The Forerunners of Gay Liberation

The global growth of gay liberation has a history of a mere ten years, but it was not born into an entirely hostile world. As early as 1897 Magnus Hirschfeld founded his Scientific Humanitarian Committee. It, and a number of similar groups in Europe, led by Germany, did more to champion the cause of homosexual emancipation than is usually acknowledged nowadays. Indeed it stands to the latter-day gay rights movement in a relationship not unlike that between the early suffragettes and contemporary feminism. Nevertheless, that particular movement died by suppression with the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich.

England in the early 1950's saw growing dissatisfaction with the law concerning homosexual conduct. Ecclesiastical and secular bodies, such as the Church of England Moral Welfare Council and the Howard League for Penal Reform, helped to create a situation in which the Wolfenden Committee was appointed.

It produced its report in 1957 and, in May 1958 the Homosexual Law Reform Society was founded, with the objective of lifting criminal sanctions from homosexual acts between consenting adults in private, the principal recommendation of the Wolfenden report in respect of homosexual conduct. And, as we well know, it was not until a decade later, in July 1967, that the English Sexual Offences Act finally implemented the Wolfenden Committee's recommendations.