According to the NSW education minister Adrian Piccoli and premier Mike Baird, school is a place to learn maths and English; everything else is a waste of time and should be banned. There is no time for “tolerance” in schools, especially not if it’s about supporting LGBTI people.

An unprecedented ban on the screening of a PG-rated film in NSW schools came after a homophobic storm was unleashed by the Liberal government’s mates at Sydney’s Daily Telegraph. The Telegraph ran a front page story with the headline “Gay Class Uproar”, plus a comment piece on why a so-called “Gay Push Should be Kept out of Schools” and a full colour cartoon featuring the education minister pouring rainbow brainwash over a child. That’s a homophobic triple dose for the low low price of  $1.40. 

The Telegraph’s lead article claimed that parents were “outraged” that Burwood Girls High School was planning to screen a documentary called Gayby Baby as part of Wear it Purple Day. The film is a documentary about four Australian families, each with same sex parents. Wear it Purple Day is an annual event to celebrate LGBTI identities and challenge discrimination. It has been widely observed in schools and other organisations since 2008.

Subsequent research by other news agencies revealed that the school had in fact received no complaints from parents about the film screening.

We also know that just a few days earlier, Abbott government minister Julie Bishop had visited the school, presumably distracting the students from their maths and English lessons. It may have been this visit and Bishop’s comment that opponents of  equal marriage “shouldn’t be made to feel isolated because of their views” that sparked the whole thing. Bishop and her Liberal colleagues know that the real victims of discrimination are the bigots, who are made to feel alone because of their attitudes. 

As if to even up the score, Piers Akerman’s Telegraph comment article pulls no punches in its attack on the school and the film. He even has a crack at Ebony, one of the children who feature in the film. He hit back at her concern about not feeling normal by schooling her in maths. “Statistically”, Akerman told the 12-year-old, “you are not in a ‘normal’ family, no matter how many LGBTIQ-friendly docos you may be forced to watch by politically-driven school principals”.

He also told the film’s director that whatever she thinks, she does not have two mums. Biologically, she only has one, the good doctor Akerman exclusively revealed in his column.

It’s not hard to figure out that if you can screen Pride and Prejudice during school time, a film that clearly encourages a tolerance of ridiculous heterosexual romance, floppy hair and britches, but can’t show same sex parented families doing the washing up, something is wrong. That something is called homophobia. And it’s sprouting from the pages of News Ltd, fed by the words and actions of politicians. It’s about time we put an end to it.