The British report which launched gay rights

This year marks a milestone along the path which eventually led to same-sex marriage – the publication of the Wolfenden Report in the United Kingdom in 1957. The report dealt with the possible decriminalisation of prostitution and male homosexuality.

Its conclusion on the latter was that “homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence”. At the time this was such a hot political potato that it took ten years to pass the Sexual Offences Act in 1967. But pass it did, and we live in a world which the Wolfenden Report helped to shape.

All that took place six decades ago; society has changed; the law has changed; medicine has changed; psychiatry has changed. But an examination of the arguments used in the report sheds light on where we might end up 60 years from now.

First of all, some background.

After World War II, there seemed to be an increase in homosexual activity in the UK. This might have been due to the social and psychological turmoil of the War; it might have been the publicity surrounding the Kinsey Report when it was published in 1948; it might have been just a social panic. Several high-profile men were convicted of acts of “gross indecency” in 1954 and imprisoned, including the 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu, who later became a Conservative politician, Michael Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers, who was just wealthy and travelled a lot, and Peter Wildeblood, who was probably England’s first gay rights campaigner.

“Nobody had any idea how much of it there was … but there was an impression that it was increasing; and there was a feeling that if it was then it ought to be curbed,” the head of the committee, Sir John Wolfenden, later recalled.*

The Prime Minister of the day was a Conservative, Winston Churchill. Nonetheless, his government appointed a distinguished committee under Wolfenden, a former headmaster at two leading boys’ schools, and vice-chancellor of the University of Reading. He later became head of the British Museum. The other 14 members were well-known figures in British public life.

As we all know, the report did anything but curb the prevalence of homosexuality in British society. However, this was not the intention of the government of the day. The Home Secretary, Rab Butler, insisted, as he introduced the report into Parliament, that homosexuality was wrong:

An impression has undoubtedly gained ground – which I do not think is fair to the Wolfenden committee – that the committee desired to legalise homosexual conduct. This gives a sort of impression that it wished to make it easier. In fact what the members of the Committee wished to do was to alter the law, not expressly to encourage or legalise such practices, but to remove them, like adultery and other sins, from the realm of the law.

So what were the arguments put forward by the Committee which eventually led to homosexuality becoming a socially-acceptable lifestyle?

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