Feb 28 Sexual Offences Act 1967. The decriminalisation of homosexuality in the UK was a gradual and uneven process shaped by law, scandal, activism and social change.
Male homosexual acts had been criminalised in England since the Buggery Act of 1533. The 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act widened the net through the offence of “gross indecency,” later used to prosecute figures such as Oscar Wilde. In the twentieth century, prosecutions intensified; in 1952, mathematician Alan Turing was convicted and chemically castrated, highlighting the law’s severity.
A turning point came with the 1957 Wolfenden Report, chaired by John Wolfenden, which recommended that private, consensual homosexual acts between adults should no longer be criminal offences. After a decade of debate and campaigning by groups such as the Homosexual Law Reform Society, Parliament passed the Sexual Offences Act 1967, introduced by Leo Abse. It decriminalised consensual sex between men over 21 in private in England and Wales—though significant restrictions remained.
Scotland followed in 1980 and Northern Ireland in 1982, after a European Court of Human Rights ruling. The age of consent was equalised at 16 in 2000. Civil partnerships for gays and lesbians were legal from 2005. Yet in Northern Ireland, the ban on anal sex was not finally repealed until 2008. Scotland’s anti-gay laws were repealed in 2009 but, in the case of sodomy, did not take effect until 2013. Same-sex marriage for gays and lesbians became legal in 2014.
In 2017, the “Turing law” granted posthumous pardons to men convicted under historical legislation.
Decriminalisation was not a single event but a long struggle, laying foundations for later advances in LGB rights.
