Written by Dr Kayden J. Schumacher
Dr. Kayden J. Schumacher (they/he) is a Research Fellow at Coventry University working across all work packages on the Horizon Europe-funded YOUROPE project, which focuses on strengthening youth participation in European democracy, particularly among underrepresented groups. With a multidisciplinary background spanning psychology, education, health, and social policy, their work explores the intersections of mental health, physical wellbeing, gender diversity, and democratic participation across educational and community settings.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
(Santayana, 1905, p. 284)
In 1988 the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative Government responded with a moral panic to a same-sex couple in children’s book taking things out of proportion and aiming to pass legislation known as Section 28 (Lee, 2019). Section 28 was part of the Local Government Act (1988) and on paper, it was framed as a safeguard against “promoting homosexuality” in schools. But, in reality, it was a direct state-sanctioned silencing of LGBTQ+ people, specifically students and educators. Passing Section 28 made it against the law for any local authority to “(a) intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality; (b) promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship” (Local Government Act, 1988).
Looking back, it is staggering to think that such a discriminatory law ostracising an already marginalised group could take root in a country of people who had just been through the AIDS epidemic, where “Silence=Death” (Kerr, 2017) was not just a protest slogan but a daily reality. The 1980s moral climate in the UK was steeped in fear and stigma. Tabloid headlines fuelled homophobia, framing LGBT+ people as a public threat (Collins, 2025; Lovelock, 2018). Thatcher’s government leaned into “traditional family values,” capitalising on public anxieties about social change (Somerville, 1992). The moral panic around LGBT+ visibility in schools was amplified by broader conservative backlash against feminist gains, multiculturalism and what was labelled “political correctness” (Baker, 2022; Duffy, 2025; Weeks, 1990). Conservative MPs used the rhetoric of “protecting children,” but what they were really protecting was cisheteronormative dominance.
Resistance to laws like Section 28 did exist, as it always has. In a now-iconic example, a group of lesbian activists broke into the BBC during the 6 o’clock live news broadcast to protest Section 28 and the harm of this legislation. Their message beamed into living rooms and pubs across the country and was widely noticed, but ultimately did not stop the law from passing, thereby cementing a culture of silence, bullying, and marginalisation in schools across England. For the next 15 years, Section 28 legitimised an environment where LGBT+ students and staff were erased, and where conversations about identity, consent, or healthy relationships could be construed as illegal. For trans and gender-diverse people, whose identities were barely recognised in mainstream discourse, the law meant complete erasure.
When I arrived in England in September 2022, the very day Queen Elizabeth II passed away, I was beginning a PhD exploring trans and gender-diverse experiences in English schools from 1988 to 2023. As someone who grew up in a small, homogeneous Catholic town in the US, hiding my pansexual and transgender identity for fear of backlash, I felt an immediate resonance with what my participants told me about their school years under Section 28. Their stories carried the same themes I had known of silence, shame, and the need to fragment oneself, being one person in school and another in private. But unlike my own experience, their marginalisation was explicitly legislated.
Even after Section 28’s repeal in England in 2003, my participants described school as having a sort of “shadow” of Section 28, where there was an institutionalised culture of cisheteronormativity that persisted in school structures, policies and everyday interactions, despite the repeal of the law. There were still rigid binaries enforced in areas like PE, sex education, toilets, and classrooms. Mental health was rarely openly discussed, LGBT+ teachers often concealed their identities and bodies were policed according to narrow norms without affirmation or recognition of diversity.
The 2010s gave the impression of progress. The Equality Act 2010 legally protected people against discrimination based on “sexual orientation” and “gender reassignment” (Equality Act, 2010, s.7). Ofsted began inspecting for homophobic bullying in 2012 (Ofsted, 2012). The first Trans Pride was held in Brighton in 2013 (McConnell, 2014). Same-sex marriage became legal in England and Wales in 2014, and media representation of trans people increased (BBC’s Boy Meets Girl, Lavern Cox on the Cover of Time, Jazz Jennings’ reality show), there was a perhaps naïve sense that visibility and policy change were working together to build a more inclusive future.
But if history teaches us anything, it is that progress is never linear. The current climate in the UK carries unsettling echoes of the past. Today the UK is seeing the re-emergence of very rigid gender binaries in public discourse, something that harms not only trans people, but everyone whose life does not neatly fit the “trad wife” (Bower, 2024) or “manosphere” (Ging, 2019) mould (More in Common, 2022). There is an increasing disregard for diversity across race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion. Emotional expression is again being boxed in with boys allowed anger but not vulnerability, and girls allowed fragility but not power. And while the internet boom was just beginning in the 1980s, it promised connection and organising for change, it is now equally capable of isolating, surveilling, and policing interactions, echoing Section 28’s original aim: control.
The slogan, “Silence = Death” (Kerr, 2017), born from AIDS activism, still echoes with urgent clarity. Then, it was a rallying cry against government inaction during a health crisis, now, it is a warning, a reminder, and a call to resist the erasure of trans and gender-diverse lives in education and beyond. My research traces these legacies through the stories of trans and gender-diverse students and educators, showing that the repeal of Section 28 did not erase its shadows and its repeal cannot undo systemic harm. Laws can change, but cultures of silence linger, shaping classrooms, policies, and hearts. Section 28 teaches us that silence harms the most marginalised first, but its ripples reach everyone. Representation without structural change leaves the door open for backlash. We must be vigilant: attentive to how quickly silence can return, how rigid binaries can reassert themselves, and how appeals to “protecting children” can be wielded as instruments of control.
The work before us in our democratic society, especially in education is quiet but urgent, we must name injustice where it festers, nurture spaces for complexity, and ensure that trans and gender-diverse students and educators never again endure the sanctioned invisibility that once passed for law. Visibility alone is not enough. Genuine inclusion demands action, care, and relentless attention so that the lessons of the past guide us, the voices of the present are heard, and the future is shaped by courage rather than fear, only then can we ensure we all have remembered the past and are not condemned to repeat it.
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