How do you teach gay relationships to children?

'Dear God, please help me...'

UPDATE: I posted this on my MyTelegraph blog site and guess what!? It was removed! So obviously I re-posted it. I think my account is in danger! I don't believe in being controversial for its own sake, but apparently, I'm not allowed to say this...

Let's just take Nick Clegg at his word and imagine we are in the classroom observing a lesson on gay relationships in sex education. Exactly how is this lesson going to be taught? Personally, I failed as a teacher in a PGCE in Primary Education and the experience was so horrific I don't want to set foot in a classroom as long as I live, but, that said, I do know how teachers teach. Firstly, there is a lesson plan and at its heart is a 'teaching objective'.

So, then, teaching objective for this lesson is, 'That the children have a good understanding of same-sex relationships.' I don't envy the task of the teacher who has to teach this most likely certain future sex education lesson, since whatever decrees even opposition leaders issue in gay mags eventually get onto the statute book. After all, wasn't it a Lib Dem who got the ball rolling on abortion? Teachers, as we know, have to confront a class of giggling, snotty schoolchildren and many find even teaching standard sex education an unmitigated trauma. Not only is this field of education ground on which children can be outrageously crude and show off to their friends, but it is without doubt a moral, intellectual and emotional minefield for the teacher. Who knows? In a few years time maybe faithful Catholics and other Christians will be unable to teach in schools on the grounds of conscience alone, so if you are a Catholic teacher, enjoy the profession while you can.

Children, even teens have an innate understanding of what is 'natural', therefore what we are dealing with here is a re-education of the minds of the young. The reason why children suspected of being gay are teased and bullied, which is always hurtful, is because children know that homosexuality goes against natural law and any teacher educating children should be aware of that one acute fact. The graphic nature of modern sex education, which nowadays steers itself away from the need for adolescents to be aware of the 'facts of life' and to know that sexual expression is reserved for one person in the stability of marriage, sets up a pornographic stage in which the 'normality' of same-sex relationships will be taught.

How do you teach 'same-sex relationships' without recourse to imagery, mental or actual which will cause children confusion at best and profound scandal at worse? I have to say, there will be few teachers who are not floored by children's questions during the lesson on the equivalence of gay relationships. Questions children are likely to ask and statements they are likely to make in a dialogue may include classroom boulders such as this (...granted these children are quite eloquent...)

"So if the man puts his penis in the other man's bottom what is the purpose of this? If it is not to make a baby then what is it for?"

"If it is for pleasure alone then why is it good? What is good about one man putting his penis inside another man?"

"Wouldn't it be better if the man put his penis inside a woman because then a baby can be born?"

"Wouldn't it be better if the man put his penis inside a woman because if lots of men did what these men are doing women would be lonely?"

"Wouldn't it be better if the man put his penis inside a woman because if lots of men did this instead then there would be a lot less babies being born and babies are good, my mum just had another one?"

"Aren't these men just being selfish?"

"But isn't that where poo comes from?"

"I'm glad my Dad doesn't do that."

"Is this really 'natural'?"

"Isn't this just dirty?"

"Is that hygenic?"

"Isn't that really painful?"

"Does anyone else feel a bit sick? Please can I go to the toilet?"

"What if any of us are gay? Who here actually wants to do that?"

That is the problem with trying to introduce a sexual sub-culture into a classroom.

"Next week, kids, S&M with Katie and George."

Children know full well that homosexual sex is not 'natural' and that while teachers can tell them it 'feels good' they know that it is not love. If I learned anything in my PGCE, it was that children are not dumb and they can smell bullshit, lies and fear a mile off. Teaching this will involve all three. To anyone who has to teach this garbage to children, in a way, you have my sympathy, because in what is already a challenging task, it looks like our legislators are going to make your job a thousand times harder and what is more, you're going to have to mark their papers to see whether they 'got' the lesson objective!

I have every sympathy for any children who will grow up to be 'gay' and feel miserable and outcast, but, I assure you, Nick Clegg's suggestion is most certainly not the way to approach this inflammatory and highly sensitive issue...That said, why bother? Nowadays, whatever a teacher may say, children's 'sex education' comes from TV and the internet which is uncensored as I know only too well. 'Dear God, please help me.' The chances of finding a lesson involving those five words in five years time are not looking good, but as a lesson objective, it would serve children better.