UNITED?KINGDOM – A report from the U.K.’s Equality and Human Rights Commission recommends children should be asked if they are gay starting at age 11, and a record of those who are unsure or “questioning” their sexuality should be kept.

According to The Daily Mail, the report says children could be asked about their sexuality without their parent’s consent. The commission says the purpose of monitoring sexual orientation among young people is to prevent them from becoming victims of discrimination and bullying.

The report claims “some young people begin to question their sexual orientation as early as age eight and may begin to identify as LGB (lesbian, gay, bisexual) from early adolescence.”

Graham Stuart, Tory chairman of the Commons education select committee, called the plans “invasive, sinister and threatening.”  “School should be a place of safety, not a place where pupils are picked over for the purpose of some QUANGO [quasi-autonomous non-governmental organization]; and many children won’t understand what they are talking about.”

Teachers, nurses and youth workers are being urged to set up pilot studies aimed at monitoring adolescent sexual orientation for the first time.
A report commissioned by the Government’s equalities watchdog found that it was ‘practically and ethically’ possible to interview young children about their sexuality.  Controversially, it says parental consent, while ‘considered good practice,’ is not a legal necessity.

The report – Researching and Monitoring Adolescence and Sexual Orientation: Asking the Right Questions, at the Right Time – says it is “critical” to track children’s sexuality to “shed light on the complexities of young people’s developing sexual orientation and how this may disadvantage them”.   It tells researchers not to dismiss a subject’s gay feelings as “a passing phase”.

Last night, a Commission spokesman said: “This is independent research produced to help the Commission form its policy direction”.