History in England and Wales
At the time of the formation of the United Kingdom, English law identified anal sex and zoophilia as offences punishable by hanging, as a result of the Buggery Act 1533. In 1861, section 61 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 removed the death penalty for homosexuality. However, male homosexual acts still remained illegal and were punishable by imprisonment and in 1885, section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 extended the laws regarding homosexuality to include any kind of sexual activity between males. Conversely, lesbians were never acknowledged or targeted by legislation.
In the early 1950s, the police actively enforced laws prohibiting sexual behaviour between men. This policy led to a number of high-profile arrests and trials. One of those involved the noted scientist, mathematician, and war-time code-breaker Alan Turing (1912–1954), convicted in 1952 of "gross indecency". In 2009, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in response to a petition, issued an apology. In 1953, Michael Pitt-Rivers and Peter Wildeblood were arrested and charged with having committed specific acts of "indecency" with Edward McNally and John Reynolds; they were also accused of conspiring with Edward Montagu (the 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu) to commit these offences. The Director of Public Prosecutions gave his assurance that Reynolds and McNally would not be prosecuted in any circumstances. The trial of Edward Montagu, Michael Pitt-Rivers and Peter Wildeblood began on 15 March 1954 in the hall of Winchester Castle. All three defendants were convicted. The Sunday Times published an article entitled "Law and Hypocrisy" on 28 March 1954 that dealt with this trial and its outcome. Soon after, on 10 April 1954, the New Statesman printed an article called "The Police and the Montagu Case". A month after the Montagu trial the Home Secretary Sir David Maxwell Fyfe agreed to appoint a committee to examine and report on the law covering homosexual offences. The official announcement in the House of Commons was made on 18 April 1954 by Sir Hugh Lucas-Tooth. On 7 June 1954 Alan Turing committed suicide. In August 1954, the Home Office appointed a departmental committee of fifteen men and women "to consider... the law and practice relating to homosexual offences and the treatment of persons convicted of such offences by the courts."
The Report of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution (better known as the Wolfenden Report) was published on 3 September 1957 and recommended that "homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence", finding that "homosexuality cannot legitimately be regarded as a disease, because in many cases it is the only symptom and is compatible with full mental health in other respects." In October 1957, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Geoffrey Fisher, spoke in support of the Wolfenden Report, saying that "There is a sacred realm of privacy... into which the law, generally speaking, must not intrude. This is a principle of the utmost importance for the preservation of human freedom, self-respect, and responsibility." The first parliamentary debate on the Wolfenden Report was initiated on 4 December 1957 by Lord Pakenham. Of the seventeen peers who spoke in the debate, eight broadly supported the recommendations in the Wolfenden Report. Maxwell Fyfe, now ennobled as Lord Kilmuir and serving as Lord Chancellor, speaking for the government, doubted that there would be much public support for implementing the recommendations and stated that further research was required. The Homosexual Law Reform Society was founded on 12 May 1958, mainly to campaign for the implementation of the Wolfenden Committee's recommendations.
A 2010 Integrated Household Survey (IHS), an experimental survey in a testing phase, estimated that 1.5% of Britons identify themselves as homosexual or bisexual – far lower than previous estimates of 5–7%. Interpreting the statistics, an ONS spokeswoman said, "Someone may engage in sexual behaviour with someone of the same sex but still not perceive themselves as gay."
Read more about this topic: LGBT Rights In The United Kingdom
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