[Extracts of a written conversation in August 2021]

Our school has a policy on wearing badges that we can wear whatever badges we want but if they are political, they aren’t allowed… which in theory sounds great, apart from the fact that we are a Catholic school so there are some biased views on specific social opinions! For years, we’ve fought the rules, [and argued] that being LGBTQ+ is not a political view and because of the schools views on it, we can’t have pride badges/flags being told they “go against The Pope”.

I think the school [are] trying to say that the LGBTQ badge issue [is] a political view, because if it is political, there’s not really any rules that they’re going against [by banning it].

Let’s start with me, i’m non binary and queer and i’m very open about that, have been since I started there! First encounter with this rule was when we wore pronoun badges to school and were told to take them off because teachers “don’t walk around with their sexuality on a badge”. Being a timid year 7, I took it off and thought nothing of it until I was told it was pretty transphobic and there was uproar from other LGBTQ students! We were threatened with detentions for bringing pride flags into school and wearing badges also was a detention. We defied those rules no matter how many times we were told!

We had all planned to storm outside in pride flags, rainbow badges, everything, something that had now after nearly 7 years, we’d been threatened detentions, with some students being threatened suspensions! We’d secretly formed a school alliance, basically a bunch of LGBTQ+ members and we did everything to go against the rules that we believed were unjust and unfair! First time we tried it, we were attacked by other students and called homophobic slurs. We then re-did it a few days later and were pretty successful! Obviously we don’t know what’s came of it yet as we haven’t heard anything from the school and we had one student leave the school, but we try our best to create a safe environment for the LGBTQ community given the situation our school has put us in for 6 years!

This isn’t just an issue that the LGBTQ in the school faces but the ethnic minorities also face quite a few issues due to the school being majority white!

There was a girl who was wearing an 'Autism Speaks' [controversial organisation that considers autism a disease to be cured] badge (which i told the headteacher and she said it was a charity) and then i’ll have the headteacher down my ear like “[...] take your rainbow badge off” and autism speaks is controversial and EXTREMELY political if you ask me.

It baffles me sometimes but we’ve taken it for so long that i’ve never questioned it so much until now.

[Interviewer]:
Where you draw the line about what's political or not is so arbitrary and schools rely on that all the time. The fact is, by them saying you can't express your sexuality or specify your pronouns (discriminating against two separate protected characteristics), they're being extremely political themselves!

This is what i’ve tried to say for years but we always got the “our school goes off the Pope’s views”.

We were genuinely told that in a room of 4 of us after we asked for a safe space for the LGBTQ members. They then said that it was “leaving out the other students”.
They made us make a diversity club because a pride club went against the school rules.

Completely unrelated but my parents made a formal complaint around nine months ago over some racial issues involving members of staff and nothing was ever done.

Honestly it’s an awful environment to be in.

I’ve been in contact with one of my friends parents and we’re going to actively speak to the school once the school year restarts [Sept '21]. Obviously we’re unsure what will come of that yet but will definitely keep you updated if anything crops up. I also spoke to my friend who went through the same issues when he was in secondary school and he helped me gather up some resources and laws and stuff.