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News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyJuly 28th, 2016
On July 28, 1967, Queen Elizabeth II gave her Royal Assent to the Sexual Offenses Bill, which marked a significant overhaul of Britain’s laws regulating sexual practices between consenting adults. The Royal Assent was the last act in a long, tortuous path toward finally getting rid of the Gross Indecency statute that had ensnared so many victims like the famous playwright Oscar Wilde (May 25) and WWII code-breaker and computer pioneer Alan Turing (Jun 23). The law penalized male homosexuality with up to two years in prison. (Consensual sexual acts between lesbians was not illegal, largely because the phenomenon was unknown when the Gross Indecency statute was last amended in the nineteenth century.)
Efforts to repeal the Gross Indecency law had been ongoing for well more than a decade. It began soon after a a string of arrests of very prominent and well-known men in Britain in the early 1950s, including Lord Montagu (Oct 20), his cousin, Maj. Michael Pitt-Rivers, and journalist Peter Wildeblood (May 19), all of whom had been charged and convicted under the same law that put Wilde away for two years. The resulting debate over whether homosexual acts between consenting adults should remain criminalized let Home Secretary David Maxwell-Fyfe in 1954 to convened a committee to study the issue under the leadership of Lord John Wolfenden. After three years of study, the committee issued what became known as the Wolfenden Report in 1957. The report recommended that “homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence” (Sep 4). Parliament shelved the report a year later (Nov 26). Efforts to revive the the report’s recommendations followed in subsequent years, but backers of repeal were dealt a severe setback after the John Vassal spy scandal in 1962 (Sep 12).
MP Leo Abse
In 1965, Welsh Labour MP Leo Abse, and the Conservative Whip in the House of Lords Arthur Gore, 8th Earl of Arran, put forward the Sexual Offenses Bill as a private member’s bill, meaning that the bill was not an official part of the government’s legislative agenda. But the Labour Government signaled its support in 1967 and allowed a free non-party vote on July 4. Home Secretary Roy Jenkins took pains to reassure members that “this is not a vote of confidence in, or congratulations for, homosexuality.” Instead, he said, “those who suffer from this disability carry a great weight of shame all their lives.” Supporters said that the bill would eliminate one of the most frequent causes of espionage: blackmail of gay diplomats and other officials.
But Labor member Peter Mahon summed up the feelings of those who opposed repeal. “It is by no means unnatural to have a feeling of absolute revulsion against a bill of this kind. Without any lack of charity I say without equivocation it was a bad bill to begin with, it is a bad bill now and will be a bad bill until the end of time. It will be a bad bill throughout eternity because homosexual acts are a perversion of natural function.” Conservative member Rear-Admiral Morgan Giles warned darkly that “decent and reasonable” people of Britain would react violently when they realized what Parliament had done. “It will only encourage our enemies and those who disparage us, and it can only dismay our friends,” he declared. Another Tory MP, Sir Cyril Osborne, said that many people were tired of democracy being made safe for “pimps, prostitutes, spivs and pansies — and now for queers.”
Arthur Gore, 8th Earl of Arran
After an acrimonious eight-hour debate, Parliament approved the Sexual Offenses Bill in a rather minuscule 99-14 vote, with most of the 600-member chamber not taking an official position. It then went to the House of Lords, which gave its approval to the measure on July 21. Lord Arran quoted Oscar Wilde in closing the debate. “We shall win in the end, but the road will be long and red with monstrous martyrdoms.” Lord Arran’s subsequent statement then reflected the ambiguity most politicians felt who supported the bill: “I ask one thing. I ask those who have, as it were, been in bondage for whom the prison doors are now opened to show their thanks by comporting themselves quietly and with dignity. This is no occasion for jubilation and certainly not for celebrations. Homosexuals must continue to remember that while there may be nothing bad in being homosexual, there is certainly nothing good.”
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