Top Private School to Join LGBT Pride Parade

Brighton College will become the first private school in Britain to join a Pride parade, with pupils making “peace and love” banners for a float in the city’s LGBT parade.

The school, where annual fees can top £37,000, reports having four transgender pupils, and last year introduced a “gender-neutral” uniform which allows boys to wear skirts.

The Times reports that children at the school will create 1960s costumes for the August Pride event, its theme this year “Summer of Love”.

George Cook, a sixth-former and member of the rugby team, said: “It is 50 years since the summer of love and legalisation of homosexuality. Everyone is more accepting now.”

“I do not know if there are any gay people in the rugby team but if there are, I am confident they could be themselves,” he added.

The school’s participation in the parade is backed by the actor Sir Ian McKellen, who told pupils at Brighton College that he was unhappy he had felt unable to come out as homosexual until well into adulthood.

Brighton College headmaster Richard Cairns, who will be riding the float dressed as A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s Theseus, said: “Pupils are enthusiastic about taking part, spurred on by McKellen’s visit last year. It is a strong statement of our ethos. There are heads who resist tackling these issues because they wonder what parents will say.”

Last month, Breitbart London revealed that 120 schools in Britain have signed up to an LGBT “best practice” programme under which separate boys’ and girls’ uniforms are ditched, and material promoting gay and transgender lifestyles is spread across all parts of the curriculum.

Educate & Celebrate’s programme says schools must “increase visibility” of sexual minorities, with “displays in key areas, and a reception greeting” which makes every constituency of LGBT youth “feel represented”.

Examples of the “LGBT+ inclusive curriculum” that the charity advocates are available on its website in the form of teaching resources. A sample geography lesson for children aged five to seven concerns “gay penguins” raising a chick which is said to encourage children to “challenge ‘typical’ behaviours and gender stereotyping” and “actively confront prejudice”.