Last week was the anniversary of the passing of the Homosexual Reform act, 40 years on and we’re still on our jouney.

I find it difficult to contemplate the life of LGBT people in the sixties. It was supposedly the time of free love and understanding but the reality was very much different. I remember the challenge that was ‘coming out’; the fear of rejection and repercussion. For a gay or bisexual man in the sixties that fear would be far worse. There was not only repercussion in law, a life-time incarceration the maximum penalty, but stigma in a way society could not threaten to whip up today. Lesbians too faced the stigma, maybe it wasn’t a penal sentence but losing your job and friends was punishment enough.

Few would challenge the catalysts of change, both driven by the animal instinct that is freedom, the Wolfenden Report driven by liberalisations in other countries and the succession of well-known men, including Peter Wildeblood, who were convicted of homosexual offences and, of course, the Stonewall riots in ’69.

So in 1967 came the Homosexual Reform Act, not the sweeping decriminalisation of homosexuality that its name suggests, but the legalisation of consensual male same-sex activity for those over the age of twenty-one in private. It would be another thirty-four years before an equal age of consent and another thirty-seven before the privacy clause is removed in the Sexual Offences Act of 2003.

Although Wolfenden had paved the way for public challenges to LGBT oppression, it was events in the USA that would really begin the movement for change. Starting on the early morning of June 28, 1969 and for several days after, the Stonewall Riots were a watershed for the worldwide gay rights movement. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people had never before acted together in such large numbers to forcibly resist police. After this groups like the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) and the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) were formed and it is to them we owe so much of our liberty today.

For everything that we have achieved and for the equality won, we have had to fight. For the nights out on the local ’scene’, living with your partner, holding hands and so many of the things we take for granted, we owe so much. It’s important to keep fighting and to keep winning, all of us, because while we’ve come far in 40 years, it’s not far enough. It’s up to every one of us to remember that history is written by the victors, let’s ensure our history will be written by us.

If you want to know more…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfenden_report

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_for_Homosexual_Equality

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots

The Blogs on this site represent the individual views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or practices of the National Union of Students.

All links in blogs will open in a new browser window.

The permanent URL for this specific blog entry is: http://www.officeronline.co.uk/blogs/scottcuthbertson/274551.aspx