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Question
#60254. my_baby_love
asks:
Was homosexuality ever a crime in the UK, and if it was when did it become legal?
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picqero
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Yes, it was a crime until 1967, when the 'Sexual Offences act" was passed by the British Labour government under Prime Minister Harold Wilson. The act decriminalised homosexual acts 'between consenting adults in private'. Locations such as hotels and other premises where a third person might be present were exempt from this law, and homosexual acts in such locations were still crimes. The Act only applied in England and Wales at the time. Also exempt from the act were persons under the age of 21, and members of the Armed Forces.
Oct 29 05, 2:00 PM
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lanfranco
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Picqero, I would be interested to know what changes, if any, have been made in the law since 1967.
Oct 29 05, 5:19 PM
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bloomsby
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There have been a number of changes since then:
The (English) reform was extended to Scotland in 1980 and to N. Ireland in 1982. In 1994 the age of consent for gay sex was reduced to 18, and in 2000 it was further reduced - to the same age as for heterosexual consent, namely 16, except in N. Ireland, where it is 17.
This link has a section on the UK:
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_law
Incidentally, it seems that the crime was first put on the statute book in 1533 and carried the death penalty. One of the very first people to be convicted was Udall, the then Headmaster of Eton.
He appealed to Henry VIII and got away with just under one year in prison. What's really astonishing, however, is that he later was appointed Vicar of Braintree and - wonders will never cease - Headmaster of Westminster in 1554.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Udall
Oct 29 05, 7:52 PM
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picqero
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You beat me to it Bloomsby! There is no doubt that criminalising homosexual relationships caused massive damage to trade and national security. There were many cases of unwilling spies being trapped and blackmailed, by potential 'enemy' nations and rival companies, into giving away secret information. If these unfortunate people had been able to be open about their sexual preferences, such entrapment would have been impossible.
Oct 30 05, 1:50 AM
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bloomsby
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As far as one can generalize about such things, it's my impression that attitudes (against homosexuals) hardened from mid Victorian times onwards culminating in something akin to (mild) hysteria in the 1950s.
Oct 30 05, 1:20 AM
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Flynn_17
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Until, I think it was 1978, it was also seen as a mental illness in the UK.
Oct 30 05, 2:17 PM
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lanfranco
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As it was in the U.S. until comparatively recently.
As for hardening attitudes, I'm reading a biography of Isabella of France, wife of Edward II, and I don't think attitudes can have been quite as hard in the early 20th century as in the 14th. (See one of my posts on my fennel question.) And I wonder whether a certain amount quiet tolerance actually existed during the 16th-18th centuries, prior to the Victorian era, or whether people were simply better at being discreet.
I've heard a story, possibly apocryphal, that no specific law against lesbianism was passed in the 19th century because Queen Victoria flatly refused to believe that women might engage in such activities and would not entertain any discussion of the subject.
Oct 30 05, 4:10 PM
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bloomsby
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From what I've heard, it wasn't only Queen Victoria who couldn't bring herself to believe that some women "did such things". It was a recurrent feature of parliamentary debates in the 19th century on the subject.
As for the days of Edward II, I wonder whether attitudes were in fact consistent. When Edward I (Longshanks, who didn't put up with nonsense from anyone) discovered what the Prince of Wales and his prematurely Renaissance tutor, Piers Gaveston were getting up to, nothing particularly awful happened to the latter. Gaveston was dismissed and banished from the King's territories.
Oct 31 05, 4:42 PM
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lanfranco
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Not for long. And then there was Hugh le Despenser. Both of them met quite unpleasant ends, though admittedly largely for political reasons.
The biography, by the way, which is Alison Weir's latest book, makes a reasonable case that Edward was not murdered with a "symbolic" hot poker but probably died of natural causes.
Oct 31 05, 5:19 PM
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