tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/sexual-offences-act-1967-40972/articlesSexual Offences Act 1967 – The Conversation2018-10-05T14:20:40Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1044442018-10-05T14:20:40Z2018-10-05T14:20:40ZSocial media is making it harder to protect the identities of suspects<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239508/original/file-20181005-72133-i0j15o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A man accused of raping a seven-year old child at a restaurant in South Africa makes his first court appearance.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eyewitness News/Christa Eybers</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>A controversy is <a href="https://www.news24.com/Columnists/GuestColumn/dros-rape-media-must-strive-to-minimise-harm-20181001">raging</a> in South Africa over the naming of a man accused of <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/gauteng/drosrape-he-ruined-things-for-us-says-dros-waitress-17346838">raping a seven-year old child</a> at a restaurant in Pretoria, the capital city, before he had appeared in court. His name and photograph were widely circulated on social media. At <a href="https://city-press.news24.com/News/your-sunday-headlines-in-city-press-20180930">least two</a> major Sunday newspapers identified him. The Conversation Africa asked Jameelah Omar, a criminal procedure expert, to explain what is and isn’t allowed.</em> </p>
<p><strong>What does the law say?</strong></p>
<p>The country’s <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/Act%2051%20of%201977s.pdf">Criminal Procedure Act of 1977</a> prohibits the publication of the identity of the accused before they appear in court and plead. This is to prevent undue prejudice to a person before the prosecuting authority decides to prosecute. </p>
<p>Some information can be reported before the accused appears in court and pleads. But this is limited to information about an alleged crime, such as where it allegedly took place. </p>
<p>The act also stipulates that the identity of the complainant in a sexual matter must always be confidential. </p>
<p>Generally, criminal trials are public. In some cases, however, a court can direct that a criminal matter be heard behind closed doors (in camera), and that any person whose presence is not necessary will be barred from attending the trial. This is common practice in sexual offence cases given the sensitivity of the subject and the vulnerability of the complainant.</p>
<p>Even if a case is heard in camera, the name and personal particulars of the accused, the charge against him, the plea, the verdict and the sentence (unless the court directs otherwise) can all be reported. </p>
<p>Another law that sets down conditions for what can and can’t be reported is the <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/Act68of1995.pdf">South African Police Service Act</a>. This prohibits the publishing of pictures (photos or sketches) of someone who is in custody on suspicion of having committed an offence before a decision to prosecute has been made or criminal proceedings have started. But, in particular circumstances, permission can be sought from the national or provincial commissioner of police to authorise publication.</p>
<p>In the latest furore, both sets of laws were broken because people on social media circulated the name of the alleged rapist, as well as his photo before he pleaded in court. At least <a href="https://city-press.news24.com/News/your-sunday-headlines-in-city-press-20180930">two major newspapers</a> also broke the law by doing this.</p>
<p><strong>Why is identifying suspects before they have pleaded a problem?</strong></p>
<p>The rationale behind about banning the publication of details, particularly when it comes to sexual offences, is threefold.</p>
<p>Firstly, to (always) protect the complainant, secondly, to protect minors, and finally, to protect the accused (or any witnesses) if there is a likelihood that they may be harmed. </p>
<p>The prohibition of the accused’s identity before they plead has a slightly different rationale. </p>
<p>The logic here is that the prosecuting authority must be able to apply its mind as to whether there is, at face value, enough evidence. If there is sufficient evidence a prosecution should proceed. But this should happen without the pressure of a public outcry.</p>
<p>Should the prosecuting authority opt not to prosecute, the matter doesn’t go to trial? If the alleged perpetrator had already been named they would suffer reputational harm.</p>
<p>It’s of course frustrating if someone who people believe has committed a crime doesn’t get charged. But, the thing to bear in mind is that the law has to apply consistently for everyone. None of us would want our name to be spread through the media before we’ve appeared in court. </p>
<p><strong>What about public figures and public interest?</strong></p>
<p>The prohibition against identifying alleged perpetrators before they have actually appeared in court, and pleaded, doesn’t depend on who the person is. As soon as the accused has pleaded, their identity can be disclosed, regardless of the person’s public profile.</p>
<p>The prohibition applies to any person publishing details of a criminal allegation, not only the media. But media houses are more likely to be cautious about sticking to the law compared with ordinary people. </p>
<p>The rise of social media has brought about a whole new set of challenges. For example, it would be ridiculous to envisage charging every person who has shared the identity of an alleged perpetrator on Twitter or Facebook. Individuals are not bound by the same restrictions of ethical reporting guidelines as media companies are. Individuals could also possibly claim ignorance of the law as a defence, something media companies can’t do.</p>
<p>Having said that, I always make a point of warning my students to be cautious when they share information on social media, as we should all abide by an ethic of care when we communicate publicly.</p>
<p><strong>What is the penalty for breaching the law or rules?</strong></p>
<p>Contravening the Criminal Procedure Act by identifying alleged perpetrators before they have pleaded is a criminal offence. Those found guilty can be either fined, or jailed for up to three years. If the person who has been wrongfully identified is under 18-years-old, the imprisonment could be five years.</p>
<p>Violations of the South African Police Act involving the publication of a picture of someone in custody before criminal proceedings start carries a possible sentence of either a fine or a year in jail.</p>
<p>These laws have been applied in South Africa. But making them stick in the era of social platforms like Twitter and Facebook presents a whole new set of challenges.
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jameelah Omar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Social media presents new challenges in sensitive cases but media houses must stick to the law.Jameelah Omar, Lecturer in Criminal Justice, Department of Public Law, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/943342018-04-04T11:16:54Z2018-04-04T11:16:54ZWhy the age of sexual consent continues to be a worldwide challenge<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213145/original/file-20180404-189830-1ao3x2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/arrested-teenager-boy-drug-trafficking-criminal-1060623818?src=gOC2QVlWE9yEl6jL4Kravg-1-66">shutterstock/MIAStudio</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>France is <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/france-consent-age-sex-15-rape-new-law-children-minister-marlene-schiappa-a8237226.html">considering changing</a> its legal age of consent so that sex before the age of 15 is automatically considered rape after <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/french-man-11-year-old-girl-consensual-sex-abuse-montmagny-a8209586.html">recent child sex cases</a> raised serious concerns. At the moment, prosecutors have to prove that the underage sex was non-consensual to obtain a rape conviction. </p>
<p>The change is being proposed as a way to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-41966245">tackle issues with the laws</a> in France that mean if no violence or coercion has taken place or been proved, offenders can only be charged with sexual abuse and not rape. In fact, sentences of this nature are the same for sexual assaults of minors and non-minors.</p>
<p>The debate around the age of consent is still as relevant and as serious as it ever was. In the UK, the age of consent is 16. But in Germany and Italy it is 14, whereas in Turkey the <a href="https://www.ageofconsent.net/continent/europe">age of consent is 18</a>. Yet, if we consider that <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/peter-g-tatchell/age-of-consent_b_4314619.html">one in three teenagers</a> are having sex before the age of 16, does that mean the age of consent needs to be considered again in the UK? </p>
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<h2>Children and the law</h2>
<p>It is an issue that emerges <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/sep/14/revised-uk-child-sexual-consent-guidelines-provoke-backlash">time and time again in the UK</a> and it always remains at deadlock. But does UK law ensure that our children are always on the edge of being a “sex offender”?</p>
<p>In the UK, under the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/contents">Sexual Offences Act 2003</a>, it is illegal to engage in sexual activity with someone under the age of 16. In some cases, it may be a defence to say that it was reasonable that there was a belief that the person was 16 or over. But, ordinarily, a “sex offender” is likely to be imprisoned for around five years if someone was under 18 at the time. The sentence increases to ten years to life if the offender <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/apr/15/teenagers-law-human-right-consensual-sex">is over 18 at the time of the offence</a>.</p>
<p>In effect, it does not matter what your age is. But if you have sex with someone under 16, you become a sex offender. That is despite half of all UK teenagers <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/peter-g-tatchell/age-of-consent_b_4314619.html">having their first sexual experience</a> by the age of 14, according to the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles. So is it right to see <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/peter-g-tatchell/age-of-consent_b_4314619.html">young people hauled before the courts</a>, convicted and put on a sex offenders register alongside adult rapists and paedophiles?</p>
<p>This is the reality but the law is there for a reason – to protect the vulnerable and less experienced. Although this does not always happen. The NSPCC says five child sex offences are <a href="https://www.nspcc.org.uk/what-we-do/news-opinion/child-sex-offences-uk-record-rise/">reported every hour</a>. It is no surprise then that people have expressed concerns that some sex offenders would see any change in the law on consent as an opportunity to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/apr/09/labour.immigrationpolicy">focus their sexual intentions</a> on young teenagers. The worry is it could lead to an increase in abuse cases and increasing pressure to have sex at a younger age.</p>
<p>Some are concerned that it might lead to a further increase in STI rates and unwanted pregnancies (the UK has some of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jul/18/how-uk-halved-teenage-pregnancy-rate-public-health-strategy">highest rates of teenage pregnancies</a> in Western Europe). </p>
<p>There are wider issues relating to the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/letting-children-be-children-report-of-an-independent-review-of-the-commercialisation-and-sexualisation-of-childhood">sexualisation of childhood</a> and the culture that we live in. Can we not just let children be children? </p>
<p>There is also the issue of education – or lack of it – in schools and at home relating to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2015/mar/24/sex-education-uk-teenagers-pregnancy-sexually-transmitted-infections">sexual consent and behaviour</a>. So lowering the age of consent is not necessarily the answer. </p>
<h2>A confusing global picture</h2>
<p>While 16 remains the average age of consent in Europe and beyond, there are dramatic differences globally. This ensures there are confused messages about when it is right to have sex or not. In some countries, you have to be married before you have any sexual relations (Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia). In other countries, you can have sex from the age of 11 (Nigeria) and quite a few countries allow the age of consent to be 13, <a href="https://www.ageofconsent.net/world">including Japan and Niger</a>. For many, for the age of consent to be so low is unthinkable. But it may reflect the traditions, religion, culture and history of a particular country. </p>
<p>Perhaps the laws of consent need to be more flexible and realistic to ensure that young people are protected. At the same time, there must be an appreciation that many reach sexual maturity quicker than others and therefore are able to make choices about their own bodies. For example, in Canada, while the age of consent is 16, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/confused-messages-an-emotive-debate-reignites-about-the-uk-s-age-of-consent-8945535.html">the legislation is constructed</a> in such a way that older sexual predators would be prosecuted rather than young teenagers who might be in established relationships, even if they have not quite reached the age of 16. This also alleviates some of the pressure associated with having sex at a younger age.</p>
<p>The issue of consent is an emotive one that may never be fully resolved. But it is an important issue for people of all ages. France is having that debate once again. Perhaps it is time the UK joined in?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94334/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Richards does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>France is having a debate over the age of sexual consent. Perhaps it is time the UK joined in.Michael Richards, Lecturer in Applied Health and Social Care, Edge Hill UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/894222017-12-20T14:36:32Z2017-12-20T14:36:32ZBuggery, bribery and a committee: the story of how gay sex was decriminalised in Britain – podcast<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199970/original/file-20171219-4980-1ujgoan.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Gay men should show their thanks by “comporting themselves quietly and with dignity”. So said Lord Arran, the man who shepherded the landmark law that partially decriminalised sex between men through parliament in 1967. It was a long time in coming and left a lot to be desired for gay men.</p>
<p>Listen to the fascinating in-depth story of how the 1967 Sexual Offences Act came to pass and the legacy it had. It is written by Chris Ashford and read by Andrew Naughtie.</p>
<p>You can read the text version of the article <a href="https://theconversation.com/buggery-bribery-and-a-committee-the-story-of-how-gay-sex-was-decriminalised-in-britain-79597">here</a>. And click <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/sexual-offences-act-1967-40972">here</a> to read more articles in our series, which marked the anniversary of the act earlier this year.</p>
<iframe src="https://player.acast.com/5e29c8205aa745a456af58c8/episodes/5e29c8365aa745a456af58d5?theme=default&cover=1&latest=1" frameborder="0" width="100%" height="110px" allow="autoplay"></iframe>
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<p><em>The music in this episode is <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere/Music_for_Podcasts_4/Lee_Rosevere_-_Music_for_Podcasts_4_-_06_Night_Caves">Night Caves</a>, by Lee Rosevere from the Free Music Archive. A big thanks to City University London’s Department of Journalism for letting us use their studios to record this podcast.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89422/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Ashford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Listen to the fascinating in-depth story of the decriminalisation of gay sex in Britain.Chris Ashford, Professor of Law and Society, Northumbria University, NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/795172017-07-28T11:56:31Z2017-07-28T11:56:31Z‘Stranger danger’ in the online and real world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180174/original/file-20170728-23744-erpmyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/adult-online-anonymous-internet-hacker-invisible-513076849?src=fNOcR8GpzKFm0SQBhBzmXA-1-74">Artem Oleshko/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The term “<a href="https://www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing-abuse/keeping-children-safe/staying-safe-away-from-home/">stranger danger</a>” was coined as a warning to children: beware the unknown adult, proceed with caution and be very careful what personal information you reveal. The question is, do adults take their own advice? Perhaps most would be more guarded and make sure they know who they are dealing with before revealing too much about themselves. But our relationship with “strangers” has been evolving and social media has torn down some of the barriers that used to protect us.</p>
<p>Now a relative stranger could be a Facebook “friend” and <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0886260517718187">evidence shows</a> that sexual predators are using this <a href="http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/local-news/cops-slammed-over-facebook-murderer-885048">to their advantage</a>. How we transition from stranger to non-stranger relationships is a relatively unexplored strand in research, with little recognition paid to the fact that the internet has completely transformed our <a href="http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/publications/670-emerging-new-threat-in-online-dating-initial-trends-in-internet-dating-initiated-serious-sexual-assaults">level of engagement with strangers</a>. </p>
<p>At the same time <a href="https://rapecrisis.org.uk/statistics.php">other studies</a> are showing how the rate of reporting sexual offences to conviction is low. A report by <a href="https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmic/publications/crime-recording-making-the-victim-count/">Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC)</a> concluded that 1 in 4 sexual offences should have been recorded as crimes but were not. Reasons cited for this were mainly centred on poor processes for recording the crimes and transferring them on to national recording systems. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180178/original/file-20170728-22562-1qz1246.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180178/original/file-20170728-22562-1qz1246.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180178/original/file-20170728-22562-1qz1246.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180178/original/file-20170728-22562-1qz1246.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180178/original/file-20170728-22562-1qz1246.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180178/original/file-20170728-22562-1qz1246.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180178/original/file-20170728-22562-1qz1246.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The rate of reporting sexual offences to conviction is low.</span>
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<p>Regardless of these issues, the <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/compendium/focusonviolentcrimeandsexualoffences/2015-02-12/chapter4violentcrimeandsexualoffencesintimatepersonalviolenceandserioussexualassault#reporting-of-serious-sexual-assault">reporting of sexual offences is on the rise</a>, with this attributed to increased reporting of sexual offences and apparent improved investigative responses. In the year ending March 2015, the Office of National Statistics <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/compendium/focusonviolentcrimeandsexualoffences/2015-02-12/chapter4violentcrimeandsexualoffencesintimatepersonalviolenceandserioussexualassault#reporting-of-serious-sexual-assault">recorded the highest figure</a> for sexual offences since recording began in 2002, up 37% increase on the previous year. For female victims of serious sexual assaults, 16% were recorded as “stranger relationships”. Other categories included partner/ex-partner (47%) other known (33%) and family member (4%). </p>
<h2>What is a ‘stranger’?</h2>
<p>What is our understanding of how stranger rapes occur? Do we believe this happens within a dark alleyway, involving victims randomly chosen by someone they have never interacted with? Given that most of these attacks are perpetrated by people the victims know – as opposed to the dangerous “stranger” – do these statistics allow us to feel safe within our online social interactions? Herein lies the problem: people we know. At what point would we say we actually <em>know</em> someone in the online and interconnected society of today?</p>
<p>One in three relationships now <a href="http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/publications/670-emerging-new-threat-in-online-dating-initial-trends-in-internet-dating-initiated-serious-sexual-assaults">start online</a>. The change in how people communicate in their day-to-day lives has impacted on the “modus operandi” of sexual offenders. The online environment has evolved a “<a href="http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/publications/670-emerging-new-threat-in-online-dating-initial-trends-in-internet-dating-initiated-serious-sexual-assaults">new type of sexual offender</a>”. Police forces have recorded <a href="http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/publications/670-emerging-new-threat-in-online-dating-initial-trends-in-internet-dating-initiated-serious-sexual-assaults">a six-fold increase</a> in the number of “internet-facilitated” sexual offences between 2009 and 2014. </p>
<p>The vast amount of <a href="http://www.onlinedatingassociation.org.uk/membership/research/research.html">dating and social networking sites</a> easily accessed through smartphones has resulted in the <a href="https://ssrn.com/abstract=2050898">normalisation of providing personal information</a> to strangers. Even Snapchat now allows users to share their exact location. People are able to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/23/snapchat-maps-privacy-safety-concerns">see your every move</a> from your home location, work, school or college. </p>
<p>Snapchat states that their default setting is “off” for location-sharing and users must activate it. They claim that locations can only be shared with your friends list. Given our friendship circles are continually changing and our friends lists are likely to contain <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/06/nspcc-urges-parents-to-do-more-to-keep-their-children-safe-online">people we have never met</a>, how practical is this safety feature? </p>
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<h2>Are you being groomed?</h2>
<p>Grooming techniques are individually tailored to meet victims’ expectations. From <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13552601003698644">child sexual grooming research</a>, we know that trust is key in developing relationships online, with boundaries slowly broken down before introducing <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13552600601069414">sexualised conversations</a>. In cases initiated through online dating that resulted in sexual assaults, sexual communication was reported in over 50% of cases prior to meeting, with online contact to first meeting occurring within a week for <a href="http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/publications/670-emerging-new-threat-in-online-dating-initial-trends-in-internet-dating-initiated-serious-sexual-assaults">43% of cases</a> . The frequency and intensity of interactions allows victims to feel comfortable and shifts the perception of the relationship from stranger to non-stranger <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0886260517718187">quicker than offline encounters</a>.</p>
<p>National Crime Agency <a href="http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/publications/670-emerging-new-threat-in-online-dating-initial-trends-in-internet-dating-initiated-serious-sexual-assaults">evidence</a> reveals 72% of internet-facilitated sexual assaults took place in the victim’s home. Exploration of attack locations of 459 internet-facilitated rapists showed more than half occurred within a <a href="http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/18983/">1.6km radius of the offenders’ home</a>. This differs from <a href="https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1023/A%3A1023044408529.pdf">previous findings</a> where offenders travelled further to their assault location in a bid to reduce the risk of identification. Is this due to an expedited transition from stranger to non-stranger, where the regular dating precautions are dismissed, with victims meeting their victims sooner and in unsafe locations?</p>
<h2>New offenders, new crimes</h2>
<p><a href="http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/18984/">Recent research</a> exploring sexual offending within the UK appears to back this up, concluding that the typical offender profile and crime scene behaviours have changed. Stranger rapists are appearing to be <a href="http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/publications/670-emerging-new-threat-in-online-dating-initial-trends-in-internet-dating-initiated-serious-sexual-assaults">less “criminogenic”</a> – in other words, they have fewer criminal convictions. And those with previous convictions are now likely to be for more low-level offences. This new type of sex offender is also taking <a href="http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/18984/">fewer precautions</a> and less likely to use forced entry or violence in their sexual attacks.</p>
<p>The same techniques used by online sexual offenders are being employed by so-called “<a href="https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/uk/cyber-crime-romance-fraudsters-extracting-34m-year-britons-looking-love-online/">romance fraudsters</a>” targeting dating websites with the intention of extracting money from victims. Around £34.4m from over 3,100 victims was recorded regarding romance fraud last year. </p>
<p>More needs to be done to increase the understanding of the term “stranger” and how this is defined within criminal justice agencies. More importantly society as a whole needs to start getting to grips with the term. Our interactions online are now embedded at such a young age. They have allowed us to become comfortable in revealing personal information and speeding up the relationship process <a href="http://www.onlinedatingassociation.org.uk/membership/research/research.html">at a dangerous pace</a>.</p>
<p>So before engaging with new “friends” online ask yourself: is this person really a stranger? Have you transitioned them to “non-stranger” status too quickly? Are you really being safe online?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79517/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle McManus receives funding from Lancashire Constabulary and Lancashire Police Crime Commissioner as part of a part-time secondment placement within Lancashire Constabulary's Evidence Based Policing Research Hub.
This article was written with the help of Lee Rainbow and Mark Webb from the National Crime Agency.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Louise Almond does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Social media and the internet has helped create a new type of sexual predator, forcing us to reassess our understanding of the terms “friend” and “stranger”.Michelle McManus, Senior Lecturer in Policing, Forensic and Applied Sciences, University of Central LancashireLouise Almond, Senior lecturer in Investigative and Forensic Psychology, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/747852017-07-26T21:38:19Z2017-07-26T21:38:19ZAgainst The Law review: a fitting tribute to gay men whose persecution in 1950s paved way for new rights<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179483/original/file-20170724-24368-vc9uak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A dangerous romance in the 1950s. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The journalist Peter Wildeblood may not be a household name in Britain today, but he was in 1954. Along with the wealthy Lord Montagu and Michael Pitt-Rivers, Wildeblood was sent to prison for homosexual offences in a case that shocked Britain. His case is the subject of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p057nmkt">Against The Law</a>, a film premiered at the BFI Flare film festival and aired on BBC2 to mark the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality. </p>
<p>The post-war period saw a major upswing in the number of such cases coming before the courts in the UK and the US. This was not because men were having more sex with other men, but because the authorities on both sides of the Atlantic were acting with increased vigour to catch them. In 1948, the American biologist Alfred Kinsey and his team of scientists had published <a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?isbn=0253334128">Sexual Behavior in the Human Male</a>, with its shock findings that same-sex incidents were widespread across the population.</p>
<p>Panic reactions, including attempts to identify secret homosexuals hiding in the closet, were <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/picturing-the-closet-9780190205638?cc=gb&lang=en&">spurred</a> by fears that the Soviet Union was using information about private lives to blackmail individuals into spying for them.</p>
<h2>Speaking out</h2>
<p>Wildeblood’s importance in reforming the strict laws in the UK lay not so much in his conviction but in his subsequent publication of <a href="https://www.orionbooks.co.uk/books/detail.page?isbn=9781780225418">Against The Law</a> in 1955. In this pioneering book, he openly advocated legal reform from the position of an avowedly gay man or, to use the language of the time, “a homosexual”.</p>
<p>The BBC film telling Wildeblood’s story – part dramatisation, part documentary – was produced in associated with the Wellcome Trust, which advised on the medical treatments for homosexuality on offer at the time, such as <a href="http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719095887/">hormone and aversion therapies</a> involving the administration of emetics and electric shocks.</p>
<p>Wildeblood was the only openly homosexual man to agree to give testimony to the committee, chaired by Lord Wolfenden, that was established in the wake of the trial. The resulting <a href="http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item107413.html">report</a>, published in 1957, laid the groundwork for the eventual (partial) decriminalisation of male homosexual sex brought about in England by the passing of the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1967/60/pdfs/ukpga_19670060_en.pdf">Sexual Offences Act</a> in July 1967. </p>
<p>When Wildeblood, played by Daniel Mays in the film, attests in court to being homosexual, he is not admitting that he has broken the law. Sexual acts such as “buggery” were illegal, but simply being a “sexual deviant” <a href="https://theconversation.com/buggery-bribery-and-a-committee-the-story-of-how-gay-sex-was-decriminalised-in-britain-79597#comment_1350236">was not</a>. Yet, whether they were celibate or not, gay men were loathed by a considerable proportion of the population and by the police who were paid to hunt them down. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179482/original/file-20170724-21564-z6ohqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179482/original/file-20170724-21564-z6ohqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179482/original/file-20170724-21564-z6ohqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179482/original/file-20170724-21564-z6ohqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179482/original/file-20170724-21564-z6ohqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179482/original/file-20170724-21564-z6ohqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179482/original/file-20170724-21564-z6ohqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Peter Wildebood was sentenced to 18 months in prison.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When Wildeblood’s former lover agrees to turn “Queen’s evidence” in return for immunity from prosecution, viewers are invited to think of the line “each man kills the thing he loves” from Oscar Wilde’s poem <a href="https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/ballad-reading-gaol">The Ballad of Reading Gaol</a>. The ghostly presence of Wilde and his own <a href="http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item107514.html">trials</a> in 1895 haunt this production, implying that little had changed over the intervening 60 years. </p>
<h2>Insecurity leads to clampdown</h2>
<p>But interwar Britain had in fact witnessed several years of much more openly queer life, even if it had not seen a relaxation of the criminal law. World War II then brought all manner of opportunities for queer sex, even if not sustained love, in the blackout. As the writer and sometime sex-worker <a href="https://www.harpercollins.co.uk/9780006540441/the-naked-civil-servant">Quentin Crisp</a> said of the behaviour of American service personnel stationed in London: “Never in the history of sex was so much offered to so many by so few.”</p>
<p>What had changed, by the 1950s, was that the British establishment was far less secure than it had been. There was a real fear of the spread of communism across Europe, and the end of the British Empire was widely understood to be inevitable once India was given its independence in 1947. New methods of social control were introduced in the 1950s: the police manufactured evidence, intimidated witnesses, entrapped homosexual men, and ensured that careers and relationships were ruined.</p>
<p>The film’s dramatic reconstruction of events during the 1950s is intercut with testimony from men who lived through the time. Some of them enjoyed playing cat and mouse with the authorities. But others admit to years of shame and terror at the thought that their desires might become public.</p>
<p>Wildeblood was not a gay liberationist in the mould of the civil rights campaigners of the 1970s. What he wanted was the right to live a respectable private life and, to some extent, the 1967 law provided that opportunity. It was no proud exercise in identity affirmation, but rather the application of discretion to what was felt to be a pressing social problem. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, the BBC’s film, with its sexy scenes and celebratory tributes to men who endured years of bullying and intimidation, makes it clear that it was the establishment that was in retreat as British imperial power fell apart in the face of the rising demands of people across the former empire for independence, respect and self-determination.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74785/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dominic Janes has in the past received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy. </span></em></p>The story of the trial of Peter Wildeblood.Dominic Janes, Professor of Modern History, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/797032017-07-26T13:29:16Z2017-07-26T13:29:16ZWhy a postwar legal debate over the impact of private sex still matters today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179815/original/file-20170726-7205-qv9wzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">I've told you before, the Lawrence v Texas decision says it's fine.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/gay-couple-lying-on-bed-reading-626611700?src=_LCZ6inRtKgCLdkXfh00Xw-2-2">Africa Studio</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the UK marks the 50th anniversary of the 1967 <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1967/60/pdfs/ukpga_19670060_en.pdf">Sexual Offences Act</a>, it’s crucial not to forget that <a href="https://southeast.unison.org.uk/news/article/2017/02/lgbt-history-month-50th-anniversary-sexual-offences-act/">views on sexual identity and orientation</a> are diverse and often directly contradictory – and that this applies in lawmaking, too. There’s been plenty of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2007/jun/24/communities.gayrights">research</a> on the ways public and private behaviour and sexual activity are regulated, but there’s surprisingly little analysis of the ideological and cultural forces that shape those regulations as they’re formulated.</p>
<p>One of the most decisive attitudes towards sexual behaviour, and especially sexual orientation, is a general fear that “challenges” to accepted norms will inevitably hasten societal disintegration regardless of whether they occur publicly or privately. And indeed, it was an argument over this idea that helped produce the Sexual Offences Act 1967.</p>
<p>That act <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/23/fifty-years-gay-liberation-uk-barely-four-1967-act">only partially decriminalised</a> male homosexuality; it didn’t legitimate sexual orientation per se, only the behaviour of two “consenting” men over 21, and crucially, “in private”. Homosexuality and homosexual behaviour were to remain covert.</p>
<p>This approach had been set out a decade earlier by the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution in Great Britain, led by Sir John Wolfenden, whose <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/before-after-wolfenden-report.htm">report</a> concluded that it is not the duty of the law to concern itself with “immorality”. This sparked a famous legal exchange between legal philosopher <a href="http://www2.law.ox.ac.uk/jurisprudence/hart.htm">H. L. A. Hart</a> and judge Patrick (later Lord) Devlin, now known as the <a href="https://www.academia.edu/10892361/Legislating_Morality_Scoring_the_Hart-Devlin_Debate_after_50_Years">Hart-Devlin debate</a>. </p>
<p>On the one side, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-lord-devlin-1539619.html">Devlin</a> argued that even private “immoral” behaviour can potentially lead to <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-dXcq7Y8hI0C&lpg=PA380&ots=dBr7t3E8Xd&dq=%22the%20loosening%20of%20moral%20bonds%20is%20often%20the%20first%20stage%20of%22&pg=PA380#v=onepage&q&f=false">social disintegration</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>When no common morality is observed … the loosening of moral bonds is often the first stage of disintegration, so that society is justified in taking the same steps to preserve its moral code as it does to preserve its government and other essential institutions.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In contrast, Hart questioned Devlin’s notion of a unified society that needed to be “protected”, one unaffected by diversity, superstition and prejudice. He also argued that societies can and do survive changes in basic moral views, and that no causal link could automatically be made between private behaviour and the state of society at large.</p>
<p>While the 1967 act was ultimately passed, with assorted other liberalising measures following over the next five decades, the argument over the morality of private sexual behaviour remains <a href="https://theconversation.com/fifty-years-of-gay-rights-but-some-in-the-british-media-are-peddling-the-same-homophobia-81465">both public and live</a>. And just as the Wolfenden report and the 1967 act did not end this debate in the UK, much of the world is still arguing over whether and why private sexual behaviour demands regulation.</p>
<h2>Caught out</h2>
<p>Take, for example, the US, which has been on quite a legal journey when it comes to sodomy in particular. </p>
<p>In 1986, the US Supreme Court heard the case <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/478/186">Bowers v. Hardwick</a>, brought by a Georgia resident named Michael Hardwick, who claimed that a state law criminalising sodomy was unconstitutional. The court ultimately ruled against him. The justices’ majority opinion cited the 18th-century English jurist <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/01/17/william-blackstone-and-the-fou-1/">William Blackstone</a>, who argued that homosexual sex is “an infamous crime against nature”, and argued that “millennia of moral teaching would be overturned to accept such practices”. </p>
<p>Such notions of “moral teaching” are often based upon a <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus%2018">selective religious interpretation</a> of “natural law”, under which sex is proscribed unless it takes place between men and women, in a particular manner, and for the purposes of procreation. Whether the sex happens in private, it seems, was considered irrelevant. On the other hand, a dissenting argument by <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bowers_v._Hardwick/Dissent_Blackmun">Justice Harry Blackmun</a> focused on the right to privacy that Hardwick had claimed, which Blackmun said was enshrined in “broad principles” that the court had failed to properly consider.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179811/original/file-20170726-16242-1ct3q5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179811/original/file-20170726-16242-1ct3q5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179811/original/file-20170726-16242-1ct3q5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179811/original/file-20170726-16242-1ct3q5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179811/original/file-20170726-16242-1ct3q5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179811/original/file-20170726-16242-1ct3q5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179811/original/file-20170726-16242-1ct3q5m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The US Supreme Court justices who decided Lawrence v. Texas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Supreme_Court_1998_new.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The case wasn’t overruled until another Supreme Court case in 2003, <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-102.ZO.html">Lawrence v. Texas</a>, which many still see as a landmark decision. It began when police officers in Houston, Texas were called to a supposed weapons disturbance and entered a home to instead find two men, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3022026.stm">John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Garner</a>, having sex. (The neighbour who called the police was convicted of filing a false report.) </p>
<p>In contrast to Bowers v. Hardwick, the court struck down the sodomy law in Texas in a 6-3 decision, stating that intimate consensual sexual conduct was part of the liberty protected by substantive due process under the 14th Amendment, regardless of the sex of the participants. According to the majority opinion, the case involved “two adults who, with full and mutual consent from each other, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle” and “the state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime”.</p>
<p>Yet even in an era where the Supreme Court has ruled in favour of same-sex marriage, the argument is still not entirely resolved: lawsuits over certain US states’ anti-sodomy laws <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/21/12-states-ban-sodomy-a-decade-after-court-ruling/7981025/">continue to this day</a>.</p>
<h2>The debate continues</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://www.coe.int/t/democracy/migration/bodies/echr_en.asp">European Court of Human Rights</a> has also been challenged to decide whether to legitimise or challenge the idea that private behaviour matters to society at large. This lately presented itself in the November 2016 case <a href="http://merlin.obs.coe.int/iris/2017/2/article1.en.html">Kaos GL v. Turkey</a>, which centred upon the seizure and confiscation of all the copies of issue 28 of a magazine published by Kaos GL, a Turkish cultural research and solidarity association for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. </p>
<p>The case reveals how the court attempts to accommodate diverse attitudes. The court ultimately decided that the confiscation was a “disproportionate interference” with Kaos GL’s <a href="https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/human-rights-act/article-10-freedom-expression">right to freedom of expression</a> – and that the Turkish authorities’ defence of attempting to “protect public morals” didn’t excuse the overstep. It concluded that simply prohibiting the magazine’s sale to minors or requiring content warnings would have sufficed.</p>
<p>This amounts to a refusal to defer to powerful cultural norms. <a href="http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/4/3/838">Recent reports</a> from Turkey illustrate that while homosexuality is more and more publicly visible, it still doesn’t enjoy much in the way of understanding, acceptance, or tolerance. Many homosexual men are stereotyped as feminised, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17474967">unfit for military service,</a> and <a href="http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/4/3/838">curuk raporu</a> (rotten). In 2015, Efkan Ata, a former minister of internal affairs, said he <a href="http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/4/3/838">opposed gay marriage</a> as “the destruction of humanity”.</p>
<p>These are problems all over the world. Many people still believe that homosexuality and “non-conventional” <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-uks-online-porn-crackdown-could-harm-young-people-more-than-it-helps-81213">pornography</a>, will inevitably corrupt public morals, weaken or change society, even cause societal collapse, even if they exist or take place out of public view. As the UK celebrates 50 years since the great change of 1967, the Hart-Devlin debate is as relevant as ever.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79703/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kim McGuire does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Are gay rights a matter of protecting privacy, or sexual freedom itself?Kim McGuire, Senior Lecturer, Lancashire Law School, University of Central LancashireLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/804852017-07-26T12:48:13Z2017-07-26T12:48:13ZOut on the screen: 50 years of queer cinema in Britain<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179787/original/file-20170726-30149-qoa0ct.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">One of the first British films to depict the 'crime' of homosexuality.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>When the British parliament passed the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1967/60/pdfs/ukpga_19670060_en.pdf">Sexual Offences Act of 1967</a> – which stated that: “a homosexual act in private shall not be an offence provided that the parties consent thereto and have attained the age of 21 years” – it sought to legitimate gay identity in Britain, at least partially. Interestingly, the language contained within – the “homosexual act in private” – speaks directly to gay experience. </p>
<p>First, the document’s phrasing connotes ideas around “acting”, “performing”, “presenting” oneself in a particular way (the theatre has long been a bastion for queer creativity) and, second, the dichotomy of public and private space, where people can “be themselves”. The Act seems to be constructing a social stage (albeit obscured, out of view) on which gay men can perform. For a man living in Britain before 1967, to be gay was a criminal offence. Therefore, how and where he was able to perform his homosexual identity would have been a constant source of anxiety and danger. </p>
<p>It should be mentioned that the Sexual Offences Act did not legislate for the decriminalisation of female homosexuality. This could stem from Queen Victoria’s apparent belief that lesbians didn’t even exist – or a more troubling reflection on the view of women generally in the British social sphere at the turn of the 20th century. However, lesbians do feature throughout the course of this 50-year history and should be included within these debates around increased visibility – even if, when compared with films about gay male experience, they are underrepresented.</p>
<p>It’s fair to say that 1967 and the years after the Act was passed did not open the floodgates for the immediate visibility of gay lives. Neither should the pre-1967 years be considered as a cinematic wasteland with no queer inhabitants. Rather, ways of viewing such characters in these films and the ways in which they were represented changed. As Andy Medhurst explains in his entertaining and thoughtful search for “<a href="http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/30808/">nebulous nancies</a>” in British films made between the 1940s and 1960s, the aim of the queer spectator was to pick up on visual and verbal clues which would give away a character’s or actor’s “gayness”. </p>
<p>These could be a costume, a glance, a sibilant delivery of a line, but would form a viewer’s set of identifiers, both a visual and verbal vocabulary of how to identify themselves in characters on the big screen. For Medhurst, films such as <a href="http://www.thespinningimage.co.uk/cultfilms/displaycultfilm.asp?reviewid=5721">Once a Jolly Swagman</a> (1948), <a href="https://www.createspace.com/6783521">Mr Perrin and Mr Traill</a> (1948), and <a href="http://dfordoom-movieramblings.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/high-treason-1951.html">High Treason</a> (1951) all offer up clues for a spectator who is “in the know”. As soon as Michael Ward’s character gushes “Tony can be deliciously devastating” at a cocktail party in Swagman, we understand exactly what he means and who he is.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, in Britain during this time any overt gay characters were often marginalised or non-existent. It was not until the 1950s and the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/14/against-the-law-the-wildeblood-scandal-the-case-that-rocked-1950s-britain-and-changed-gay-rights">high-profile trials</a> involving Lord Montagu, Michael Pitt-Rivers, and Peter Wildeblood for homosexuality that the issue received substantial social attention. As a result, in 1957, Lord John Wolfenden and his committee <a href="http://sti.bmj.com/content/sextrans/33/4/205.full.pdf">published their report</a> which had investigated “homosexuality and its implications for British social life and the law”.</p>
<p>The Wolfenden report proved an influential precursor to the 1967 Act. The findings proved highly divisive among the British public, as did the subsequent release of films which capitalised on the scandals that rocked the upper classes. Even so, this political conversation about homosexuality was still reflected in film at the time in hushed tones.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179799/original/file-20170726-17560-1uj2n21.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179799/original/file-20170726-17560-1uj2n21.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179799/original/file-20170726-17560-1uj2n21.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179799/original/file-20170726-17560-1uj2n21.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179799/original/file-20170726-17560-1uj2n21.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179799/original/file-20170726-17560-1uj2n21.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179799/original/file-20170726-17560-1uj2n21.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">South: the earliest surviving British gay TV drama to deal with homosexuality.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">British Film Institute</span></span>
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<p>On the small screen, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/mar/16/itv-play-gay-television">South</a>, based on the play by Julien Green and shown as part of ITV’s Play of the Week series in 1959, is the earliest surviving British gay television drama. Set against the backdrop of the American Civil War, it depicts the tortuous realisation of soldier Jan Wicziewsky (played with brio and bluster by Peter Wyngarde) that he desires another man who visits the plantation house at which he is staying. As was common with so many gay stories, Jan is doomed to die, unable to profess his love and killed in a duel by the object of his affections. Coded conversations and meaningful looks indicate that South was made at a time when queer love still dare not speak its name.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jul/20/victim-review-dirk-bogarde-basil-dearden-gay-drama-rerelease">Victim</a> (1961) was a film which dared to speak louder and more directly about gay experience. It starred matinee idol Dirk Bogarde as a closeted gay lawyer who is implicated in a blackmail ring which threatens to expose his gay identity and destroy his career. As well as situating its gay politics within a thriller narrative designed to appeal to a wider audience, it is noteworthy for being one of the first British films to cast a well-known actor in a gay title role. </p>
<p>Extra-textual elements about Bogarde’s own private life as a gay man lend the film and his performance in it additional meaning and an authenticity which inflects his performances in later films such as Joseph Losey’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2013/mar/27/the-servant-homosexuality-harold-pinter">The Servant</a> (1963) and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/mar/29/darling-dvd-review-philip-french-julie-christie-frederic-raphael">Darling</a> (1965). Victim would mark a career-long fascination with Bogarde’s queer star persona and his own, often reluctant, negotiation of a gay identity. </p>
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<p>John Schlesinger, who directed Bogarde in Darling, was one of a group of gay filmmakers working during the “Swinging 60s”, within an atmosphere of sexual freedom. Schlesinger, with Tony Richardson and Lindsay Anderson, emerged out of the <a href="http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/592919/index.html">Free Cinema movement</a> in the 1950s. This was a cinema which, often through documentaries, reacted against the perceived privilege of British filmmakers and tended to focus on a disenfranchised individual, the prototypical “angry young man”. </p>
<p>In films as diverse as <a href="http://freshfilmfestival.net/cms_files/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/FFF_2000_The_Loneliness_Of_The.pdf">The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner</a> (Richardson, 1962), <a href="https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/626-this-sporting-life-the-lonely-heart">This Sporting Life</a> (Anderson, 1963), <a href="https://grunes.wordpress.com/2007/03/01/if-lindsay-anderson-1968-2/">If…</a> (Anderson, 1968), and <a href="https://www.criterion.com/films/28025-sunday-bloody-sunday">Sunday Bloody Sunday</a> (Schlesinger, 1971), we see male central characters who – as UK film academic Robin Griffiths wrote in his history of <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/British_Queer_Cinema.html?id=cHlHa3sQpB8C&redir_esc=y">Queer Cinema</a>, “find themselves trapped, symbolically reflect[ing] both the experiences of their respective directors, and the general dilemma of being queer in British society at the time”. Regardless of whether or not they were explicitly described as being gay, these tragic figures presented the plight of gay men who were desperately searching for somewhere to “be themselves”.</p>
<h2>Stigma signals</h2>
<p>It is precisely this notion of performance which captures the quandary for gay men living in a society where being homosexual is synonymous with being “unnatural”. Canadian-American sociologist Erving Goffman, writing in 1968 (a year after the Sexual Offences Act was passed in England and Wales), includes <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/stigma-notes-on-the-management-of-spoiled-identity-3026757">homosexuality as a social stigma</a> – that is, a marker which disqualifies an individual from full social acceptance. He continues by describing evidence of stigma as “reflexive and embodied” and so communicated by the person through bodily expression via “stigma symbols”.</p>
<p>For the gay man, these could range from (self-evident) sexual relations with someone of the same sex to less obvious symbols which have developed in society and culture over time – for example drag queens, effeminate behaviour and particular ways of dressing or acting. In the interest of self-preservation, an individual may want to conceal their stigma symbol(s), which means that visibility is important for someone who is stigmatised. </p>
<p>It is significant, then, that in some of the films released in Britain in the immediate years after the Sexual Offences Act was passed, performance figures so centrally to the stories; in the characterisations of the actors and critical reactions to them. <a href="http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/159647%7C0/Staircase.html">Staircase</a> (Stanley Donen, 1969), featuring Richard Burton and Rex Harrison as a couple of “flaming queen” hairdressers, drew the <a href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/staircase-1969">critical ire of Roger Ebert</a> (and, one imagines, some of the gay community) for their portrayal of Harry and Charlie as a parodic “sideshow attraction”. Ebert comments further that we’re “not asked to watch a movie about homosexuals, but a movie about Harrison and Burton playing homosexuals”. </p>
<p>Consider also Nic Roeg’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jul/21/james-fox-sandy-lieberson-how-we-made-performance">Performance</a> (1970) – whose performative agenda is writ large from the title – and its gender fluid boundaries that constitute the film’s plot, gently subverting the British gangster genre. Later came <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/feb/21/how-we-made-the-crying-game-neil-jordan-stephen-rea-miranda-richardson">The Crying Game</a> (1992) whose “big reveal” demonstrates the permeability of gender categories played out within a neo-noir story where, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ncIbd-Uch28C&pg=PA224&lpg=PA224&dq=The+Crying+Game+richard+dyer&source=bl&ots=ecH5HI1sIJ&sig=ebbRzO-7ypIfQOe6vdaqvitapJ0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiu6-yUyKbVAhXkLMAKHcRECXAQ6AEIMzAE#v=onepage&q=The%20Crying%20Game&f=false">for Richard Dyer</a>, the genre’s themes of uncertainty, mystery, and duplicity in the search for a cold-hearted killer become a question of “who is queer?” As such, these films all highlight the significance of looking a certain way, which for the queer spectator prior to the 1967 Act entailed looking for queer characters.</p>
<h2>Another way of looking</h2>
<p>This act of looking, this voyeurism, is closely linked to the cinematic apparatus and forms the titles of numerous British queer films in this period. Whether one is Looking for Langston (1989) – the title of Julien’s 1989 film about gay black American poet Langston Hughes – or <a href="https://www.timeout.com/london/film/caught-looking">Caught Looking (1991)</a> – Constantine Giannaris’ 1991 film about risque fantasies – the desire to see and be seen has been crucial in the advancement of gay rights. </p>
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<p>In 1978, Nighthawks – another attention-grabbing film title – took spectators into the subterranean milieu of gay clubs. Presumably taking its title from the famous Hopper painting, <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2015/04/revisiting-nighthawks-film-most-extraordinary-coming-out-scene">Ron Peck’s film</a> is widely heralded as the first gay movie produced and commercially released in Britain. It follows Jim, a teacher by day and a cruiser by night, who is eager to make a romantic connection with the men he picks up. </p>
<p>Peck’s direction and Paul Hallam’s writing gives the film an authenticity of gay experience in 1970s London and focuses on the importance of “looking” – looking a certain way or looking for your next hook-up. Nighthawks offers a glimpse into one man’s negotiation of identity and would go on to influence future British gay filmmakers such as Andrew Haigh and his films <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/sep/04/greek-pete-film-review">Greek Pete</a> (2009) and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/nov/03/weekend-film-review">Weekend</a> (2011).</p>
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<h2>Touch of class</h2>
<p>British film has historically had a singular fascination for social dramas centred on class. In Thatcher-era Britain, debates around class, race and sexuality were heated and found their way into films of the period. Entries into this queer canon of British films included Merchant and Ivory’s lavish adaptation of E.M. Forster’s posthumously-published, semi-autobiographical novel <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/may/19/maurice-film-period-drama-merchant-ivory">Maurice</a> (1987) and the Hanif Kureishi-scripted <a href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/my-beautiful-laundrette-1986">My Beautiful Laundrette</a> (Stephen Frears, 1985). </p>
<p>Both films spoke to a contemporary social context which, through an increasing sense of British nationalism, created groups of outsiders based around racism and homophobia. It is telling, then, that against this decidedly bleak cultural backdrop these two films offer something of the utopian in their representations of university society Edwardian England and an aspirational Pakistani in 1980s London respectively – “an English Arcadia” as Michael Williams puts it. Equally suggestive however may be “utopia’s” double meaning of “ideal place” and “no place”. The fight for visibility, acceptance – and a place to call home within British society and cinema continues.</p>
<p>During the 1980s and 1990s, a group of gay British filmmakers emerged and were subsequently adopted into the “<a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/culture/twenty-five-years-of-new-queer-cinema/2018251.article">New Queer Cinema</a>” movement inaugurated in North America. Each had a recognisable style which developed through “personal is political” narratives and arthouse aesthetics. </p>
<p>Isaac Julien (Looking for Langston, Young Soul Rebels [1991]) became the voice of a black gay identity. Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/nov/19/terence-davies-religion-being-gay-sunset-song-interview">Terence Davies</a> would tackle elements of his own homosexual awakening within a repressive Catholic upbringing and a dysfunctional family unit in his films The Terence Davies Trilogy (1983), Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and The Long Day Closes (1992). These films of intense feeling are metaphysical looks inward by Davies which reveal the fluidity of memory used to construct a gay “self”.</p>
<h2>Queering history</h2>
<p>One of the most critically acclaimed queer voices in British cinema at this time was <a href="http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/derek-jarman-five-essential-films">Derek Jarman</a>. Films such as Sebastiane (co-directed with Paul Humfress, 1976) and The Angelic Conversation (1985) demonstrated Jarman’s experimental aesthetic and sensual imagery which privileged the “look” of his films. </p>
<p>Dyer proposes that the significance of the “look” of these films, and perhaps why so much invigorating queer film-making was being done independently and shown in underground venues (as well as for commercial reasons), was a reflection of the “surface” homosexuals had to manage in order to pass for heterosexual. But Jarman’s films also reveal another, more subversive, move which was a feature of British gay film – the “queer biopic”.</p>
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<p>Perhaps Jarman’s best-known films (if it is possible to talk of such) are his biographical treatments of notable cultural figures. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/News_Story/Critic_Review/Guardian_review/0,,1434768,00.html">Caravaggio</a> (1986), <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/aug/16/reel-history-edward-ii">Edward II</a> (1991) and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9F0CE5DC1739F934A2575AC0A965958260">Wittgenstein</a> (1993) can be interpreted as a “queering” of history, to emphasise the sexuality of their respective central figures in order to carve a space for gay visibility within the largely heterosexual (not to mention, white and male) academy.</p>
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<p>Understandably, British film has had a long held fascination for the camp celebrity of Oscar Wilde (which continued with <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/12101514/Wilde-director-Brian-Gilbert-We-righted-a-wrong-with-the-film.html">Stephen Fry’s Wilde</a> [1997]), but other, less ubiquitous, gay lives are documented. Playwright Joe Orton (very much the theatrical descendant of Wilde’s risqué high society satire) is memorably portrayed by Gary Oldman in <a href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/prick-up-your-ears-1987">Prick Up Your Ears</a> (1987), Ian McKellen plays Frankenstein director James Whale in <a href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/gods-and-monsters-1998">Gods and Monsters</a> (1998) and, in The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/nov/16/the-imitation-game-review-engrossing-thriller-benedict-cumberbatch">Imitation Game</a> (2014), Benedict Cumberbatch’s Alan Turing races to crack the enigma code during World War II as he wrestles with his homosexuality.</p>
<h2>Out in the mainstream</h2>
<p>Mainstream appeal may or may not be the aim of these queer films – but social, cultural and legal acceptance would surely be the hope of their gay audiences. There has been a small, yet noticeable, shift towards increased gay representation in British feature films. In films such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/feb/23/best-exotic-marigold-hotel-review">The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel</a> (2011) and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/12/fashion/Philomena-True-Story-Michael-Hess.html">Philomena</a> (2013), queers occupy sub-plots, but Pride (2014) puts its subject matter (equal rights for lesbians, gay men and Welsh miners in 1984’s strikes) front and centre. The film’s comedy genre-leanings and all-star British cast ensured healthy takings at the UK box office. </p>
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<p>Additionally in British-American big budget co-productions, gay characters are beginning to find a place. Disney’s live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast (2016) featured a (very) brief scene of a supporting male character dancing with another man, and the crew of horror sequel Alien: Covenant (2017) included a gay couple – and, later, Michael Fassbender’s cyborg locking lips with “himself”). These two examples <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/mar/16/beauty-and-the-beast-disney-gay-scene-malaysia">prompted backlash</a> in conservative countries and indicate that there is still work to be done for gays to find acceptance on the big-screen. </p>
<p>With this is mind, when someone comes to write an article in 2067 to mark the Act’s centenary, let’s hope that all LGBTQ+ people can come out from a cinema screen and into a British social context in which being prosecuted and persecuted for simply loving someone is a distant memory.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80485/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Vaughan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Decriminalisation changed the way homosexuality and gay culture were portrayed on screen.Adam Vaughan, Postgraduate Researcher, University of SouthamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/797052017-07-25T09:11:26Z2017-07-25T09:11:26ZOn sexuality, the law still caters to the norms of public disgust<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179445/original/file-20170724-10327-x6bot3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Marching for pride, London, 1974.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A%22We_Are_Nature's_Children_Too%22_-_Gay_Pride_March%2C_(1974)_(7408285244).jpg">LSE Library via Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We tend to assume that law is objective and disembodied, but the story of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/buggery-bribery-and-a-committee-the-story-of-how-gay-sex-was-decriminalised-in-britain-79597">decriminalisation of homosexuality in the UK</a> shows that, like the people who create it, it is in fact an emotional creature, animated by visceral human feelings – and as far as sexuality is concerned, the chief emotion at work is often disgust. </p>
<p>You don’t have to look very hard to see how much it was disgust, not a concern for morality or justice, that shaped the laws governing homosexual activity. In fact, in the UK, homosexuality was long deemed so perverse that to even speak of it in public would stain your character.</p>
<p>Criminal punishments for homosexual activity, which included the death penalty, thrived on disgust for centuries. Introduced by Henry VIII in 1533, the Buggery Act 1533 criminalised the “abominable vice” of anal sex between men. In his <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Rww0AQAAMAAJ&pg=PP284&lpg=PP284&dq=%E2%80%9Coffence+of+so+dark+a+nature%E2%80%9D+blackstone&source=bl&ots=NsxJd2wEo1&sig=U9s1YAvuYcUPVYE5Vp5ACG9IbUY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiT-uPZ7qHVAhUqJcAKHVOwAIkQ6AEINDAC#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9Coffence%20of%20so%20dark%20a%20nature%E2%80%9D%20blackstone&f=false">commentaries</a> on the common law of England published in 1765, jurist William Blackstone described buggery as an “offence of so dark a nature” that “the very mention of [it] is a disgrace to human nature”. <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2008/12/17/alien-legacy/origins-sodomy-laws-british-colonialism">Colonial statutes</a> (which are still in effect in a number of Commonwealth countries today) referred to sex between men as an “act against the order of nature”. </p>
<p>In 1895, writer Oscar Wilde was put on trial for “gross indecency”, a statutory offence <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-criminal-law-amendment-act-1885">introduced in 1885</a> to punish individuals who engaged in same-sex relationships, without having to prove they had anal sex. In sentencing Wilde for gross indecency, <a href="http://www.mr-oscar-wilde.de/words/trials/justice_wills.htm">Justice Wills</a> noted:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The crime of which you have been convicted is so bad that one has to put stern restraint upon one’s self to prevent one’s self from describing, in language which I would rather not use, the sentiments which must rise in the breast of every man of honour who has heard the details of these two horrible trials.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Disgust, again, was the animating principle. In writing about the Wilde trial, philosopher and legal scholar <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7697.html">Martha Nussbaum</a> observes that disgust was not simply an excess or unintended consequence of prosecuting sexual offences; it was central to it. Criminal penalties were contingent on the extent to which the person, and the activity they engaged in, could elicit public disgust.</p>
<h2>Dealing with disgust</h2>
<p>Unsurprisingly, then, the process of decriminalising homosexuality that began in the mid-20th century involved rethinking and redirecting disgust in the law. Following the convictions of famous British citizens such as <a href="http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/08/24/heartbreaking-alan-turing-letters-reveal-turmoil-over-gay-cure-treatment/">Alan Turing</a> and <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11834758/Lord-Montagu-of-Beaulieu-obituary.html">Lord Montagu</a>, the UK government commissioned Sir John Wolfenden in 1954 to head up an inquiry to consider the appropriateness of criminalising homosexuality and the treatment of those who were convicted as a result.</p>
<p>In its powerful and widely celebrated <a href="http://www.humandignitytrust.org/uploaded/Library/Other_Reports_and_Analysis/Wolfenden_Report_1957.pdf">report</a>, the Wolfenden Committee noted that revulsion towards homosexuals was an insufficient basis to criminalise their behaviour, since it breached their right to privacy: “Moral conviction or instinctive feeling, however strong, is not a valid basis for overriding the individual’s privacy.”</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175244/original/file-20170622-12049-1gsswcm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175244/original/file-20170622-12049-1gsswcm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175244/original/file-20170622-12049-1gsswcm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175244/original/file-20170622-12049-1gsswcm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175244/original/file-20170622-12049-1gsswcm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175244/original/file-20170622-12049-1gsswcm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175244/original/file-20170622-12049-1gsswcm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Offended? The LGBT Centre in New York.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>On paper, this was a breakthrough. But instead of liberating homosexuality, the notion of protecting “privacy” became a legal container for public disgust. The committee also noted that by confining homosexuality to the bedroom, it could be zoned away to a space where the public would not have to bear the disgust of witnessing it. In fact, the committee emphasised the need to protect children from this “corrupting” vice; it recommended this be done by setting the age of consent for homosexual activity at 21, several years above the heterosexual boundary.</p>
<p>Ten years after the report, parliament gave effect to these recommendations when it passed the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1967/60/pdfs/ukpga_19670060_en.pdf">Sexual Offences Act 1967</a> and partially decriminalised homosexuality in England and Wales. Criminal law still prohibited sexual activity between men aged under 21, and those who had (group) sex in the company of other adults. </p>
<p>Homosexuality, in short, was not cleansed of public disgust. Rather, legal notions of privacy allowed the state to contain homosexuality in a way that would avoid offending the moral sensibilities of a “normal” (read: heterosexual) public. Disgusting sex was safely confined to the private sphere.</p>
<h2>Happily ever after?</h2>
<p>Over the last 50 years, the British gay rights landscape has been dramatically reshaped. Same-sex couples have gone from being revolting “outlaws” to dignified “in-laws”. They can have anal sex at the same age as those who can have vaginal-penile intercourse; they can get married and have children. Many of us who are directly affected sentimentalise these as milestones on a march towards a happy ending – a world where we are no longer abused because of who we are or what we do.</p>
<p>That’s perfectly understandable, but we should treat this legalistic narrative of progress with caution. Disgust, after all, is still used to regulate sexual minorities.</p>
<p>Various laws still <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Homosexual_ity_of_Law.html?id=F-G8O95Yk2wC">police</a> public sex and sex work. Thanks largely to the judgment in the notorious <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/perverts-on-parade-for-the-right-to-practise-safe-sadism-1599215.html">Operation Spanner trial</a> of 1990, people who enjoy consensual sadomasochism <a href="http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/1993/19.html">risk prosecution</a> when their kinky activities result in what the law deems “actual bodily harm”. Those who find kinship outside the conventional couple remain on the peripheries of legal recognition. </p>
<p>The law is still used to stigmatise and punish identities and forms of intimacy that don’t conform to the mainstream’s romanticised expectations. Yes, it’s right to celebrate the legal progress in this area over the last five decades; many of us who would once have been kept in the shadows no longer think of our desires as disgusting or shameful. But it must be remembered that this was made possible by changes in public emotion, not just the law – and if we want to see further progress, we must ask ourselves why some sexualities still disgust us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79705/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Senthorun Raj does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Even the Wolfenden report cited the need to protect the public from that which disgusted them.Senthorun Raj, Lecturer, Keele Law School, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/814652017-07-25T07:52:29Z2017-07-25T07:52:29ZFifty years of gay rights but some in the British media are peddling the same homophobia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179452/original/file-20170724-24368-1ozrm8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/grungy-newspaper-texture-235542745?src=XR-CkJkhJPHcJkHJ4wruXw-1-70">EddieCloud/www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On July 27 2017, it will be 50 years since the <a href="https://theconversation.com/buggery-bribery-and-a-committee-the-story-of-how-gay-sex-was-decriminalised-in-britain-79597">first major gay rights reform</a> in British history. The <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1967/60/pdfs/ukpga_19670060_en.pdf">Sexual Offences Act 1967</a> decreed that, in England and Wales, it would no longer be illegal for two men over the age of 21 to have sex behind closed doors. </p>
<p>The intervening years have seen vast changes in the <a href="https://www.mmu.ac.uk/equality-and-diversity/orientation/LGBT-Timeline.pdf">legal rights and cultural visibility</a> of LGBT+ people in the UK. To the point that it might now seem like the British LGBT+ community is on an unstoppable ascent to acceptance and equality. Yet in the last year there has been a rising tide of anti-LGBT sentiment. </p>
<p>History has shown that conservative attitudes towards sexuality and gender tend to flare up during periods of social and political uncertainty. Post-World War II, for example, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hx4EAQAAIAAJ&q=gay+history+of+britain+undermining+post+war&dq=gay+history+of+britain+undermining+post+war&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiIlOaL8KHVAhUDDMAKHcKLA4sQ6AEIJDAA">there was a spike in arrests for homosexuality</a>. It is no different now: following the 2016 EU referendum vote, homophobic hate crimes <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/oct/08/homophobic-attacks-double-after-brexit-vote">rose by 147%</a>. </p>
<h2>Attitudes</h2>
<p>The media plays a central role in shaping public opinion, offering partial, selective and ideologically-loaded access points to the world beyond our everyday experiences. For many heterosexual people, it is through the media that they encounter LGBT identities. This is why media representation has been, and remains, such an <a href="http://criticalmediaproject.org/cml/topicbackground/lgbt/">important issue in the struggle for LGBT rights</a>. </p>
<p>Whether national treasure or person on the street, in recent years these representations have become increasingly negative. In May this year, the Daily Express put the word “marry” in inverted commas when <a href="http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/05/09/tom-daley-and-dustin-lance-black-receive-homophobic-wedding-tweet-from-the-daily-express/">tweeting</a> about the openly-gay, Olympic medal-winning diver Tom Daley. The grammar breathed new life into the old, homophobic idea that “real” marriage can only take place between heterosexuals. This was not an isolated incident, but the tip of a growing iceberg of thinly-veiled homophobia since the EU referendum.</p>
<p>The right-wing press in Britain has a well-deserved reputation for homophobia. In 1986, for example, The Sun “<a href="http://www.gayinthe80s.com/2012/06/1983-book-jenny-lives-with-eric-and-martin/">discovered</a>” that a teachers’ resource library in the Labour-held London borough of Islington held a copy of a children’s book called “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/jan/31/booksforchildrenandteenagers.features11">Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin</a>” about a young girl and her two gay dads. The paper branded the book “vile”, “perverted”, and a direct threat to the children of Britain.</p>
<p>This homophobia did not spring out of nowhere, but was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/10/margaret-thatcher-poster-girl-gay-rights">part of a joint effort</a>, in the run up to the 1987 election, between the right-wing media and Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government to paint Labour as the “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=M1ijULLi2qEC&pg=PA1&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q=loony%20left&f=false">loony left</a>”, who were apparently prioritising the needs of minority groups over “normal” – white, heterosexual – families. Homophobia was central to this strategy, and throughout the AIDS epidemic of the late 1980s the press persistently associated gay people with danger, contagion and death. </p>
<h2>Influence</h2>
<p>Amid the current government’s drastic programme of austerity, and under the newer shadow of economic uncertainty posed by Brexit, the right-wing press has begun to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/11/hiv-stigma-1980s">repackage these old homophobic myths</a>.</p>
<p>Faced with increasing financial cuts, last year the NHS decided that it would not fund the newly developed HIV prevention medication Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP). In <a href="http://betablog.org/demand-prep-shows-high-efficacy-ipergay-trial/">clinical trials</a>, PrEP has been shown to dramatically reduce rates of HIV transmission among gay men, and is publicly funded in <a href="http://www.aidsmap.com/France-approves-PrEP/page/3016707/">France</a> and <a href="http://www.itg.be/E/Article/itm-welcomes-reimbursement-preventive-hiv-medication">Belgium</a>. </p>
<p>When the NHS’s decision was contested in the High Court by the National Aids Trust, the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3720706/What-skewed-sense-values-NHS-told-5-000-year-lifestyle-drug-prevent-HIV-vital-cataract-surgery-rationed.html">Daily Mail, MailOnline</a> and <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1547570/nhs-warns-other-care-is-at-risk-because-of-hiv-drug-and-vows-to-appeal-high-court-decision/">The Sun</a> were quick to denounce PrEP as a waste of scarce public resources – ignoring the fact that studies have found it is cheaper to <a href="http://www.aidsmap.com/Provision-of-PrEP-in-the-UK-will-be-cost-effective-for-gay-men-at-high-risk-of-HIV-model-finds/page/2972926/">prevent HIV than to treat</a> it.</p>
<p>On its front page, the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3720706/What-skewed-sense-values-NHS-told-5-000-year-lifestyle-drug-prevent-HIV-vital-cataract-surgery-rationed.html">Daily Mail</a> called the medication a “promiscuity pill”, the funding of which would represent “a skewed sense of values”. Its take-home message was clear: it’s not government cuts which are decimating the NHS, but feckless, promiscuous gays. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"760586749282226177"}"></div></p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3925792/The-13-NHS-treatments-risk-controversial-HIV-drug-PrEP.html">another article</a>, the Mail claimed that funding PrEP would deprive “toddlers with cystic fibrosis” and “deaf children” of the care they needed. In a seeming resurgence of Aids-era homophobia, gay sex is characterised as a threat to the health of the nation as embodied by its children. </p>
<h2>Pervasive homophobia</h2>
<p>These are not just one-off incidents. The idea that LGBT+ people represent some kind of threat has become a recurrent theme in the right-wing media over the last 12 months. </p>
<p>In September 2016, MailOnline <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3795097/Gay-traffic-lights-stay-No-plans-sex-symbols-three-months-replaced-green-man-celebrate-London-LGBT-Pride.html">branded</a> same-sex traffic lights in Trafalgar Square in London as “dangerous” to pedestrians. </p>
<p>When, in February this year, The Sun published a <a href="http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/02/13/nhs-nurse-outed-outed-as-a-former-gay-porn-star-by-the-sun-for-no-reason/">story</a> “revealing” that an NHS nurse used to star in gay porn, it tapped into existing anxieties around the implication of proximity between gay sex and the nation’s health.</p>
<p>When singer George Michael (himself a frequent target of tabloid homophobia) passed away last year, The Sun attempted to <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/2601515/george-michaels-lover-fadi-fawaz-seeking-showbiz-career-just-18-days-after-finding-the-pop-legends-body/">implicate George’s partner, Fadi Fawaz</a>, in his death – even after he had been legally cleared of suspicion. </p>
<p>This media assumption of wrongdoing in the high-profile death of a gay partner was also seen in 2009, when <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8301187.stm">Boyzone singer Stephen Gatley passed away</a>. A post-mortem examination ruled that he died of natural causes, and yet Mail columnist Jan Moir was quick to condemn the events of the night that 33-year-old Gately died as being “another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships”.</p>
<p>For this section of the British media, gay relationships will never be anything but <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1220756/A-strange-lonely-troubling-death--.html">dysfunctional, pathological and destructive</a>.</p>
<p>These representations carry very real consequences: anti-LGBT+ bullying <a href="http://www.stonewall.org.uk/get-involved/education/secondary-schools">remains rife in schools</a>, and LGBT+ people face disproportionate rates of <a href="http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/LGBhealth/Pages/Mentalhealth.aspx">mental health issues</a> when compared to heterosexuals. As political and economic uncertainty continues to loom in the UK, these reactionary ideas are in danger of cementing even further into the fabric of society.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81465/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Lovelock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The media has the power to influence the nation - so why are we letting it promote blatant homophobia?Michael Lovelock, Lecturer in Media, Cardiff Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/795972017-07-24T04:04:30Z2017-07-24T04:04:30ZBuggery, bribery and a committee: the story of how gay sex was decriminalised in Britain<p>It was a summer evening in 1954 and the home secretary, David Maxwell Fyfe, was travelling on the Liverpool to London sleeper train. His accompanying security detail passed him a note from a man called John Wolfenden. Fyfe had been due to meet with Wolfenden the following week but Wolfenden – on seeing Fyfe on the passenger manifest – suggested that he might pop by his compartment and have the conversation now. A half-dressed Fyfe put on an overcoat and invited Wolfenden in.</p>
<p>The conversation that these two men would have – sat side-by side on the home secretary’s sleeping berth – would set in motion a series of events that would lead to <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1967/60/pdfs/ukpga_19670060_en.pdf">Sexual Offences Act 1967</a> and the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales. </p>
<p>Wolfenden, who recounted this story in his <a href="http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/display.do?tabs=moreTab&ct=display&fn=search&doc=BLL01011327834&indx=1&recIds=BLL01011327834&recIdxs=0&elementId=0&renderMode=poppedOut&displayMode=full&frbrVersion=&frbg=&&vl(488279563UI0)=any&dscnt=0&scp.scps=scope%3A%28BLCONTENT%29&tb=t&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&srt=rank&tab=local_tab&dum=true&vl(freeText0)=turning%20points%20wolfenden&dstmp=1500524650531">1976 memoir</a>, discovered that night that he was being invited to chair a new committee to consider the law relating to both prostitution and homosexuality. Both areas brought together issues of morality, legality and debates about the role of the state in regulating sexual behaviour. </p>
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<p><strong><em>Listen to an <a href="https://theconversation.com/buggery-bribery-and-a-committee-the-story-of-how-gay-sex-was-decriminalised-in-britain-podcast-89422">audio version</a> of this article on The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/in-depth-out-loud-podcast-46082">In Depth Out Loud</a> podcast.</em></strong></p>
<iframe src="https://player.acast.com/5e29c8205aa745a456af58c8/episodes/5e29c8365aa745a456af58d5?theme=default&cover=1&latest=1" frameborder="0" width="100%" height="110px" allow="autoplay"></iframe>
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<p>A review of the law relating to prostitution was prompted, Wolfenden subsequently wrote, by a growing visibility and persistence of soliciting (prostitution <em>per se</em> was not a criminal offence in itself but a number of 19th-century laws did serve to outlaw loitering or importuning) and a fear that the law was being brought into disrepute. Homosexual behaviour on the other hand was regarded as “unnatural vice” – a threat to individuals and society – but also a behaviour attracting a range of different police responses, including the use of <em>agent provocateurs</em>. There was also considerable scope to blackmail homosexual men. </p>
<p>The reason for Wolfenden’s selection to chair the committee remains unclear. Then vice chancellor of Reading University and a former Oxford don, he speculated that this academic independence perhaps enabled him to be a committee chair. But he was also careful to note in his memoirs that it “cannot have been because I was an expert in either of these two subjects [of prostitution and homosexuality]”.</p>
<p>Despite the historic public silence around homosexuality, it was increasingly breaking through into the public imagination. There were frequent arrests for public sex offences prior to the 1956 Sexual Offences Act drawing upon a combination of 19th-century laws and the common law. This legal landscape prompted a growing number of cases of men being threatened with extortion via fake or real accusations of homosexuality, along with the high-profile trial of journalist Peter Wildeblood and peer Lord Montagu in the 1950s.</p>
<p>In 1953, the actor John Gielgud would find himself in what he would later describe as “a disagreeable incident” in which he was <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/john-gielgud-when-england-hounded-a-hero-788459.html">arrested</a> for cottaging in London. The story of Gielgud soliciting in a public lavatory for sex would be covered in the press but would not ultimately harm his career. He was cheered as he appeared in a new play in Liverpool and then later in London. This suggested the public – albeit the theatre-going one – appeared rather more supportive than the media. </p>
<p>Into this mix, dropped the <a href="http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item107413.html">Wolfenden Report</a> in 1957, recommending that homosexual behaviour between consenting adult men in private should no longer be criminalised. The report also indicated that it expected gross indecency to continue to exist as an offence. The permanent secretary at the Home Office <a href="http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/display.do?tabs=moreTab&ct=display&fn=search&doc=BLL01011327834&indx=1&recIds=BLL01011327834&recIdxs=0&elementId=0&renderMode=poppedOut&displayMode=full&frbrVersion=&frbg=&&vl(488279563UI0)=any&dscnt=0&scp.scps=scope%3A%28BLCONTENT%29&tb=t&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&srt=rank&tab=local_tab&dum=true&vl(freeText0)=turning%20points%20wolfenden&dstmp=1500524650531">told Wolfenden</a>: “don’t expect legislation quickly”. Ministers, upon being presented with the report, told Wolfenden that he was “way out in front of public opinion”. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">An ITN interview with Lord Wolfenden in 1957 after the publication of his report.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>The 1967 Act</h2>
<p>The civil servant’s prediction proved pretty accurate. It took ten years for legislation to transform the Wolfenden recommendations into law. In the meantime, the 1961 film <a href="http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/444107/index.html">Victim</a>, starring Dirk Bogarde and Sylvia Syms would depict – in a bold cinematic intervention – the very extortion of gay men that Wolfenden had been set up in part to tackle.</p>
<p>The reforming Labour home secretary, Roy Jenkins, would provide private encouragement in order to allow a backbench law to enact Wolfenden’s recommendations to gain parliamentary time and ultimately, support in the late 1960s. At the third reading, the Sexual Offences Bill 1967 was <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private-lives/relationships/collections1/sexual-offences-act-1967/sexual-offences-act-1967/">passed</a> by 101 votes to 16, overcoming a decade of debate and resistance since the Wolfenden report. </p>
<p>With just 11 sections, the 1967 Act was a relatively short piece of legislation. Its long title indicated that it was “an Act to amend the law of England and Wales relating to homosexual acts”. The first section would indicate that “a homosexual act” in private would no longer be an offence, provided that the parties were 21 years of age or older. The second section contained two further caveats that would signify a broader attitude to homosexuality. First, it would be offence when more than two persons took part or are present, and it would be an offence if an act took place in “a lavatory to which the public have or are permitted to have access, whether on payment or otherwise”.</p>
<p>It is worth noting that the legislation was focused on male homosexuality. Traditionally, the law had been preoccupied with acts of buggery and sodomy and conceptualised these acts as solely male-based. While lesbianism was also considered an “unnatural vice”, sex between two women was never actually illegal in the UK.</p>
<p>The 1967 Act was not a sudden embracing of homosexuality by the law. It was, at best, tentative. The law had found itself intervening when gay men were being either the victims of blackmail or being visible. This law was designed to put male homosexuality out of sight and end it being an issue of public debate. The law on public lavatories regarding the ongoing acts of “cottaging”, or seeking sex in public toilets, may perhaps seem a historic curiosity today. Yet, the section was restated as recently as 2003 and remains in force. Taken together with the common law on outraging public decency, the law continues to operate today: no two men may have sex in a public lavatory. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Private Lives and Public Acts’, a film produced and directed by Dickie Beau for the British Library exhibition Gay UK: Love, Law and Liberty.</span></figcaption>
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<p>In February 2017, two men were arrested in a Newcastle shopping centre toilet, found <a href="https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/two-men-caught-sex-newcastle-shopping-centre-loo-6pm/">guilty</a> of sex in a public lavatory by local magistrates and fined £180 and £120 respectively. No reports indicated that any actual sex activity had been witnessed by the public or shopping centre workers but their public naming, shaming and, significantly for the future of both men, criminalising was evocative of an earlier age. It showed that this darker side of the 1967 Act continues to have a legacy today in determining what homosexual acts are acceptable under the law and which are not.</p>
<p>The Act described “homosexual acts” as being either buggery or “gross indecency”, a concept introduced into law in 1885 and restated in the Sexual Offences Act 1956. Gross indecency was designed to criminalise those men where buggery could not be proven and would be the offence that would lead to the criminal convictions of both Oscar Wilde and Alan Turing. The offence remained on the statute book until 2004 when the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/contents">Sexual Offences Act 2003</a> came into force, repealing the 1956 Act offence. This was the same year that the Civil Partnership Act was passed. </p>
<p>Lord Arran, who had been the shepherd of the 1967 law in the House of Lords, famously <a href="http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1967/jul/21/sexual-offences-no-2-bill">stated</a> when the Act was passed that gay men should now “show their thanks by comporting themselves quietly and with dignity”. The quote is sometimes now seen as suggesting his words reflected a broad conservative sentiment. This is true, but Lord Arran, in a <a href="http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/display.do?tabs=moreTab&ct=display&fn=search&doc=BLL01001467895&indx=1&recIds=BLL01001467895&recIdxs=0&elementId=0&renderMode=poppedOut&displayMode=full&frbrVersion=&frbg=&&vl(488279563UI0)=any&dscnt=0&scp.scps=scope%3A%28BLCONTENT%29&tb=t&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&srt=rank&tab=local_tab&dum=true&vl(freeText0)=lord%20arran%20writes&dstmp=1500528723026">collection</a> of his journalistic writing published in 1964, would offer jokes about infidelity and sex, noting that: “Sex is the greatest possible fun. But not something to be taken too seriously.”</p>
<p>Homosexuality was not just sex, it was in a different category and although it had been decriminalised, it was still very much something to be taken seriously. </p>
<h2>The rights era</h2>
<p>The 1967 Act only decriminalised homosexuality in England and Wales. It would take until the passing of the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1980/62/pdfs/ukpga_19800062_en.pdf">Criminal justice (Scotland) Act</a> in 1980 for Scotland to come in line, and it would take the <a href="http://www.hrcr.org/safrica/dignity/Dudgeon%20_UK.htm">Dudgeon v United Kingdom</a> case before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in 1981 for the law to be changed in Northern Ireland in 1982. That case – which found that the continued criminalisation of homosexuality in Northern Ireland breached Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights – would later be cited in the 2003 US Supreme Court decision of <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-102.ZO.html">Lawrence v Texas</a>, a case that struck down the sodomy laws of 14 states.</p>
<p>The first decade following the passing of the Sexual Offences Act was uneventful. It would be a conflict between the Thatcher government of the 1980s and a growing radicalism on gender and sexuality from Labour-controlled councils in the great cities that would lead to the next major spark in statutory reform.</p>
<p>Section 28 of the <a href="http://lgbthistorymonth.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/1384014531S28Background.pdf">Local Government Act 1988</a> set out to ban material or teaching that would “promote” homosexuality. The law, which we might today better associate with Putin’s Russia, was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/nov/17/uk.gayrights">repealed</a> in 2003. You would have to be currently aged 14 or under to have not been affected by this legislation. It contained two key provisions, stating: a local authority shall not (a) intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality; and (b) promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.</p>
<p>The law simultaneously sent out the government-mandated signal that homosexuality was not something to be “promoted” and that it could not constitute a “real” family, only a “pretend” one. </p>
<p>While the law was never used as part of a prosecution, it had a chilling effect on the freedom of expression relating to homosexuality. The National Council for Civil Liberties, the forerunner to Liberty, sought to catalogue this impact in its <a href="http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/display.do?tabs=moreTab&ct=display&fn=search&doc=BLL01009781099&indx=1&recIds=BLL01009781099&recIdxs=0&elementId=0&renderMode=poppedOut&displayMode=full&frbrVersion=&frbg=&&vl(488279563UI0)=any&dscnt=0&scp.scps=scope%3A%28BLCONTENT%29&tb=t&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&srt=rank&tab=local_tab&dum=true&vl(freeText0)=liberty%20section%2028&dstmp=1500528785741">1989 guide</a> to the law. They noted plays cancelled and LGBT student groups banned from college premises as a result of the law. </p>
<p>The legislation was also significant for sparking the formation of the cross-party LGB (and later LGBT) campaign organisation, Stonewall. The organisation brought together Labour’s Michael Cashman with the Conservative Matthew Parris along with celebrities including the actor Ian McKellen. It would be this organisation that would be in the campaigning vanguard in the years that followed, often being a lead organisation for consultations between government and the LGBT “community”. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/contents">Human Rights Act 1998</a>, made law ten years on from the Local Government Act, was another turning point, signalling the start of a rights-based approach that would ultimately lead to the <a href="http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2012-13/marriagesamesexcouplesbill.html">Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013</a>. In the years following 1998, significant legal reform followed. The age of consent for same-sex would finally <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1047291.stm">be lowered</a> from 18 to 16-years-old in 2000, new employment protections would be passed in 2003, and goods and services protections would come in 2006. Civil partnerships were made law in 2004, the same year as the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/7/contents">Gender Recognition Act</a>, followed by the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2008/22/contents">Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act</a> in 2008 and subsequent laws to address historic wrongs.</p>
<h2>Militant dreams</h2>
<p>For some, the same-sex marriage law signalled the end of a journey that had begun in 1967. The then head of gay rights campaign organisation, Stonewall, Ben Summerskill, described the law as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/nov/23/david-cameron-gay-marriage">final piece</a> of the legislative jigsaw.</p>
<p>Yet who decided that this was the final picture, the end-point of gay rights? There was no vote, or consultation on what gay rights should look like. In the march from 1967 to the present day, few stopped to ask “where are we going?”. In a sense, it speaks to the transformed legal landscape that there are now <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/24/opinion/24franke.html">growing</a> numbers of voices <a href="http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-michelangelo-signorile-conversation-20150419-story.html">asking</a> this question. </p>
<p>Shifting attitudes towards gender and sexuality, notably in the increased embracing of gender-fluid and queer identities is creating a social and political driver for re-evaluating our laws. During the passing of same-sex marriage the then MP, Gerald Howarth referred in Parliament to “aggressive” homosexuals, later amending it to “militant”, fearing that the Act would lead to further radical reforms. He would subsequently <a href="http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/05/23/sir-gerald-howarth-i-should-have-used-militant-rather-than-aggressive-to-describe-the-homosexuality-community/">justify</a> his remarks based on the activism of Peter Tatchell, and my own writing.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179018/original/file-20170720-24021-n7db0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179018/original/file-20170720-24021-n7db0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179018/original/file-20170720-24021-n7db0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179018/original/file-20170720-24021-n7db0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179018/original/file-20170720-24021-n7db0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179018/original/file-20170720-24021-n7db0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179018/original/file-20170720-24021-n7db0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Proud in London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/danoliverm/35691503271/sizes/l">danoliverm/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This radical or militant agenda is activists and academics asking the questions that will shape our next steps following 1967. This shift to greater emphasis on the fluidity of gender and sexuality enables us to now shift the conversation surrounding how we seek to regulate both sex and gender rather than to continue with the previous narrative of “LGBT rights”. In doing so, it also shifts the attitude from something to be bestowed from the state via positive rights to a radical assertion of freedom; of liberation.</p>
<p>The Sexual Offences Act 1967 remains a major watershed in the legal status of homosexuals in the UK, which is why its 50th anniversary has been celebrated so widely in 2017. But it also signalled the start of a journey that has not, and arguably never will, end. A half-dressed home secretary and an academic would change the world from a shared bed. I need to take more rail journeys.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79597/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Ashford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The legacy of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, which partially decriminalised male homosexuality 50 years ago.Chris Ashford, Professor of Law and Society, Northumbria University, NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.