Talk:Sexual Offences Act 1967

"Buggers' charter

In 1978 British judge Aubrey Melford Steed Stevenson was reprimanded by Lord chancellor Elwyn Jones for calling the Sexual Offences Act 1967 a "buggers' charter" - where can we put that in? Maybe in a new section - "critical reception"? Thoughts? Malick78 (talk) 21:11, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Here's what the Melford Stevenson article says: His reference to the Sexual Offences Act 1967 as a "buggers' charter" earned him a reprimand from the Lord Chancellor Elwyn Jones, and a parliamentary motion in the UK House of Commons calling for his resignation. In 1976 the Court of Appeal overturned three of Stevenson's decisions in a single day, and Labour MP Marcus Lipton tabled another parliamentary motion calling for his removal from the bench."

References

"Link needed"

Should be a link to the law this repealed, the Labouchere Amendment. Someone else can decide best place for it. Philcrbk (talk) 17:25, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

A "Programming Error"?

It seems to me that a serious phrasing error was made when the law was first drafted. It is the same error that computer science students are repeatedly warned about in their first year of programming. The errror is called hard coding a constant and is, say, when they code "3.14159" rather than "pi". If the law had said the age of majority rather than 21 a lot of misery would have been avoided. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.220.25.93 (talk) 21:42, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Decriminalised?

This article uses the word "decriminalised" rather than "legalised". There is a difference. "Decriminalised" implies that the act is still illegal, but is no longer subject to harsh penalties (often used in relation to soft drugs), but as far as I know, in this case homosexuality was legalised. Could someone perhaps clarify? 22:26, 25 June 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Simhedges (talk • contribs)

It wasn't 'legalised' because the law still fundamentally viewed sex between men as unlawful despite the limited exceptions of the 1967 Act. That's why prosecutions continued for 'importuning' and 'soliciting for an immoral purpose', it's why gay contact ads in magazines were considered illegal and why the 'in private' bit of the Act was so draconian (a hotel room wasn't seen as 'private'). 'Buggery' and 'gross indecency' still remained criminal acts in many cases. Had sex between men been made legal then you wouldn't have had all these laws still punishing various activities connected to it. Police training for several decades after 1967 taught police officers that sexual activity between men was in essence unlawful except for the exceptions decriminalised by the 1967 Act Vauxhall1964 (talk) 23:42, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

What is the legal status today ? Is it legal or merely decriminalised ? 86.162.203.102 (talk) 13:14, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

The original IP user was correct: the 1967 Act did 'legalise' homosexual acts that met its requirements, rather than merely 'decriminalise' them. The original text states:

"Notwithstanding any statutory or common law provision, but subject to the provisions of the next following section, a homosexual act in private shall not be an offence provided that the parties consent thereto and have attained an age of twenty-one years." [Subsequent text lists other exceptions.]

Decriminalisation implies things like reducing the penalty to a civil fine or dropping prosecutions without changing the law. But it's clear that this law went further, declaring them to be legal. Anywikiuser (talk) 14:34, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

I think the difficulty here is that "decriminalisation" is a term which seems to have been imported from US jurisdictions: it is not a term which is traditionally used in the law of England and Wales. Anywikiuser is therefore correct in saying that if something is no longer a crime, it is "legal".

On the other hand, Vauxhall1964 is correct in saying that the way in which the SOA 1967 legalised certain homosexual acts did influence the law more generally. Buggery and gross indecency remained offences, unless a defendant could bring himself within all of the statutory conditions. This would have encouraged police training to take the approach mentioned by Vauxhall1964. It did also have a broader effect. For example, in R v Ford (Graham) [1978] 1 All England Reports 1129 Lord Widgery, the Lord Chief Justice, held that the trial judge was correct to leave to a jury the question of whether homosexual sexual activities, which would have taken place in private, were "immoral purposes" for the purposes of an offence of solicitation under s 32 SOA 1956 (the jury had convicted). The continued existence of the offences of buggery and gross indecency would have encouraged the view that they were "immoral", though strictly speaking "immoral purposes" were not defined, and the s 32 offence did not depend on the existence of the offences of buggery and gross indecency.

86.162.203.102 can be assured that there can be no longer be any argument that homosexual activity has been merely "decriminalised". The SOA 2003 abolished the offences of buggery and gross indecency, and introduced a statutory code of sexual offences which focusses on the age of the participants, and whether consent has been given. It does so in a way which is intended to be "blind" to matters of gender and sexual orientation. (It has been argued that the section 71 offence of "sexual activity in in public lavatory" is for practical purposes biased against gay men, but in principle it could be committed by two women, a heterosexual couple, three or more people, or even by a single individual.)Ntmr (talk) 13:04, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Another note: the offences of buggery and gross indecency encompassed some actions that are still illegal today, including child sexual offences. As the article notes, they also encompassed male rape until that was defined as a form of rape in 1994. This is why today you still get people being prosecuted for buggery and gross indecency in historic child abuse and rape cases. So although those two offences remained on the statute books until the 2003 SOA, by that time they were rarely being used to prosecute offences that are legal today. The main effects of the 2003 SOA on homosexual acts were that it removed the last few discriminatory provisions (e.g. the requirement for two persons that did not apply to heterosexual sex) and re-named the offences so that they no longer conflated consensual and non-consensual acts. Anywikiuser (talk) 10:33, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Parking a reference

Guardian- Peter Tatchall research Any use to anyone? --ClemRutter (talk) 07:36, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Contradiction

"Peter Tatchell in his 1992 book Europe in The Pink claims that the legislation facilitated an increase in prosecutions against homosexual men."

Presumably Tatchell is being misquoted here. How can an act to legalise something lead to more prosecutions for it? Anywikiuser (talk) 09:48, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Tatchell's statement here that the passing of the SOA 1967 "facilitated" an increase in prosecutions against gay men needs to be analysed. As Anywikiuser implies, most cases where sexual activity took place in private could no longer be prosecuted at all, so prosecutions in such cases would not have been made easier. It is, however, true that the number of prosecutions for gay sexual offences (buggery, gross indecency, and "persistently importuning for an immoral purpose") did increase in the period after 1967. This, I believe, was almost entirely due to the police more actively patrolling public toilets to detect sexual activity (and sometimes acting as agents provocateurs). The SOA 1967 may even have "facilitated" prosecutions, in the sense that there was an increasing public perception before the SOA 1967 that the outright prohibition of male same-sex sexual activity was clearly harsh: or at least that prosecutions were not the answer (even Leo Abse argued in favour of his Bill that it would encourage more gay men to seek out psychiatric help). After 1967 many in the heterosexual community took the view "the homosexuals are legal now: why do they still have to make a nuisance of themselves in public toilets?" The public was therefore more likely to side with the police taking a hard line on cottaging. There was also probably an element in the police which resented the limited decriminalisation afforded by the SOA 1967 and which was prepared to devote more resources to attempt to suppress cottaging.Ntmr (talk) 14:36, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Since writing the above I have come across another point which could justify the statement that the SOA 1967 facilitated an increase in prosecutions against gay men. The point is made in "Gays and the Law", by Paul Crane (Pluto Press, 1982) at p 14 than the SOA 1967 made many offences of "gross indecency" triable for the first time by a Magistrates' Court, whereas previously all such offences had to be heard by a judge, usually in Quarter Sessions (the predecessor of the Crown Court), and therefore with a jury, if defended. This could well have encouraged the police to prosecute more trivial cases which they would not have thought sufficiently serious to justify the trouble and expense of a trial in the higher court.

Paul Crane also makes the perceptive point that the SOA 1967 shifted the focus of the law away from an outright prohibition on gay male sexual activity so that it then tended to address issues around privacy and the age of consent. The former issue meant discussion could focus on cottaging; the age of consent issue was discussed in terms of the potential for younger men to be "corrupted" by older men.Ntmr (talk) 12:15, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

That makes more sense. Thank you. Anywikiuser (talk) 09:57, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Roy Jenkins

I believe the statement " Jenkins himself had had homosexual relationships." requires a reference to validate.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.231.190.6 (talk) 10:17, 8 February 2020 (UTC) 

Sex in hotels, and the requirement of "in private"

I have deleted the assertion in the main Article that same-sex sexual activity in an hotel room was not decriminalised by the SOA 1967. It was an assertion which was often made by law reform campaigners prior to the passing of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. It was a potentially useful slogan, but it was not borne out by reality. As a gay solicitor who sometimes advised those who were being prosecuted for offences, it seemed to me an unhelpful assertion, as it discouraged some who might have had a good defence to charges from pleading "not guilty". (The cases that I heard of were not cases where the couple were in a hotel room, but where the police were prosecuting eg for sex in a quiet part of a park at night: those accused might well have had a defence - see below).

As early as the Court of Appeal decision in R v Reakes (1974) Crim LR 615 it was no longer tenable to continue to make the assertion that same-sex sexual activity was legal only if it took place in a private dwelling, and if the two participants were either the sole occupants or their activities took place behind a locked door. The Court of Appeal approved the following direction given to the jury by the trial judge, to determine the issue of whether an act was "in private":

"You look at all the surrounding circumstances, the time of night, the nature of the place including such matters as lighting and you consider further the likelihood of a third person coming upon the scene."

This became the classic, approved direction for a judge to give a jury when privacy was at issue. In practice any judge hearing a case where privacy was at issue would give this direction, to be "fireproof" in the event of an appeal.

In the Reakes case, the sexual act took place in an enclosed unlit private yard at 1.00 a.m. The yard gave access to a lavatory, the use of which was shared by three businesses. The jury decided that the act had not taken place "in private". The Court of Appeal said that the jury had been given the correct direction on this, and upheld the conviction. Nevertheless the implication of the approval of the direction was that, if there was a reasonable expectation of being undisturbed, same-sex sexual activity would not be an offence.

I am not aware of any reported case of a conviction of two men for having consensual sexual activity in a hotel room during the period 1967 - 2003. The most that one could say was that, prior to the passing of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, it was occasionally difficult to be absolutely sure that sex would be classed as taking place "in private". Ultimately, it would always be a question of fact to be determined by the magistrates or a jury. (So if "in private" was likely to be an issue, most lawyers recommended taking the matter to the jury in Crown Court!) The only absolute clarity on the privacy issue in the SOA 1967 was its provision that sexual activity that took place in a lavatory to which the public had admission could never be considered to be "in private".Ntmr (talk) 14:07, 26 January 2021 (UTC)