Essex teachers telling gay pupils to tone it down are right!

In a report for Essex County Council on school bullying, it was revealed that, in some instances, homosexual pupils were advised by teachers to act “less gay” or to change their hairstyles to make life easier for themselves.

This has led to predictable howls of outrage from gay rights campaigners and anti-bullying charities. According to Sherry Adhami, director of communications at the Beat Bullying charity: "Because someone is a particular way, the victim should not have to change their ways, particularly on issues of such sensitivity as sexuality, race, colour or religion.”

Race and colour are irreversible facts of existence. Kids who are black or oriental can’t choose not to be, so picking on them purely for being black or oriental is a particularly horrible thing to do. Ditto, obviously, disabilities. Similarly, being homosexual is – in most cases – probably not a matter of choice. It could be argued that, when you’re a child, religion isn’t a matter of choice either, especially if your parents are strict observers of a particular faith.

Any instance of kids ganging up on other kids (or adults ganging up on other adults, for that matter) simply because they are any of the above should be stopped and punished.

What I’m far less certain of is that, say, blacks, gays, Muslims and disabled people who set out to stuff their differences up the noses of “normal” people in a deliberately provocative fashion – in the UK, that would be vaguely Christian or mildly unbelieving white, heterosexual, able-bodied folk – should expect the law to come down like a ton of bricks on those who react badly to their deliberate provocation. Society as a whole sets the limits of acceptable behaviour – not the individual concerned, or the minority group to which they belong.

When an Asian accountant or black barrister or a devout Muslim family or a gay man out with his partner or some chap in a wheelchair trying to get on a bus suffer abuse purely because of what they are, that’s plain wrong – legally and morally.

But when a group of young Muslims demonstrate against British soldiers on Remembrance Day, calling them “butchers” and “crusaders”, when a gang of young blacks with their arses hanging out their trousers set out to intimidate white or Asian kids or adults, when a homosexual couple dressed in tutus and leather caps indulge in vigorous tonsil-licking in a public place, and when a disabled person behaves as if everyone else should be inconvenienced in order that their disability shouldn’t inconvenience them in any way – well, when people are determined to behave in that sort of way, I think they should expect the odd harsh word and for the police to turn a blind eye (fat chance, given the enforced liberal wetness of today's constabulary).

And the best place to learn that there are limits to the way you express your differentness is surely school. If children are brought up to believe that being different gives them carte blanche to behave in any way they like – no matter how annoying or upsetting to the majority – then the rest of us might begin to feel that we had a right to express our relative normality in any way we saw fit.

School isn’t just about revealing possibilities: it’s just as much about civilising children by teaching them that (a) the sun doesn’t necessarily shine out of their backsides, and (b) there are limits.

And now I'm off to put on my pointy-hooded top with eye-slits in it to express my whiteness, a smock with a red crusader cross on it to express my Christianity and a version of the "Black Russian" codpiece worn by Rowan Atkinson in the first series of Blackadder to express my heterosexuality.

And if anyone objects, I'll just tell them I'm simply expressing who I am.