In 1993, three men – Hugo Greenhalgh (editor of Openly), William Parry and Ralph Wilde – complained to the Commission that the UK had “the highest homosexual age of consent in Europe”. The Commission confirmed that the UK had the discretion under the ECHR to “fix the age under which young people should have the protection of the criminal law” and dismissed Mr Desmond’s complaint. In 1982, Richard Desmond became the first man younger than the minimum age of consent for gay sex in England and Wales to challenge the higher age of consent using the ECHR. In the Court’s view, there was a “legitimate necessity” for “some degree of control over homosexual conduct notably in order to provide safeguards against the exploitation and corruption of those who are specially vulnerable by reason, for example, of their youth”. The law reform in Northern Ireland was impelled by the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in 1981, in respect of a case brought by Jeffrey Dudgeon, which determined that the complete criminalisation of gay sex violated the ECHR but that maintaining a higher age of consent did not. Similarly, the Homosexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 1982 partially decriminalised male same-sex acts in Northern Ireland with a minimum age of 21. The Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1980 partially decriminalised gay sex in Scotland, in similar terms to England and Wales (although in Scotland “sodomy” rather than “buggery” was an offence) with a minimum age of 21. In 1977, the House of Lords decisively rejected the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Bill that proposed a reduction in the age of consent for male same-sex acts in England and Wales from 21 to 18 years. The Commission decided that fixing the minimum age of consent for gay sex at 21 was justified to protect the rights of others – namely younger men under 21 – and did not violate the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The man complained that, because of a relationship with an 18-year-old man when he was 26, he had been prosecuted for the offence of buggery and sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. In 1975, a man who was imprisoned became the first person to complain to the (now abolished) European Commission of Human Rights about the higher age of consent for gay sex in England and Wales. Gay sex remained criminalised in Northern Ireland and Scotland. Lesbian sex was not specifically regulated by English criminal law, but a minimum age of 16 existed by virtue of the offence of indecent assault on a woman. The minimum age for heterosexual acts in England and Wales (other than buggery, which remained criminalised) was 16. The minimum age of 21 for gay sex was proposed by the “ Wolfenden Report”, published in 1957 which looked into “homosexual offences and prostitution” and reflected the then age of majority.
The Sexual Offences Act 1967 partially decriminalised “homosexual acts” – “buggery” and “gross indecency” – in England and Wales between two consenting males in private of or over 21 years of age. Paul Johnson is professor and head of the department of sociology at the University of York It took from 1967 to 2009 to equalise the age of consent at 16 for everyone across the UK He was buried in Paris.* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation. Oscar Wilde died on November 30, 1900, at the age of 46. He spent the last three years of his life living in exile in France, where he composed his last work The Ballad of Reading Gaol, about an execution that took place while he was imprisoned there. Wilde’s health suffered in prison and continued to decline after his release. Wilde was later transferred to London’s Reading Gaol, where he remained until his release in 1897. Prisoners spent hours untwisting and teasing apart recycled ropes to obtain the fibers used in making oakum.
Oakum was a substance used to seal gaps in shipbuilding. He spent the first several months at London’s Pentonville Prison, where he was put to work picking oakum.
On May 25, 1895, Oscar Wilde was taken to prison. This time, Wilde was convicted of gross indecency and received two years of hard labor, the maximum sentence allowed for the crime.
The trial ended with the jury unable to reach a verdict. During the trial, Wilde was questioned extensively about “the love that dare not speak its name,” a phrase from Lord Alfred Douglas’ poem “Two Loves,” published in 1894, that many interpreted as a euphemism for homosexuality.