BBCcom_Content_Index_for_September_2024.txt
'It provoked a fierce public debate' The 1957 homosexuality report that divided the UK.txt
'It provoked a fierce public debate': The flames si1957 homosexuality report that divided the UKSkip to contentBritish Broadcasting CorporationRegisterSign InHomeNewsSportBusinessInnovationCultureArtsTravelEarthAudioVideoLiveHomeNewsIsrael-Gaza WarWar in UkraineUS & CanadaUKUK PoliticsEnglandN. IrelandN. Ireland PoliticsScotlandScotland PoliticsWalesWales PoliticsAfricaAsiaChinaIndiaAustraliaEuropeLatin AmericaMiddle EastIn PicturesBBC InDepthBBC VerifySportBusinessExecutive LoungeTechnology of BusinessFuture of BusinessInnovationTechnologyScience & HealthArtificial IntelligenceAI v the MindCultureFilm & TVMusicArt & DesignStyleBooksEntertainment NewsArtsArts in MotionTravelDestinationsAfricaAntarcticaAsiaAustralia and PacificCaribbean & BermudaCentral AmericaEuropeMiddle EastNorth AmericaSouth AmericaWorld’s TableCulture & ExperiencesAdventuresThe SpeciaListTo the Ends of The Earth EarthNatural WondersWeather & ScienceClimate SolutionsSustainable BusinessGreen LivingAudioPodcast CategoriesRadioAudio FAQsVideoLiveLive NewsLive SportHomeNewsSportBusinessInnovationCultureArtsTravelEarthAudioVideoLiveWeatherNewsletters'It provoked a fierce public debate': The 1957 homosexuality report that divided the UK1 September 2025ShareSaveMyles BurkeShareSaveGetty ImagesWhen the Wolfenden Report was published 68 years ago this week, it pushed for decriminalising male homosexuality – but it also led to a crackdown on sex workers.Sir John Wolfenden was unprepared for the backlash that his dry, academic 155-page government report would provoke. "All sorts of people said all sorts of things, and all sorts of people wrote all sorts of things on the pavement outside our house," he told BBC radio. "I have from one religious sect an official curse. Typed." He was surprised by how "violent" the press reaction was: "I didn't expect it to make as much splash as it did."When The Report of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution – better known as the Wolfenden Report – came out on 4 September 1957, it flew off the shelves, selling out its first print run of 5,000 copies within hours. It also provoked a fierce public debate in Britain, contrary to what the government had hoped.4:17WATCH: 'We are concerned primarily with public order and not with private morality'.Home Secretary Sir David Maxwell Fyfe had been prompted to set up the committee by the government's discomfort with two issues. The first was the visibility of sex workers on London's streets, the second was the rising number of men arrested for homosexual acts, which were illegal at the time in the UK. This rise had been triggered by Maxwell Fyfe's own policy of the deliberate entrapment and arrest of gay men by the police."You knew what could happen," Rex Batten, a gay man who lived in London at the time, told the BBC's Witness History in 2010. "You knew the cases that had come up, the people who were in jail for a year, two years, three years. Did you want that? The answer was no."At the time of publication, homosexual sex was not a crime in many other European countries, such as France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark and SpainMaxwell Fyfe's intensive crackdown led to a number of high-profile men being prosecuted for homosexual behaviour, including Enigma codebreaker Alan Turing in 1952, the recently knighted actor Sir John Gielgud in 1953, and the Conservative peer Lord Montagu of Beaulieu in 1954. These cases had, in turn, generated extensive press coverage and embarrassed the establishment.In setting up the committee, Maxwell Fyfe aimed to find new ways to regulate these cases effectively, so that they would stop generating press interest and public debate. As Sir John was at pains to make clear to the BBC on the day the report was released in 1957, the committee's remit was not to judge the morality of such behaviour. "We're concerned primarily with public order and not with private morality," he told the BBC's Godfrey Talbot.Harsh penalties for sex workersFrom 1954, Sir John chaired the committee of four women and 11 men, whose expertise ranged from the law, medicine and religion to the Girl Guides, the UK's largest organisation for girls and young women. Over the course of three years, they heard evidence from the police, psychiatrists and religious leaders, as well as the testimony of some gay men whose lives had been affected by the law. One of the people they spoke to was The Daily Mail's former royal correspondent Peter Wildeblood, who had been convicted of so-called "gross indecency" alongside Lord Montagu. They did not, however, take evidence from any sex workers.Their finished report recommended that consensual homosexual acts between men over the age of 21 in private should "no longer be a criminal offence". It didn't address homosexual acts between women, since there was no UK law in place prohibiting such acts. The report was far from pioneering. At the time of publication, homosexual sex was not considered a crime in many other European countries, such as France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark and Spain.When it came to prostitution, the Wolfenden Report's recommendations were much more punitive. Rather than advocating a move toward decriminalisation, it recommended lowering the burden of proof for soliciting charges. It suggested that sex workers convicted more than once should face increasingly harsh penalties, with three months in prison for the third offence. It also recommended bringing male prostitution on to the register of chargeable offences.In HistoryFor more stories and never-before-published radio scripts to your inbox, sign up to the In History newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights twice a week. The recommendations were not intended to make sex work safer for those concerned, but, as Sir John explained to Talbot, just to make it less visible to the general public. "My hope and our endeavour is this. At the present time there are in London, and there are in other places, streets where, if I'm walking through them with my 14- or 15-year-old daughter, I have to make a detour to avoid those places. And I honestly don't think that I ought to have to." Uncomfortable readingSir John said that the Wolfenden Report could be "a contribution towards the ordinary person's understanding of these complicated and rather difficult matters". However, from today's perspective it makes for uncomfortable reading. While it rejected the idea that homosexuality is a mental illness, it still condemned it as "immoral" and "psychologically destructive", while urging more research into its causes and possible so-called "cures". This was despite the fact that Sir John's own son Jeremy had come out to his father as gay before he was asked to chair the committee. The government's hope of decreasing public debate backfired. The Wolfenden Report was accused by elements of the press, some religious groups and certain politicians of being a "threat to public morality". Sir John told the BBC: "It was called, for instance, 'proposals to legalise degradation in our midst'."The Daily Mail lambasted it, declaring, "Great nations have fallen and empires decayed because corruption became socially acceptable," while the Scottish Labour MP Jean Mann said: "There's no knowing where it will end. We may even have husbands enticed away from wives." More like this:? The world's first same-sex civil unions? The 1960s sex scandal that rocked British politics? The man who turned the Beatles into superstarsThe report also received a frosty reception from the very home secretary who had commissioned it. Maxwell Fyfe had expected the report to advocate stronger policing of homosexual behaviour, and rejected the proposal to decriminalise it. This was despite the report's recommendations being endorsed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the British Medical Association and the National Association of Probation Officers. But the government did readily adopt Sir John's recommendations on prostitution. The Street Offences Act which came into law in 1959 gave the police wide powers to arrest women suspected of soliciting, and prompted an aggressive crackdown on visible sex work.If our recommendations are accepted there would be an amount of justice done – Sir John WolfendenThe discussion around the legal persecution of homosexuals did not end with the report. In March 1958, The Times published an article by academic Tony Dyson – co-signed by prominent personalities such as former Prime Minister Clement Attlee, the writer JB Priestley and the philosopher Bertrand Russell – that called on the government to look again at decriminalisation. The same year the Homosexual Law Reform Society was formed to campaign to bring about change. But it would take a decade from the Wolfenden Report's publication for its recommendation to become law. In 1967, Parliament passed the Sexual Offences Act, meaning that homosexual men would no longer be prosecuted for having consensual sexual relationships in private. The law would only apply to England and Wales. It would take until 1980 for sex between two men to be decriminalised in Scotland, and another two years for Northern Ireland to follow suit. Even in England and Wales, the law did not apply to members of the armed forces; and the age of consent for gay men was set at 21, compared with 16 for sex between men and women. In 1994, it was lowered to 18 and then equalised with the age of consent for heterosexual adults six years later.The Wolfenden Report, while flawed, triggered a public debate about equal rights, morality and the role of the state. As Sir John told the BBC in 1957: "If our recommendations are accepted on the homosexual offences side, there would be, I think, an amount of justice done in bringing this particular form of behaviour into the same category and treated in the same way as other kinds of private behaviour of adult persons."This debate would eventually enable gay men such as Batten to live freely without fear of police persecution. "What we wanted was really to be able to live together as partners, as two 20-year-olds can do now," he told BBC Witness History. "We just wanted to be left alone to live our lives."--For more stories and never-before-published radio scripts to your inbox, sign up to the In History newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights twice a week. For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook and Instagram. In HistoryHistoryFeaturesWatchWhat happened at Hiroshima?Eighty years ago, the US dropped a nuclear bomb on Japan, the only nuclear weapon ever used in warfare.6 Aug 2025HistoryPope Joan: the woman who fooled the churchA woman who allegedly was the head of the Catholic Church became one of the most controversial Middle Ages tales.7 May 2025HistoryThe secret WW2 magazine ridiculing Hitler's motherHiding in an attic, Jewish man Curt Bloch found inspiration through crafting anti-Nazi parody.6 May 2025HistoryThe insulting 'Vinegar Valentine' of Victorian EnglandValentine’s Day is thought to celebrate romance but rude cards soured the holiday for its recipients.14 Feb 2025HistoryThe WW2 experiment to make pigeon-guided missilesAn unexpected WW2 experiment by behaviourist B F Skinner proved that pigeons could be used for missile guidance.4 Feb 2025HistoryWorld War One relics live on in the fields of EuropeThe battlegrounds of World War One are still giving up their revealing evidence of bitter fighting.12 Nov 2024HistoryThe picture that tells a lesser-known chapter of US historyHow a 1892 photo from Rougeville, Michigan, became the most iconic image of the bison massacre in America.23 Oct 2024HistoryThe history of swing states in the USThe US Presidential elections did not always depend on just these seven states.21 Oct 2024HistoryWhy tonnes of mummified cats ended up in EnglandIn 1890 an estimated cargo of 180,000 ancient felines, weighing 19.5 tonnes, were auctioned off in Liverpool.18 Sep 2024HistoryInside the ancient royal tomb found by accidentThe Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak was accidentally discovered by Bulgarian soldiers digging up shelters in 1944.11 Sep 2024ArchaeologyVarna Necropolis: World's oldest gold treasureThe Varna treasure is considered the world's oldest human processed gold, dating back 6,500 years.10 Sep 2024ArchaeologyThe giant 350-year-old model of St Paul's CathedralHiding in a London cathedral is an intricate wooden mock-up of Sir Christopher Wren's masterpiece.5 Sep 2024HistoryUncovering the sunken relics of an ancient cityBettany Hughes goes underwater in search of ancient archaeological finds in historic Sozopol, Bulgaria.4 Sep 2024ArchaeologyTexas fever: The lesser-known history of the US borderIn 1911, a fence was constructed on the US-Mexico border. But its purpose was not to stop humans.18 Aug 2024HistoryCentury-old Olympics footage brought back to lifeA look through footage from the Paris 1924 Olympics gives viewers a chance to reflect on how much has changed.9 Aug 2024SportThe rare medieval street about to reveal its secretsOne of Europe's oldest residential streets hides in the heart of the English countryside.23 Jul 2024HistoryTutankhamun: The first ever view inside the tombOne month after the famous discovery, photographer Harry Burton recreated the first view of Tutankhamun's tomb.5 Jul 2024HistoryListen to the oldest known recording of a human voiceThomas Edison wasn't the first person to record sound. It was a Frenchman who invented sound recording in 1857.3 Jul 2024HistoryD-Day veteran remembers: We didn't have time to be scaredOn the 80th anniversary of D-Day, veterans who were on the beaches of Normandy recount that fateful day.6 Jun 2024HistoryKing Charles: One year since the CoronationHow does King Charles III's Coronation year compare to that of his mother?7 May 2024HistoryMore from the BBC19 hrs agoThe controversial sweet that fuels NorwegiansKnown as 'the trip chocolate', Kvikk Lunsj has fuelled outdoor adventures for generations. So, what makes this chocolate so controversial?19 hrs ago20 hrs agoHow women's pockets became so controversialWhy do men's clothes have so many pockets, and women's so few? For centuries, the humble pocket has been a flashpoint in the gender divide of fashion. Is that finally set to change?20 hrs ago21 hrs agoEarth has now passed peak farmland. What's next?The world's use of farmland has peaked, bringing the chance to turn over more space to nature. How far could the trend go?21 hrs ago1 day agoExhibition reveals 700 years of city's historyIt is said to offer a "snapshot" into medieval village life.1 day ago2 days agoRocks studied to reveal prehistoric mysteriesFrench archaeologists are heading over to the island to look at the stones.2 days agoBritish Broadcasting CorporationHomeNewsSportBusinessInnovationCultureArtsTravelEarthAudioVideoLiveWeatherBBC ShopBritBoxBBC in other languagesFollow BBC on:Terms of UseAbout the BBCPrivacy PolicyCookiesAccessibility HelpContact the BBCAdvertise with usDo not share or sell my infoBBC.com Help & FAQsContent IndexCopyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.
