The Report of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution was published in the United Kingdom on 4 September 1957 after a succession of well-known men, including Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, Michael Pitt-Rivers, John Gielgud, and Peter Wildeblood were convicted of homosexual offences.
Donald James Stewart was Scottish National Party (SNP) Member of Parliament (MP) from 1970 to 1987 for the Western Isles. He also served as President of the Scottish National Party (SNP) from 1982 to 1987. He was a councillor in Stornoway for many years and twice served as the town's provost.
The Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2000 (c.44) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It set the age of consent for male homosexual sexual activities and for heterosexual anal sex at 16, which had long been the age of consent for all other types of sexual activities, such as vaginal sex or lesbian sex. As such, it made the age of consent for all types of sexual acts equal, without discrimimating on the basis of the type of act or of the sexes of those involved in the act. It also introduced the new offence of 'having sexual intercourse or engaging in any other sexual activity with a person under 18 if in a position of trust in relation to that person'.
Andrew Paton Welsh was a Scottish politician. He was the Scottish National Party Member of Parliament (MP) for South Angus from October 1974 to 1979, East Angus from 1987 to 1997, and Angus from 1997 to 2001. He was the Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the constituency of Angus from 1999 to 2011.
The Bolton 7 were a group of gay and bisexual men who were convicted on 12 January 1998 in the United Kingdom before Judge Michael Lever at Bolton Crown Court of the offences of gross indecency under the Sexual Offences Act 1956. Although gay sex was partially decriminalised by the Sexual Offences Act 1967, they were all convicted under section 13 of the 1956 Act because more than two men had sex together, which was still illegal. One of the participants was also six months under the statutory age of consent for male gay sex: at the time, such an age was set at 18, while the heterosexual and lesbian age of consent was instead set at 16.
The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It introduced a number of changes to the law, most notably in the restriction and reduction of existing rights, clamping down on unlicensed rave parties, and greater penalties for certain "anti-social" behaviours. The Bill was introduced by Michael Howard, Home Secretary of Prime Minister John Major's Conservative government, and attracted widespread opposition.
X. v. the United Kingdom was a 1978 case before the European Court of Human Rights, challenging the Sexual Offences Act 1956 in the United Kingdom. The case addressed privacy protections and age of consent laws for homosexuals.
Sutherland v United Kingdom originated as a complaint by Mr Euan Sutherland to the European Commission of Human Rights that the fixing of the minimum age for lawful homosexual activities at 18 rather than 16, as for heterosexual activities, violated his right to respect for private life under Article 8 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The complaint was first filed on 8 June 1994 and ultimately led to the equalisation of the age of consent for homosexual and heterosexual acts.
The Homosexual Law Reform Act 1986 is a New Zealand Act of Parliament that broadly legalised consensual sexual practices between men as well as consensual anal sex regardless of partners' gender. It removed the provisions of the Crimes Act 1961 that criminalised this behaviour. The legislation established a uniform age of consent, setting it at 16 for both same-sex and opposite-sex partners.
The Sexual Offences Act 1967 is an act of Parliament in the United Kingdom. It legalised homosexual acts in England and Wales, on the condition that they were consensual, in private and between two men who had attained the age of 21. The law was extended to Scotland by the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1980 and to Northern Ireland by the Homosexual Offences Order 1982.
Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, commonly known as the Labouchere Amendment, made "gross indecency" a crime in the United Kingdom. In practice, the law was used broadly to prosecute male homosexuals where actual sodomy could not be proven. The penalty of life imprisonment for sodomy was also so harsh that successful prosecutions were rare. The new law was much more enforceable. Section 11 was repealed and re-enacted by section 13 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956, which in turn was repealed by the Sexual Offences Act 1967, which partially decriminalised male homosexual behaviour.
The ages of consent for sexual activity vary from age 15 to 18 across Australia, New Zealand and other parts of Oceania. The specific activity and the gender of its participants is also addressed by the law. The minimum age is the age at or above which an individual can engage in unfettered sexual relations with another person of minimum age. Close in age exceptions may exist and are noted where applicable. In Vanuatu the homosexual age of consent is set higher at 18, while the heterosexual age of consent is 15. Same sex sexual activity is illegal at any age for males in Papua New Guinea, Kiribati, Samoa, Niue, Tonga and Tuvalu; it is outlawed for both men and women in the Solomon Islands. In all other places the age of consent is independent of sexual orientation or gender.
The age of consent varies by jurisdiction across Europe. The ages of consent – hereby meaning the age from which one is deemed able to consent to having sex with anyone else of consenting age or above – are between 14 and 18. The vast majority of countries set their ages in the range of 14 to 16; only four countries, Cyprus (17), Ireland (17), Turkey (18), and the Vatican City (18), set an age of consent higher than 16.
Restrictions on sexual activity involving minors in the United Kingdom and its predecessors have existed since medieval times. During the 1970s, there was some political advocacy in favour of significantly reducing the age of consent, supported by various 'youth liberation' organizations and mostly by members of the Paedophile Information Exchange. Meanwhile, over a similar time period, the unequal age of consent for straight and gay young people was campaigned against by the LGBT rights movement. More recently arguments have occasionally been made in favour of reducing the age of consent, generally to an earlier point in adolescence.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in the British Crown dependency of the Isle of Man have evolved substantially since the early 2000s. Private and consensual acts of male homosexuality on the island were decriminalised in 1992. LGBTQ rights have been extended and recognised in law since then, such as an equal age of consent (2006), employment protection from discrimination (2006), gender identity recognition (2009), the right to enter into a civil partnership (2011), the right to adopt children (2011) and the right to enter into a civil marriage (2016).
The Homosexual Offences Order 1982, No. 1536, is an Order in Council which decriminalized homosexual acts between consenting adults in Northern Ireland. The Order was adopted as a result of a European Court of Human Rights case, Dudgeon v. United Kingdom (1981), which ruled that Northern Ireland's criminalisation of homosexual acts between consenting adults was a violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1968–69 was an omnibus bill that introduced major changes to the Canadian Criminal Code. An earlier version was first introduced as Bill C-195 by then-Minister of Justice Pierre Trudeau in the second session of the 27th Canadian Parliament on December 21, 1967, which was modified and re-introduced as Bill C-150 by then-Minister of Justice John Turner in the first session of the 28th Canadian Parliament. After heated debates, it passed third reading in the House of Commons by a vote of 149 to 55. The bill was a massive 126-page, 120-clause amendment to the criminal law and criminal procedure of Canada.
The Criminal Law (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 1995 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed to consolidate certain enactments creating offences and relating to the criminal law of Scotland.
A sodomy law is a law that defines certain sexual acts as crimes. The precise sexual acts meant by the term sodomy are rarely spelled out in the law, but are typically understood and defined by many courts and jurisdictions to include any or all forms of sexual acts that are illegal, illicit, unlawful, unnatural and immoral. Sodomy typically includes anal sex, oral sex, manual sex, and bestiality. In practice, sodomy laws have rarely been enforced to target against sexual activities between individuals of the opposite sex, and have mostly been used to target against sexual activities between individuals of the same sex.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in the Cook Islands face some legal challenges not experienced by non-LGBTQ residents, but these challenges have gradually lessened in recent years. As of 1 June 2023, homosexual acts between men became legal in the Cook Islands after a vote by the Parliament of the Cook Islands. Female homosexual acts have never been illegal. Same-sex marriage is outlawed. Nevertheless, LGBT people do enjoy some limited legal protections, as employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation has been banned since 2013.
