But he told BBC's Breakfast with Frost that the idea that classrooms would be home to gay role-playing exercises and pornographic literature was a nonsense.

The clause is offensive to many of our citizens. It is not needed, it should go.

First Minister Donald Dewar

The row over the repeal of the law which bans the promotion of homosexuality in schools has been raging on now for months, with feelings running particularly high in Scotland.

Mr Dewar said there was no doubt that the promotion of homosexuality had not taken place in schools up until now and that, in the future, the same would be true.

He said: "It's interesting. Section 28 has not applied in England for the last six years in schools and none of the disasters that are predicted have resulted.

A nonsense

"Are we less sensible and less balanced than the English in terms of our running of schools, the professionalism of our teachers?

"It really is a nonsense and the clause is offensive to many of our fellow citizens. It is not needed, it should go."

Jack Irvine is behind the campaign to keep the clause

Clearly angered by the manner in which the Keep the Clause activists have run their campaign, he insisted that children would be at no greater risk of being exposed to unsuitable material.

He added: "The tragedy is that they have managed to suggest, sometimes pretty blatantly, that things will happen which clearly will not happen, like pornography will come down from the Internet and appear in our schools, that children will be role-playing gay sex.

"This has never happened, it has never been intended and it won't happen."

Asked whether guidelines planned to replace the existing legislation should promote marriage, he said that the important thing in schools was to be non-judgmental and non-discriminatory.

"At the moment, 50% of children in Scotland are born out of wedlock," he added.

Donald Dewar: Defiant

"That's not something which I glory in or welcome in any sense. It's a fact.

"I don't think that when we are teaching in schools that we should give children the idea that in some way they are inferior because of the domestic arrangements of their parents."

Mr Dewar also clashed with the leader of the Scottish National Party, Alex Salmond, over Scotland's ties with the rest of the United Kingdom.

He dismissed a suggestion that devolution had weakened links between the nations of the UK.

Shifts of opinion

"What's interesting about the Ayr by-election or the opinion polls, what they show solidly, is that over two-thirds of Scotland, normally about 70%, are totally opposed to breaking the links with the rest of the UK," he said.

"All the talk about enormous shifts of opinion, I think, give or take a bit of mid-term blues, are greatly exaggerated."

But Mr Salmond accused him of being greatly out-of-touch with public opinion.

He said: "He didn't know about the escalating costs of the Holyrood project when he was in charge of it, and now he doesn't know about the growing level of support for Scottish independence.

"Scotland is in a process of independence, which now commands clear majority support."