jesus was portrayed as a transsexual woman. It was also funded with taxpayers’ cash.

In her short story, also published online, Clifford wrote of how she was unable to have sex with a girlfriend as a student because of confusion about her sexual identity.

Clifford – who was paid £500 for the story – wrote: ‘What turned me on was the thought of being a woman and wearing women’s clothes.’

But she ‘couldn’t tell her [the girlfriend] the truth… which was that in trying to repress my being trans [transsexual] I had repressed my own sexuality. And a whole load of other things besides…’

Last night, a Christian campaigning group voiced concern that taxpayers’ money was being used for a ‘deeply offensive’ book that was unsuitable for teenagers. Dr Gordon Macdonald, of CARE for Scotland, said he had seen the book ‘lying around’ on open display while on a family visit to Kirkintilloch Library in Dunbartonshire.

‘For material of this sort to be distributed to children – and for it be financed in the first place by the taxpayer – is very wrong,’ he said.

‘It is unsuitable for 14-year-olds and the fact that Jo Clifford, who caused so much controversy and genuine offence with the Jesus play, is involved in this project makes it doubly offensive.’

In the short story Clifford also recounts how, after confessing her confusion about gender identity, the relationship flourished.

She writes: ‘I must have stammered something about wanting to be a girl and being ashamed of it and she [the girlfriend] said… she’d always known there was something very feminine about me and that was one reason why she liked me. And her saying that saved my life.’

She adds: ‘I loved Susie for 33 years, and she loved me. From the time we first met until the time she died. And I love her still…’

In 2009, hundreds of people staged protests in Glasgow against Clifford’s Jesus play, which critics branded ‘blasphemous’. It porresearching trayed Christ as a man who wants to become a woman. In publicity material, Clifford posed as the Messiah in a white dress, with blood dripping from her hands and feet.

Last month, the Mail revealed that thousands of pounds of public money were given to Glasgowbased artist Eilidh MacAskill gay-friendly fairy tales. The cash allowed her to study ways of addressing gay and transgender issues with children through live performance ‘without raising the spectre of paedophilia’.

Commenting on Clifford’s story, a book trust spokesman said: ‘The book we compiled for Book Week Scotland [in November] is comprised of real stories from the real people of Scotland. The purpose of the campaign is to provide a platform for people to tell their own stories in their own words.

‘Stories reflecting the experiences of people from the LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] community are to be welcomed as part of that aim.

‘We distribute the book through public places including libraries. This year, it was decided that the content of the book was suitable for people aged 14 and over and it was distributed as such.’

‘Controversy and genuine offence’