LGBTQ Rights UK

A timeline of LGBTQ rights in Britain

History of LGBTQ rights in the UK

Let's look more in-depth at the issues faced by the LGBTQ+ community in the UK.

Male homosexuality: criminalisation and decriminalisation

Male homosexuality was illegal from the early sixteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century. This was because of Christianity's prominence in the UK since the sixth century. Although there was no explicit doctrine to brand homosexuality sinful, the Church condemned it so.

During Henry VIII's reign, this condemnation took a legal character. Henry VIII split English Christianity from Roman Catholicism thus creating the Church of England. Following this, the law was revised so that crimes which had normally been tried in ecclesiastical (church) courts were now to be tried in civil courts.

The 1533 Buggery Act criminalised male homosexuality and offenders were given the death penalty.

The act carried the death penalty, making homosexuality a capital crime for the first time in UK history. Although it was repealed under Mary I in 1553, it was quickly put back into effect upon Elizabeth I's accession to the throne.

It was only under the Offences Against the Person Act of 1881 that the death penalty was removed. Nonetheless, section 61 dictated a minimum imprisonment term of ten years. This did not mean that attitudes towards homosexuality had changed.

In 1885 the Criminal Law Amendment Act made all kinds of homosexual activity illegal. Victorian poet and playwright Oscar Wilde would fall prey to this act: he was imprisoned for two years of hard labour for gross indecency.

This law persisted well into the 1950s when the UK police actively attempted to enforce the prohibition of homosexuality. This was because the Cold War created paranoia among government circles and homosexuals were suspected of being communist spies. The hysteria culminated in Alan Turing's chemical castration in 1952.

LGBTQ Rights UK: Decriminalisation

The first real attempt to reconsider the status of homosexuality was made by the Report of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, otherwise known as the Wolfenden Report of 1957. The report stated that

Despite the report, it would take another decade for homosexuality to be decriminalised. In 1965 Lord Arran proposed in the House of Lords that homosexuality be decriminalised and he was supported by Labour MP Leopold Abse in the House of Commons in 1966. Finally, the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 partially decriminalised homosexuality under three conditions:

1. That the act was consensual.
2. That it was private.
3. That it took place between adults over the age of 21.

The courts interpreted the term 'private' very strictly. For example, homosexual acts in a hotel or a third party's household were not considered private. The rigid framework under which homosexuality was to be allowed betrayed the fact that social attitudes were still hostile. For example, the age of consent for heterosexual acts was only 16 in comparison to the much higher 21 years for homosexual acts.

Importantly, the Act only applied to England and Wales. As a result, demonstrations sparked around Scotland and Northern Ireland. Homosexuality was decriminalised by the Criminal Justice Act of 1980 in Scotland and the Homosexual Offences Order of 1982 in Northern Ireland.

Other LGBTQ+ marginalisations

Besides male homosexuality, other members of the LGBTQ+ community have also been marginalised in the UK both legally and culturally.

LGBTQ Rights UK: Lesbianism

Female homosexuality has never been made illegal. This is not because of equality but rather due to a lack of recognition.

• The Criminal Law Amendment of 1921 was to explicitly prohibit lesbianism, but it was never approved.

• The House of Lords was afraid that the Act might encourage women to engage in lesbianism and it was also commonly perceived that lesbianism was extremely rare.

• Stigmas against lesbians are still prevalent in Britain. Lesbianism has escaped legislation because of its perceived illegitimacy, another example of homophobia and marginalisation.

LGBTQ Rights UK: Bisexuality

Likewise, bisexuality has never been made illegal, but the term was often not taken seriously in society.

• The London Bisexual Group was formed in 1981 and was the first of its kind which represented sexual identity.

• Pansexuality has also been used since the 1990s to describe an attraction to 'all genders' in attempts to remove the gender binary that can be associated with bisexualism ('both genders' implying only two).

LGBTQ Rights UK: Transgenderism

Transgenderism has been an uphill struggle throughout Modern British history.

• As we mentioned before, the first vaginoplasty in the UK was performed in 1951 for Roberta Cowell but was an illegal procedure at the time.

• In 1980, gender dysphoria was first diagnosed in the US and a diagnosis would allow gender reassignment surgery to be performed on an individual.

• The 2004 Gender Recognition Act allowed transgender individuals to be legally recognised as their identified gender. Despite the progress made for transgender legal rights, there is still a long way to go.

• Recently, the 2022 pledge by the UK government to legally ban LGBT conversion therapy has been altered to discount transgender individuals.

• Culturally, transgender people are still marginalised and persecuted, with Stonewall reporting in 2018 that two in five transgender people have been subjected to hate crimes.

LGBTQ Rights UK: The Gay Liberation Front

The Gay Liberation Front was a direct result of the Stonewall Riots. After the riots, many members of the LGBT community believed that a more organised effort to achieve equality should be made. The GLF was created in the US in July 1969 and immediately staged protests against the unfair treatment of the LGBT community.

Fig. 3- The Stonewall Inn has become a legendary place for the LGBTQ movement in the U.S. The 1969 police raid of the bar ignited riots across the country

Following this, a branch of the GLF was founded in the UK in 1970. Its first meeting took place in a basement classroom of the London School of Economics. The GLF organised weekly meetings which aimed to organise protests and raise awareness of LGBT issues.

Their most high-profile protest included disrupting the Festival of Light.

• This was an organisation created by British Christians who were alarmed at what they viewed as an increasingly permissive society.

• They staged mass rallies in Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square in September 1971 leading to the Methodist Central Hall at Westminster.

• The GLF deliberately disrupted these by staging their own protest. Many sounded horns and threw mice whilst others gained access to the basement of the church and shut off the lights.

• In a movement to be repeated in the Pride of 1972, men dressed in drag stormed into the church and started kissing each other.

The GLF UK did not last long, however. Internal disputes heightened leading to the division of the Front into many smaller organisations. It was disbanded in 1973.

LGBTQ pride month in the UK

The concept of a sense of 'pride' in being gay or lesbian came to the forefront in the UK after the Stonewall Riots. The first gay pride march was a week-long protest held between London's Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square, starting on 1 July 1972.

Instrumental in organising the pride march were the activities of the Gay Liberation Front. 2000 people in total turned up.

During the event, people marched through the streets of London in either drag or clothes with positive messages towards homosexuality. The protest culminated at Trafalgar Square where the demonstrators spontaneously started kissing to celebrate homosexual love.

The march has continued to take place every year and since 1983 was officially called the 'Gay and Lesbian Pride'. The event evolved into a free music festival celebrating all sexualities and gender identities and since 1996 it has been renamed 'Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride'.

Stonewall Equality Limited and LGBT rights in Britain

The 1980s brought about a new challenge for the LGBT community. The HIV epidemic broke out as a wave of homophobic hysteria around the world. Once again homosexuals were being portrayed in a negative light. This was because it was believed that HIV was mainly spread through homosexual activity whilst many religious groups argued that HIV was God's punishment for homosexuality.

As a result, there was a conservative turn in society with churches condemning homosexuality. In 1986, Rev Robert Simpson told the Sun,

This hostile attitude reached a peak when Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government enacted the Local Government Act in 1988. Section 28 prohibited all dissemination and promotion of homosexual activity. It seemed a tragic backtrack for the LGBT movement.

Stonewall Equality Limited was created in 1989 to oppose the Local Government Act, and since then, it has become the most influential LGBTQ+ organisation in Europe. They finally managed to successfully argue for the removal of section 28 in 2003.

Notable achievements of Stonewall Equality Limite include:

• Successfully opposing the unequal age of consent by sending a complaint to the European Commission of Human Rights in 1997.
• Successfully opposing the prohibition of homosexuals in the army in 2000.
• Campaigning for the recognition of violence against the LGBT community as a hate crime in the Criminal Offences Act of 2003.

LGBTQ Rights UK: Civil partnership and marriage

The 2000s marked another turning point in the recognition of LGBT rights. The Civil Partnerships Act of 2004 allowed same-sex couples to form civil partnerships. These are a different type of union than marriage but offer the same rights and responsibilities as civil marriage. Since 2011 couples have been allowed to seal a civil partnership in religious venues and have religious readings recited if the venue in question approves it.

In 2013, the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act was approved by Parliament and legalised same-sex marriage in England and Wales. Scotland followed with the Marriage and Civil Partnership Act of 2014. Same-sex marriage became legal in Northern Ireland in 2020, following the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Act of 2019.

Future of the UK LGBTQ+ movement

Although the equality movement has created massive change for the LGBTQ+ community, the fight for equality continues. For example, conversion therapy is a highly controversial issue. In October 2021 the Government issued a statement in which it committed to banning conversion therapy:

Nonetheless, conversion therapy continues to be legal, leading the LGBTQ+ equality movement to continue to lobby and protest for its prohibition. As of April 2022, the legal ban on conversion therapy is still going through British Parliament but has recently excluded transgender individuals from the ban, demonstrating the continued legal struggle to establish LGBTQ+ rights in Britain.