Interview with Patrick Gale about his book Rough Music

[Interviewer:] But in your books sexuality is not the focal point of any character. As in real life, it is just one trait of many and 'desire' is the thing that they, and we, all have in common.

[Patrick Gale, writer:] Yes. But that said, sexuality continues to fascinate me largely because of the way it resists the best attempts of good manners to bring it to heel. In Rough Music, I was especially keen to write about what it means to be a gay child. Britain is currently hung up - thanks to the Clause 28 campaign - on the misconception that gayness is exclusively about sex and the mechanics of copulation. Long before attaining any real understanding of sex, a gay or lesbian child (and yes I know they exist because I was one), will have a profound sense of being somehow different from the rest. The puritans are panicking at the thought of children being given intimate instruction in gay copulation when what is needed, and what the infamous Clause 28 forbids, is a bit of sane reassurance about social variety and the available range of domestic partnerships. Gay children will find out about sex for themselves, whatever laws anyone brings to bear on them, but it may take damaging years before anyone gives them permission to feel normal. End of rant...

source: 'Interview with Patrick Gale' by Todd; www.dymocks.com.au/contentstatic/literarymatter/interviews/patgale.asp; About the book 'Rough Music' (2000); Dutch edition: 'Liefde en kabaal'; 2006