The teaching of religious attitudes towards homosexuality in the Religious Studies classroom: An exploration of pupil reflections.

Helena Moore

This document is a summary of a distinction-level Master’s dissertation at the University of Birmingham. The researcher plans to further this research through a Doctoral Research programme at the University of Birmingham, that will enable more exploration of the impact of this area of study on the promotion of British Values, the Equality Act 2010 and the mental wellbeing of pupils within the classroom.

Please note that within the document, the acronym “LGB” will be used rather than LGBTQI+. This should not be taken as exclusionary towards other identities, but as an attempt to be as accurate as possible when focusing on religious attitudes towards same sex relationships. Individuals who identify as transgender, queer or intersex may also identify as lesbian/gay/bisexual, and these individuals can be included in the limited acronym of “LGB”.

Introduction

Since the decriminalisation of homosexuality in England in 1967 (Sexual offences Act, 1967), a series of legal changes have led to same-sex relationships being a mandatory part of the RSE curriculum for secondary schools (DfE, 2019). In addition to this, religious attitudes towards homosexuality, including views that condemn homosexuality, is a common topic in GCSE RS specifications (AQA, 2017; Edexcel, 2016a; Edexcel, 2016b; Eduqas, 2020; OCR, 2021). Although there is little formal rationale for the inclusion of this topic at GCSE, it can be implied due to the emphasis on diversity of opinion within the indicative content (AQA, 2017; Edexcel, 2016a; Edexcel, 2016b; Eduqas, 2020; OCR, 2021) that the inclusion of this study area could be designed to allow pupils to engage with a variety of perspectives on the issue, challenging stereotypes of religions as hostile to same-sex couples, and potentially fostering positive attitudes towards Lesbian, Gay or Bisexual (LGB) individuals in line with the Equality Act (2010) and British Values (HM Government, 2011).

However, personal experience teaching these lessons within a diverse Birmingham school led to questions surrounding the effectiveness of these lessons in the proposed aims, and the potential detrimental impact on pupil welfare due to homophobic views that can arise in class. There is a significant amount of research into the phenomena known as “internalised homophobia” (Herek, 1990) and Minority Stress Theory (Barnes and Meyer, 2021), outlining the potential danger of continued exposure to homophobic views on both LGB and heterosexual individuals, leading to increased mental health challenges and suicide risk in the former (McDermott, Hughes and Rawlings, 2018; King et al, 2008; WHO, 2004) and increased polarisation and desensitisation to homophobia in the latter (Bail et al, 2018; Soral, Biliewicz and Winiewski, 2018). While useful, this research has so far been limited to the wider topic, working predominantly with adults, and has not yet been expanded to consider the impact on pupils within the RS classroom. Consequently, the MA dissertation aimed to investigate this very important gap in the current research.

Research approach

This research applied a mixed-methods approach, utilising an initial questionnaire distributed amongst three year 9 classes, followed by interviews to allow for greater expansion on ideas. The decision to distribute the questionnaire to whole classes rather than specifically pupils who identified as LGB was based on ethical issues of identification of participants alongside the practical issues of severely limiting the sample size if only a minority of pupils could participate. In addition to this, the research into the impact of homophobic views on individuals outside the LGB community meant that these participants could still provide useful data on the research question. Meanwhile the decision to focus on the year 9 cohort was a purely practical one, based on the fact that these pupils had more recently undertaken a series of lessons on this topic, and so they were considered to be the most likely to provide reliable data for this research.

The lessons were taught with a focus on determining if religions on the whole condemned or supported same-sex relationships as opposed to inviting students to debate their own views on same-sex relationships, with the aim of keeping the lessons as academic as possible, and reducing the conflict with British Values, the Equality Act and the school “No Outsiders” policy. Extensive time was given for discussion around the different scriptural verses in an attempt to seek any “true meaning” there might be from the text, alongside opportunities to hear from LGB individuals of faith in the form of online video resources. When choosing religions to study, focus was given to Christian and Muslim views due to the priority of these in exam specifications, therefore preparing pupils for GCSE study. Please see the detail below for a summary of the scheme of work.

Lesson 1. History of marriage

• Examine different forms of marriage throughout history
• Challenge the assumption that the heterosexual marriage between one man and woman is the way it has always been; that it is “normal”
• Introduce the difficult dilemma of balancing religious and LGBTQ+ freedoms.

Lesson 2. Christian views on same-sex relationships

• Key teachings rejecting same-sex relationships (Leviticus, Genesis – “be fruitful and multiply”, Natural Law Theory)
• Challenges to these arguments through reinterpretation of Leviticus and the Apocalypse hypothesis/global population. Introduction to testimonies of LGB Christians.

Lesson 3. Muslim views on same-sex relationships

• Key teachings rejecting same-sex relationships from the Qur’an.
• Challenges to these through the nature of Allah as merciful and beneficent, and teachings around judgement e.g. the Hadith of the prostitute and the dog.

Lesson 4. Evaluation of religious views

• Students produced an exam-style evaluation on the topic of whether religions condemn same-sex relationships or not. Pupils had to provide two arguments and decide which was the most convincing/accurate.

Within the questionnaire, students were asked a combination of open, closed and likert-scale style questions where students were asked to rank their opinion along a scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree. These questions ranged from ones asking for basic data on gender, sexual orientation and religious affiliation to questions asking for students to summarise their main learning points from the series of lesson, to indicate the learning that stood out to them the most. The majority of the questionnaire however formed a likert scale with the following questions:

1. These lessons added to my understanding of religious views on homosexuality.
2. These lessons allowed me to learn views on homosexuality from variety of religions.
3. These lessons allowed me to learn how there are disagreements within the religions on the issue of homosexuality.
4. In these lessons, views that I would consider homophobic were raised.
5. My religious views were respected in these lessons.
6. My gender/sexual identity was respected in these lessons.
7. I felt safe and comfortable in these lessons.

Overall, 51 pupils from a sample size of 75 agreed to complete the questionnaire. Of the remaining 24, some pupils were absent, while others opted out. Of these 51, 2 pupils then volunteered to take part in follow-up interviews where students were given the opportunity to expand personally on their answers in the questionnaires with the following questions:

1. What were your reasons for volunteering for this interview?
2. There were only two volunteers. What do you think might have held people back from volunteering?
3. These lessons are part of the GCSE content for most exam boards. Do you think it should be taught at GCSE? Why?
4. Do you think it should be taught before GCSE? Why?
5. Do you get to learn about the LGBTQ+ community in any other lessons at school? How is this similar/different to RS?
6. In these lessons, we will cover views that some people may feel are homophobic. How do you feel about that?
7. If you could give advice to someone teaching this, what would you say? Why?
8. What is going well/what could be improved?

Findings

Overall, the majority of participants (questionnaire and interview) reported positive feelings towards the lessons, claiming that they felt they had gained information about the diversity of religious attitudes to homosexuality, challenging stereotypes of religions as homophobic, whilst also feeling that their identities (gender, religious and sexual) were respected in the lessons. This included a small minority of participants who identified as LGB on the questionnaires. Where participants claimed they did not feel that their identities had been respected, this commonly came from participants who identified religious affiliation, with some taking the opportunity to express a desire for more diverse coverage beyond Christianity and Islam, whilst others suggested the exposure to views that were different to their own was upsetting for them, leading to feelings of anger and frustration that lessons were attempting to “twist” what they perceived as the true meaning of their holy texts. While the former reason is a very simple problem to fix, the latter raises more serious concerns for teachers, perhaps demonstrating the need for more intensive diversity education in an attempt to reassure pupils that diversity of opinion is not necessarily a personal attack on faith.

The largest division in opinion however stemmed from the questions surrounding whether homophobic views had been raised in the class. In the case of participants who claimed to experience homophobic views, it was not possible to ascertain from the questionnaire whether they were thinking of the scriptural views or the views of their peers in their answer. This is a clear limitation of the questionnaire, and as the interviews were performed in close proximity to the questionnaires before full data analysis had occurred, it was not possible to delve further into this with the two interviewees. This is an area for improvement in the case of further study on this topic. Regardless of the source, contrasting this with responses mentioned above, it could be seen that the exposure to views perceived as homophobic did not detrimentally affect the pupil wellbeing in these classes as the majority of participants reported their identities were respected in the classroom.
However, it is important to balance this generally positive reception against the more extreme responses within the questionnaire, some of which were mentioned earlier. A small minority of participants (most commonly those who identified as male, heterosexual and Muslim) responded exceptionally negatively to the topic, expressing clear antipathy towards the LGB community, and anger at the inclusion of this topic on the Religious Studies curriculum. Of course it is unreasonable to expect any series of lessons to be successful in every case, and so it is not necessarily a sign of a failing curriculum that these views still exist within the classroom. However such sentiments still raise potential safeguarding concerns for schools, standing in stark contrast to both British Values and the Equality Act 2010. While the pupils within the individual school did not seem to be detrimentally impacted, further research would be needed to see how representative this is of other school settings.

Recommendations

Following on from the research, the main recommendations for teaching staff are thus:

• Intensive work should be done with pupils surrounding British Values and the Equality Act 2010 to attempt to negate some of the most extreme views towards the LGB community.
• Efforts should be taken by schools to give pupils a safe environment to discover LGB-inclusive religious views, perhaps through structured inter-faith discussion groups or inviting speakers from different faiths with the aim of pupils perceiving the content as less of a threat, and therefore making them more receptive to the new information.
• Teachers should plan lessons with the aim of avoiding emotional harm to pupils, making it clear where debate is and isn’t allowed, emphasising the importance of following the Equality Act and showing kindness to peers, whilst still learning about diverse opinions.
• Teachers should consider the inclusion of Queer Theology to deepen pupil understanding of diversity of views and to support pupils of faith who may identify as LGB, raising awareness of these views. Teachers should also work closely with pupils of faith to build their resilience and empathy when discovering new interpretations of their holy scriptures.
• Teachers should attempt to cover a broad number of responses beyond the Abrahamic faiths, potentially taking a thematic approach as opposed to dividing lessons by religions to weave in more diverse opinions on the topic.

Regarding the research itself, it is clear that this area needs further study to see how widespread the findings are, and also to address some of the shortfalls of this initial project, namely the difficulty delving into the source of homophobia that a number of participants reported experiencing, and the potential impact on individuals. It would also be valuable to compare different teaching methods on this topic. Since the project’s conclusion, the curriculum has been altered in line with the teacher recommendations to develop more detailed Queer Theology and diverse religious approaches, alongside deep discussions about diversity within classes. Further study would make it possible to see the effect (if any) that this change in curriculum has had on pupil experiences of the lessons.

Reference list

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