Kookaburra Song Loses the Word "Gay"

An Australian primary school has removed the word “gay” from the children’s folk song “Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree.”

According to The Herald Sun, officials at Cheltenham's Lepage Primary in Victoria have instructed students to sing “fun your life must be,” rather than the written “gay your life must be.”

Principal Garry Martin taught first grade students the song using an old tape. "It uses 'gay' and I just suggested to kids, 'Nowadays, that can mean different things, so let's just sing a fun old time,' " he said. "It was my decision to replace it. I guess that was hypersensitive of me."

But gay rights activists are taking offense, saying the principal is underestimating his students. I don't think that's a very good message for kids to have, particularly when they've been working really hard to bring in respect and diversity into schools," Crusader Hillis, from the LGBT activist group Also Foundation, told The Sun.