The BBC, according to Jana Bennett in 2007, helps children understand themselves and their relationships. But things went badly wrong this Valentine's Day.

Most CBBC programmes dealing with romance and love are heteronormative, with very little directly relevant to the significant minority of viewers who are lesbian and gay.

There were signs that BBC children's TV was about to become more inclusive - for example, Benny revealing his sexuality at the end of series 2 of Wizards vs Aliens. And then Newsround, for the first time, directly reported on the issue of homophobic bullying in November last year. Additionally an episode of the documentary "Our School" included a section about how Conyers School dealt with an incident of homophobic bullying. A short clip of Shaun Dellenty's anti-bullying assembly at Conyer's school appeared on CBBC's website along with a chat board asking whether kids had suffered discrimination. For the first time in many years gay kids' messages weren't censored.

But any progress on CBBC appears spasmodic. One step forward - then two backward. Benny was written out of Wizards vs Aliens during series 3, and we never saw him date another boy. We do regularly see gay celebrities on CBBC & Newsround, but no direct support - for instance a gay sportsperson talking about LGBT and equality related issues. The clip of Shaun Dellenty has now been taken off CBBC's website, along with kids' messages about being discriminated against. So far CBBC has shown no obvious interest in LGBT History Month.

There's no excuse for the BBC spending licence payers' money on homophobic children's programmes. But that's exactly what we see in "The Worst Year of My Life, Again" The clip below was from an episode shown on Valentine's Day. -