ABSTRACT
I began my PhD in 1987. At that time I was a Teacher Adviser for Race Equality, working in majority white schools in a large industrial city, and my thesis was based on this work (Epstein, 1991a, 1993a). I was strongly committed to anti-racist struggle in schools and to feminism at both activist and theoretical levels. During the time which it took me to complete my thesis I came out as a lesbian and became active in lesbian and gay politics, moving rapidly from a position of keeping the closet doors well locked to proposing, as an out lesbian, the 1989 Labour Party Conference motion on lesbian and gay equality, and appearing on national television in the process. This shift was (like all such decisions) complicated and rested on issues such as the ages of my children as well as on my own confidence as a lesbian, but what really spurred my coming out process was the introduction of Section (then Clause) 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 and the massive Stop the Clause campaign that resulted from it.3 In this I was not alone. Literally thousands of lesbians and gays came out of the closet through the Stop the Clause campaign. Indeed, Jackie Stacey (1991) suggests that Section 28 had the (unintended) effect of promoting homosexuality.
