Video transcript: Being Other
Through all the progression leading towards equality for the LGBTQ+ community, there still remains a consistent feeling of otherness lingering from the centuries of isolation and hate.
While being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender was never technically against the law in England, there was legislation against practices related to same-sex activity. The 1534 Buggery Act was the first piece of legislation criminalising sexual acts between men. This was further condemned by using the death penalty to punish intimate acts between men only abolished in 1861.
In 1954, there was public pressure about the increased surveillance and prosecution of gay men after the Second World War, which challenged the norms and values at the time. The Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution was created, overlooked by John Wolfenden, who believed the law’s role was to protect the public and not interfere with private lives. He wrote, ‘There must remain a realm of private morality and immorality, which is, in brief and crude terms, not the law’s business.’
The evidence summary used to illustrate the scrutiny faced by gay men included medical documentation labelling homosexuality as a mental illness or deficiency. The language used made sexuality seem medical and artificial, with treatment plans for various categories of homosexuals. Further examples of evidence included religious documents, such as the interim report looking at the problem of homosexuality forwarded by the Bishop of St Albans with so-called godly views on the unnatural acts of homosexuality.
One of the documents held in The National Archives that demonstrates the scope of lost privacy for gay men is the 1954 map of Central London documenting all the arrests in urinals for indecent acts. The implications of surveilling public toilets not only shows the fear factor in society, blaming gay men for the infiltration of the Met police in what should be private places, but also demonstrates the lack of safe spaces for queer people.
Joe Orton, the gay poet renowned for taking library books and defacing them with depictions of nude men, made one of the most explicit depictions of 1960s gay sex in his published diary, where he describes North London at night as a frenzied homosexual Saturnalia.
The Wolfenden Report was published in 1957 with a list of recommendations that questions relating to consent and in private were to be decided in the same criteria as heterosexual acts between adults and to decriminalise sexual acts between men in private over the age of 21 trying to bridge the gap of otherness.
It took over ten years for the recommendations to be voted into law in the Sexual Offences Act in 1967. This actually resulted in a spike of arrests that brought attention
to same-sex relationships, showing the cause and effect dynamic of what should have been a step in the right direction.
Despite the considerable milestone in achieving homosexual law reform, this didn’t help normalise much or dispel that sense of otherness. For example, the medicalised language was still used and the wrongfulness of homosexuality was still brought up in the report itself. It was only in 1994 when the age of consent was lowered to 18, and then finally in 2001, when the Sexual Offences Amendment Act finally reduced the age to 16, now on the same level as heterosexual relationships.
Today, as we stand, there have been several acts passed in the journey towards equality and inclusivity. The Gender Recognition Act was passed in 2004, showing the leaps and bounds made since raiding and arresting gay men in public toilets.
Yes, there is still progress to be made for the otherness to truly stay in the past. And yes,
that path is one that is difficult. But being other doesn’t mean being wrong or unnatural. It’s being yourself.