Peter Tatchell: NI pupils will decide whether to explore bisexuality

“The DUP has ignored the majority in the Assembly and in Northern Ireland public opinion,” he told the News Letter. “Westminster was left with no options. It was intolerable that Northern Ireland denied its citizens the same rights as exist for people in the rest of the UK.”

On the Nolan Show yesterday, the Rainbow project agreed that LGBT education in NI schools would soon follow same-sex marriage. But it rejected DUP MLA Jim Wells’ claims that this would encourage “confused” children to adopt an LGBT identity.

Speaking on the fludity of sexuality, he said: “Most people have a bisexual potential and it is largely because of family, community and religious pressure that many never realise or explore their capacity to love someone of the same sex”.

But LGBT education will not encourage children to explore their bisexual potential, he said. “It won’t encourage them, it will give them facts and information. They will decide for themselves whether or not to explore it”.

He added that there was no evidence of an increase in gay children in English primary schools where LGBT education has been introduced.