CLAUSE 28

noun (Politics) (People and Society) In the UK, a clause of the Local Government Bill (and later Act) banning local authorities from 'promoting homosexuality', and thereby imposing restrictions on certain books and educational material, works of art, etc.; hence also used allusively for the loss of artistic freedom and mood of homophobia seen by many as the sub-text of this legislation. Sometimes referred to simply as the Clause. Etymology: Formed by compounding: the clause numbered 28 in the original Local Authority Bill. Although the Bill became an Act in mid 1988, and the clause therefore became a section, the term Section 28 did not gain much currency outside government or legal circles. History and Usage: Clause 28 was discussed in Parliament for the first time at the end of 1987 and was welcomed by a large number of Conservative MPs as an expression of their party's commitment to 'traditional family values' and its pledge to tackle the problem of the 'permissive society' which had resulted from increased sexual freedom in the seventies and early eighties. From the opposite side of the political spectrum, though, the emergence of measures like Clause 28 in the late eighties was interpreted as being symptomatic of a growing institutionalized homophobia in the post-Aids era. It was largely the opponents of Clause 28 who continued to use the term--after the Bill became an Act in mid 1988--to allude to this perceived mood of artistic censorship and repressiveness. The homeless, the loss of artistic freedom (Clause 28), the unemployment figures and the cuts in arts funding were the subjects discussed. Independent on Sunday 18 Nov. 1990, p. 23 In the years immediately following 1967 there was a tripling of the prosecutions for homosexual offences. What is happening today follows the same logic, reshaped by a decade of new right dominance, the impact of aids, and the climate that brought us Clause 28. Gay Times Apr. 1991, p. 3