RESOURCES

Many people associate the criminalisation of homosexuality with Oscar Wilde, but they would be mistaken, for the law that criminalised it was passed a full ten years before Oscar’s trial, and acts associated with homosexuality extended as far back as 1533 and The Buggery Act (for which the penalty was death) passed by Henry the VIII.

It was the liberal politician and journalist Henry Du Pré Labouchère who raised an amendment to The Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 that all homosexual acts became illegal under any circumstances, and it is into this world of born criminality that many gay men alive today knew only too well.

But that was just a small beginning, and in a way the public scandal of Oscar Wilde’s spectacular fall from grace was partially responsible for raising public consciousness, even if that was only in revulsion.

The Wolfenden report, commissioned in 1954 by Winston Churchill’s Government investigated the criminalisation of gay men for the first time since 1885 and the subsequent trials of Oscar Wilde. With hundreds of men being imprisoned every year, a re-examination was required, and although the matter was debated in parliament, it failed to get enough support for a change in the law to occur.

But the die had been cast, the public’s understanding of homosexuality was being fed by the work of American Sexologist Alfred Kinsey in his reports that examined human sexuality in a way that had not previously occurred.

We can view this as part of the sexual revolution, casting off the shackles of the stifling conformity of the middle of the twentieth century, and the fledgling steps of embracing a new normal.

It wasn’t an immediate change that followed but the formation of gay activist groups such as The Homosexual Law Reform Society in 1957 on the back of the inaction of the Government on the Wolfenden report marked the first serious activism in the UK gay movement, the chink in the armour the report represented helped.

It is to this British sense of fairness and tolerance that the civil rights leaders have appealed over the years.

It is no secret that the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967 led to a huge increase in the persecution of gay men by the police and the state, and this continued well into the eighties with James Anderton being a stark example of the level of Bigotry that the establishment gleefully wielded.

Beatrix Campbell the Journalist noted in her article of August 2004 in the Guardian: “Back then, Canal Street in Manchester city centre was still a red-light district. Anderton, an evangelical Christian, encouraged his officers to stalk its dank alleys and expose anyone caught in a clinch, while police motorboats with spotlights cruised for gay men around the canal’s locks and bridges.”

The formation of PIE (Paedophile Information Exchange) in 1974 brought a whole host of problems that directly stemmed from the criminalization of homosexuality and the subsequent begrudging relaxing of the law that left the age of consent at 21 for homosexuals and 16 for heterosexuals.

PIE became inextricably linked to the gay rights movement, a wolf in sheep’s clothing that meant by the time members of PIE stated they had attractions to girls as young as 8 and boys as young as 11 it was too late to extricate the nascent movement by same sex folk from it.

Again, the media went to town.

This is an example of forced teaming at its best with PIE having nothing to do with same sex attraction at all.

Today, a minor is someone under the age of 18 years according to a definition under the Births and Deaths Registration Amendment Act (No 1 of 2002). Prior to this the age of majority was 21 and reduced to 18 years by this Act. Today in law the word child is often used to describe anyone under 18.

Confusion that did nobody any favours.

It is important to realise that the language of the time that was used to describe men who had sex with any other male who was under 21, would be described as having sex with a minor, a legal term that in the minds of the public meant child. The language used today to describe the abuse of children is the same language used to denigrate gay men when an unequal age of consent existed.

As if the turmoil of the previous twenty years were not enough for the gay community when equality was just a distant desire, mother nature landed them with an atrocity that would forever change the world and almost wipe a generation of gay men from the planet. Just 16 years from decriminalisation in 1964 the AIDS crisis began.

The CDC (Centre for Disease Control) in the USA provides an excellent timeline of events from the American perspective whilst the Independent fills in the gaps for the UK in the wake of the syrupy and inaccurate C4 Drama It’s a Sin.

The first cases of GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency Syndrome) as it was originally known, and what we now call HIV/AIDS came to the public consciousness in California and New York City. The story surrounding the discovery is covered brilliantly in the novel And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Schultz and summarised well in the HBO film of the same name from 1993.

It is hard to describe the fear, disgust and hate that ripped through the population of the UK in the wake of the AIDS crisis, and it was not until 1987 that the public health campaign kicked into high gear (with the now infamous Iceberg advert), that this was seen as anything other than the “Anally Injected Death Sentence” that homophobes loved to shout at gay men.

For an already beleaguered community this was devastating, and for moral demagogues promulgating their own anti-gay agenda the homophobia in the UK reached new heights of ferocity. The stories of abandonment and cruelty were mirrored in countries all over the globe, the new untouchables had arrived, and the world would never be the same again.

The media rolled out an anti-fact, anti-science, and wholly western narrative (it was not a gay plague in Africa for a start, it got anyone it could) offered up, as a brief, convenient and comforting lie to the heterosexual population, who, if they had been the first victims, would have seen a rosier and swifter response from the authorities, on that you can bet.

We are forced to recognise that progress is not always up, or in the direction of a perceived liberal world view that has dominated the UK since the 60’s. Impediments exist, a change in law is not an end, it is the beginning, for public tolerance is a far greater nut to crack, ask any minority.

The hurdles the public had to jump in this race for a liberal and tolerant future were not easy, war, the end of the death sentence, the horrors of the crimes of Hindley and Brady, PIE, the AIDS crisis, and the constant fear mongering of the media left us with a nation that could be described as traumatised.

It does not take Einstein to see that the population of the UK may well have not been ready for schoolchildren to learn about same sex attraction. To an uneducated populace when it came to AIDS and gay people what did activists think (although they did not think at all it seems) was going to happen when the book “Jenny lives with Eric and Martin” appeared in schools and had the temerity to normalise gay relationships and tell children it was OK to be gay?

The media backlash was swift, “Homosexual Propaganda” became the new buzz word and poured petrol on the existing precarious position of same sex attracted people often seen as spreaders of disease and “Pervert Queers” who gave succour to paedophiles from PIE.

The press then gleefully presented it to the public, devoid of any context, and riven with every panic and concern that had occurred in the past 40 years, indelibly etched on our cultural psyche.

This led to the passing of legislation that became known as Section 28, a pernicious amendment that banned the promotion of Homosexuality in schools.

The effect on some people was real, as can be seen in this item, but there is also a mass of misinformation about this legislation, and when examples of its actual use in law are asked for, they never appear because it never was used.

Section 28 was a reactive piece of legislation, which illustrates that when progressive forces are unable to recognise and clearly delineate the cultural zeitgeist of the times, they are likely to overstep the mark.

Because Section 28 proved popular to a vastly different public than today, prompted by historical prejudice and misunderstanding, the current fear of AIDS and the activities of PIE, when Margret Thatcher stated “…they have an inalienable right to be gay…”, many agreed that was not on, at least not yet…

That enough condemns her in most people’s minds, but we are forced to recognise the cultural reality of Britain at the time, that the idea that the gays were after the kids was a palpably sellable one for political gain, and an equally easy to buy for the public.

There may be a naivety in imagining the Thatcher Government, in the turmoil of the prehistory and the reality of the 1980s had carte blanche to give gay people all the equality we now enjoy, as if that vista would have even been open to her if she had wanted to (which I doubt), is astoundingly innocent of the nature of Statehood and cultural and social change.

At that time, in the eyes of many, the attitude held sway that “the gays” were gleefully killing each other through their sexual promiscuity by “choosing” the original (illegal) sin of being homosexual in the first place, an idea that has recently resurfaced.

Despite words many heard far too many times, which scarred them emotionally as an individual, “they deserve what they get,” or in one disgusting case of an AIDS sufferer, “…he was 17, he was a criminal, that’s natural justice…”, I am bound to set aside valid but unhealthy emotion and consider the following.

Is it possible, in the febrile atmosphere that existed, where homosexuality was begrudgingly tolerated by some and hated by the many, a nuanced approach to change was required, because if it was the actual desire of the authorities at the time to criminalise same sex attraction completely once more, the public support may well have been with them?

Considering that in 1967, Lady Thatcher voted in favour of the decriminalisation of homosexuality, in the face of fierce opposition from Tory traditionalists, we may want to question why she supported Section 28, and I imagine it is more nuanced reasoning than contemporary understanding.

Could it be that enlightened folk, lovers of freedom, were fighting with all their might against authoritarian forces, both right and left? Protecting children may well have been what section 28 was about, but from whom?

In the eyes of many in the public sphere, child molesters and perverts and unpopular as it may be, the failure to deal with PIE and other extremists led to the law existing, and responsibility for that awful situation is not with hindsight so easily distributed.

The little book that started this is harmless by today’s standards to rational folk, certainly it is nowhere near as troublesome as what is being taught to children today in the name of “Gender Identity Ideology and Queer theory.”

Same sex attracted folks now enjoy full protection under the law, the change was incremental and could have been better, but these days we are done, and that is worth celebrating, we have indeed made it.

We are 12 years from the Equality Act 2010, and we are nowhere near living up to the standards that signifies, but it is fair to say that it is in Disability rights that we are in need of improvement, and with new rights battles on the horizon, women and same sex attracted folk are once again having to battle for their existing rights, and this time against those who they have supported so fervently in times gone by.