Renfrewshire MP Mhairi Black has defended a decision to invite a drag queen into a primary school to read to pupils, despite an outcry from parents over sexually-explicit social media posts.

Drag queen FlowJob was invited into Glencoats Primary, in Paisley, last week to speak to pupils about the notorious Section 28 Act, which was later repealed.

The Act was introduced by Margaret Thatcher to ban the ‘promotion of homosexuality’ in schools.

The event was attended by Paisley and Renfrewshire South MP Ms Black, who is a vocal activist for LGBT rights.

After parents voiced concern that sexually-explicit images were on FlowJob’s social media profile, Renfrewshire Council has said it would never have invited the performer had it been aware of the posts.

But Ms Black slated critics and accused them of homophobia.

Writing on Twitter, she said: “If my school had invited a gay MP and a drag queen to visit during LGBT History Month, or even acknowledged that LGBT History Month existed, it would have made an immeasurable difference to the difficult childhoods my LGBT classmates and I had.

"You just know that the people pretending to be livid that a drag queen read a book in a school are also the people who run out to buy their kids the latest Grand Theft Auto on release day.

“Your homophobia is transparent.”

And campaign group LGBT Youth Scotland wrote on Twitter: “We're horrified to see the abusive messages and tweets targeting Glencoats Primary School for their bold and brilliant LGBT inclusive education practices.

“We are proud to work with their pioneering headteacher and recognise the school as an example to others across the country.”

A Renfrewshire Council spokesman said: “The school pupils at Glencoats Primary are currently organising a series of activities and events to mark LGBT History month.

“In discussion with pupils in their Rainbow Club, one of their requests was to invite people from the LGBT community to hear about their own experiences growing up and they wanted to invite a drag queen to talk to this group to hear about their own personal experience.

“All school visits are arranged and managed with the wellbeing of pupils first and foremost. However, it is clear that, in this case, the social media content associated with the speaker’s stage persona is not appropriate for children and, had we been aware of this, the visit would not have been arranged.

“We are sorry for the concern this has caused.”

FlowJob was introduced to pupils as ‘Flow’ at the event, hosted to mark LGBT History Month.

A spokesman for campaign group ForWomen.scot said: “Sending abusive messages to a school is not okay but questions about this are legitimate.

“A male who dresses as a sexualised parody of a woman is hardly a role model for primary-aged children.

“Did no-one check this?”

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