Chris Smith, ‘A Climate of Growing Intolerance’, February 05, 1988, Tribune, Vol 52, Issue 6, p. 12.

Giovanni's Room referenced in a piece on Section 28.

‘By the time this column appears in print the House of Lords will have done its best or worse on the wretched Clause 28 of the Local Government Bill (Time and again these days, it strikes me as absurdly ironic that we should be forced to look to this totally undemocratic institutions to safeguard our democratic liberties.) But whatever the outcome, it’s still worth considering for a moment the implications, the motives and the lessons, surrounding the appearance of this Clause […] the practical implications of the Clause as it has emerged from the House of Commons are horrifying. Nowhere in the Bill is “the promotion of homosexuality” defined or clarified — with the result that virtually anything could be caught by it. A council places James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, or E.M Forster’s Maurice, or Chistopher Isherwood Goodbye to Berlin, in the public library. All of these are great works of twentieth-century literature, but capable of being regarded as “promoting homosexuality”.