Australian school drops 'gay' from Kookaburra song

An Australian school headteacher has asked students to stop using the word "gay" when singing a classic children's song, but today said no offence was intended – he was simply trying to keep the children from laughing. Garry Martin of Le Page primary school, in Melbourne, said he instructed students to substitute the line "Fun your life must be" for the original "Gay your life must be" when singing Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree.

The song about a native Australian bird is a favourite around campfires. Martin said he was playing a recording of the song for the students about a month ago when the line "gay your life must be" produced a flurry of giggles throughout the classroom. Some of the students use the word "gay" as a schoolyard taunt, he said, but don't understand its true meaning. And so, to calm them down, he told them to swap in the word "fun" for "gay". "It wasn't misplaced political correctness, it wasn't homophobia, there was nothing really calculated in doing it," he said.



"I could've stopped the whole class and gone into a very caring, supportive explanation of gay being quite a reasonable choice in lifestyle that some people make, but I was only talking with seven and eight year olds, and I think that sort of thing is better explained more fully with parents." His decision erupted into controversy, he said, after one of the students told his parents about Martin's change to the song. Word then spread from the parents to friends to the local newspaper, which ran a story – and Martin found himself being bombarded with angry emails. "Some think I'm the devil incarnate," he said.

Crusader Hillis, CEO of the gay and lesbian advocacy group The Also Foundation, did not go that far – but he did call the lyrical swap an overreaction. "It sends a signal to people that just because a word has two meanings, that one of those meanings is unacceptable and that's really putting us backwards," Hillis said. "Even if it's done for good intentions because 'gay' is being used in schoolyards as a slur, I think they need to use the word as a conversation rather than banning it."