1954: Discussions around The Wolfenden Report. Catalogue ref: LCO 2/5762
The Wolfenden Report was released in 1957, based on an inquiry into the state of laws against homosexuality. It recommended that homosexual acts in private between men over the age of 21 should be made legal. It took ten years for these recommendations to be implemented in the 1967 Sexual Offences Act.
These papers from 1954 shed light on some of the debates happening within the Committee putting together the Wolfenden report. The section asking the general public for their opinions comes from a Gallup poll in 1957, after the report was published.
Transcript
Surely the point of view of the Committee comes to this: that if a man … is doing wrong the law must not intervene to stop him unless he is harming someone else; and that if two or more men are doing wrong together, neither coercing the other nor taking advantage of his weakness, they must not be interfered with by the law unless their behaviour is harmful to a third party or parties. … Again, I ask: can we accept this doctrine? By and large, though it is for each Member of the House to decide for himself, I believe we can.
…
Or must we consent to the very powerful reservation attached by Mr. Adair to the Wolfenden Report?
He says: “The presence in a district of, for example, adult male lovers living openly and notoriously under the approval of the law is bound to have a regrettable and pernicious effect on the young people of the community. … The more serious phases of such conduct have been recognised by our law as criminal for a continuous period of not less than 400 years, and a very heavy onus therefore rests on the advocates of the change now proposed to demonstrate by cogent evidence that the withdrawal of hitherto criminal conduct from the realm of criminal law is clearly justified.”
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Most of us who have been at boarding schools or had adult experience of living for long period in purely masculine society, must know that if we do that, we are saying something of some whom we have known and liked at various stages of our lives. We must be aware, if we live in the present century, that there are men, some of them genuinely idealistic, who pass a life of agony in trying to resist these sinful impulses, and that some of these unfortunate people are denied by nature the normal fulfilment or marriage. Some of them, at least … might be prepared to seek medical or spiritual assistance, if the criminal taint were withdrawn, whereas at present they feel unable to lay bare their secret.
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People were told of the Wolfenden recommendations and asked if they agreed or disagreed. Their answers are in percentages:
“Homosexual behaviour between men ages 21 and over should NOT be a criminal act provided that it is carried out in private.”
| All | Men | Women | |
| Agree | 38 | 41 | 34 |
| Disagree | 47 | 49 | 47 |
| Don’t know | 15 | 10 | 19 |
- Why do you think a Committee was tasked with reviewing laws against homosexuality in the 1950s?
- What are the reasonings behind making homosexual acts legal, according to the Committee? What are the reasonings against?
- After reading this source, why do you think it took so long (ten years) for the Wolfenden recommendations to be implemented?