(Main) Anderton Park Primary School Google Maps (Bottom-right) Labour MP Jess Phillips AFP / Isabel Infantes
Jess Phillips, MP for Birmingham Yardley, was involved in a feisty exchange with the protester outside the gates of Anderton Park school in Birmingham, West Midlands.
The row, which has seen protests by parents and their supporters rage on for over two months, is over the school's 'No Outsiders' programme. The LGBT+ education programme aims to teach children about diversity of faith, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation.
Protester Shakeel Afsar, coming face-to-face with Phillips, asked her: "How have you become so intolerant towards us?" The Birmingham politician denied she was intolerant, telling the man that he doesn't get to "pick and choose which equality you can and can't have."
Asked why she hadn't turned up to support the 300 parents who have been demonstrating over the inclusive initiative, Phillips retorted that she was "against the protests."
Phillips said the worst thing about protests was that they had damaged "the reputation of a peaceful and loving community." She warned that she will request "an exclusion area to protect the 700 children in this school."
The situation has been simmering for several weeks with almost daily demos. Protesters claim they are not homophobic, or against LGBT rights, but insist that either their children are too young to learn about the issues or it goes against their beliefs.
Kids in the UK choose their subjects for GCSE level when they are in year 9 (aged about 14) and even then it's from catagories and many then don't get their first choices, but obviously up to that point it's a State free-for-all in indoctrination. I imagine the Muslim community was expected to just let this issue go, after all, Labour has been good to them, haven't they? So now, Muslims and the 'right' have become curious bedfellows!
Jess Phillips says that the protests have damaged the reputation of a peaceful and loving community...in other words, do as you're told and STFU.