AT Westminster on Wednesday, a debate was held to mark the 20th anniversary of the repeal of Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 which prohibited local authorities from promoting homosexuality or the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality as a “pretended family relationship”.

It meant that for more than a generation, same-sex attraction dare not speak its name in schools or colleges across the UK. Homophobic bullying went unchallenged and sex education about the Aids crisis was hampered at a time when it was crucial to save lives.

Section 28 was repealed in Scotland more than three years earlier than in England, on June 21, 2000. The Ethical Standards in Public Life etc. (Scotland) Act 2000 which did so was one of the first pieces of legislation enacted by the new Scottish Parliament.

Sadly, the repeal was preceded by a vicious campaign against it during which too many politicians sat on the fence. It is right that we should remember and applaud those who took a brave stand including the then Labour communities minister Wendy Alexander MSP and the MSPs, including some from the SNP, who supported her.

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When Section 28 was introduced in 1988, I was 21 and at university in Edinburgh. I had just come out as a lesbian, most of my close friends were lesbians and gay men. There was a vibrant scene in Edinburgh, and we had hope that maybe society was changing. Section 28 dented our optimism, but it did not stop us from campaigning vigorously against it.

The wonderful Blue Moon Cafe at the lesbian and gay centre in Broughton Street in Edinburgh was the hub of anti-Section 28 activism. The Scottish Homosexual Action Group or SHAG for short was set up. It organised rallies and a march in Edinburgh. Buses went to London and Manchester for mass demonstrations. I attended all of them.

SHAG also organised the Lark in the Park in the Ross Bandstand in Princess Street Gardens. It was a festival of music and comedy with a political agenda, addressed by Sir Ian McKellen, who came out to protest Section 28. The Lark in the Park ran for two years and was the precursor of Pride marches in Scotland.

One of the interesting things about the campaign against Section 28 was that lesbian feminists played a big role. Many had never worked with men before or had not done so for many years. Gay men were sometimes a bit taken aback by all these feisty women, but we worked well together in the end.

It was the height of the Aids pandemic. Many gay men were dying. Some of them were my friends. The LGB movement was united in this fight too.

What lesbian feminists brought to the fight was experience of direct action from their campaigns against porn and violence against women and girls.

Some lesbians had children and they took offence at their families being called pretend. Lesbians abseiled into the House of Lords and stormed the BBC 6pm news studio as the news went out live, handcuffing themselves to the newsreader Sue Lawley’s chair. Some lesbians, including my friend Julie Bindel, even stormed the Ideal Home exhibition to tell everyone that lesbians make the best families.

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It is important that we remember all of this because lesbian activism is something which is rather frowned upon today unless approved of by straight people and men who think they can set boundaries for lesbians. They cannot and they should not try to do so.

Section 28 was all about the state clamping down on any support for the idea that it might be normal to be homosexual. To be homosexual means to be sexually interested in and attracted to members of one’s own sex. This might not always have been popular, but it has been well-understood for hundreds if not thousands of years.

The movement of which I was part in 1988 was a movement for lesbian, gay and bisexual rights – the rights of the same-sex attracted. And yes, we had trans supporters – for example, the magician Fay Presto, a trans woman, was very involved in the Lark in the Park. But the legislation was not an attack on trans people, it was an attack on the same-sex attracted.

Stonewall was founded in response to Section 28 and it was focused exclusively on same-sex rights. The initials LGBT or LGBTQ were not used until after its chief executive, Ben Summerskill, left in 2014. As a recent survey by LGB Alliance shows, many lesbians and gays don’t like being called queer. It reminds us of queer bashing, which many of us have suffered.

The protection of gay people and trans people which was achieved in the Equality Act 2010 was a triumph for two distinct and different movements campaigning separately. In 2011, Stonewall published a guide to the Equality Act for employers. It was 48 pages long and there was not one mention of trans rights or the acronym LGBT.

Human rights and equal rights are universal but, as my friend Allison Bailey, the lesbian barrister who successfully sued her chambers for discrimination, has said, the rights of lesbians and gay men are not dependent on accepting gender identity theory. By that I mean the belief that everyone has a gender identity and that it somehow trumps the sex with which we were born and is more important.

There is no equivalence between the fight against Section 28 and the fight to prevent gender identity theory from erasing same-sex attraction, although some of the small number of speakers who turned up for the Westminster debate tried to suggest this.

I know there is not because, unlike most who draw this false comparison, I was part of the fight against Section 28, I was there. I was out and I was campaigning against an attack on the rights of same-sex attracted people like me – indeed, our very right to be who we were.

Section 28 meant that teenage girls were left confused and ashamed of their exclusive sexual attraction to other girls and with no-one to talk to about this. This for many young lesbians is the same situation now. I have constituents whose same-sex attracted daughters are told at school that they must be a boy trapped in a girl’s body.

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They feel under pressure to deny their exclusive same-sex attraction and are bamboozled by a welter of indefinable niche identities like bi-gender, gender queer and demi-fluid which overlap and confuse them.

A new form of anti-lesbian dogma is being enforced by the state in school settings just like Section 28.

Thank goodness we have organisations like LGB Alliance who exist to promote the rights of same-sex attracted people, now that Stonewall has given up on us.

The fight against Section 28 was a fight against those who wanted to destroy the reality of lesbian and gay lives. They wanted to erase us from contemporary life. Section 28 failed and I hope the contemporary campaign to erase the reality of lesbian and gay men’s lives will also fail.