LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Past Out: What Was the Labouchere Amendment? |
by Wik Wikkholm |
Playwright Oscar Wilde spent two years in prison at hard labor, computer scientist Alan Turing endured forced estrogen injections, and thousands of other British citizens were tormented because of the Labouchere Amendment. On August 6, 1885, the House of Commons was considering a bill to raise the age of consent for heterosexual intercourse from 13 to 16. Member of Parliament Henry Labouchere rose to propose a new section that would, for the first time, make any form of sex between men a crime. Buggery, or anal sex, had been illegal since the reign of Henry VIII, but Labouchere's amendment extended punishment to "any act of gross indecency" in public or in private. One member of Parliament complained that gross indecency had nothing to do with the sexual abuse of girls, but Labouchere, known by his nickname Labby to his contemporaries, deflected the objection. The Attorney General insisted that the sentence be raised to two years at hard labor instead of the one that Labouchere had proposed. Labby agreed and the bill passed.The amendment victimized thousands, but Henry Labouchere was an unlikely villain. Though he was born the heir of a banking fortune, Labby considered himself a rebel against Great Britain's class system. When he was in his 20s, Labouchere had traveled to America and had experienced democracy first hand. Although he abhorred the slavery, he left for home convinced that American democracy was superior to England's aristocratic government. Before his election to the House of Commons, Labouchere earned a reputation as a fearless journalist and an enemy of the establishment. In 1877, he founded a muckraking magazine called Truth, dedicated to exposing hucksters and stock manipulators. But he also used his pen to irritate his two favorite enemies, the aristocracy and the royal family. Labby believed that Britain's House of Lords, composed of titled aristocrats and Anglican Bishops, should be abolished in favor of an elected body, and he often complained that Queen Victoria and her family cost the nation more money than they were worth. Once elected, Labby championed the interests of the working classes. He fought to reduce taxes on the poor and demanded reductions in the royal budget during its annual review. Today, Labouchere's law against gross indecency seems like a stain on an otherwise unblemished liberal record, but in 1880s England, the law seemed progressive. The amendment was attached to the Criminal Law Amendment Act, a law that was drafted under pressure from Social Purity feminists who were outraged about a double standard that had developed in England. Prostitution was tolerated by the middle class, but concerns about the spread of syphilis moved Parliament to pass a law to contain the disease in the 1860s. The Contagious Diseases Act empowered officials to pick up women and force them to submit to medical examinations just because they looked like prostitutes. In some towns, any working-class woman was at risk. Diseased or not, men escaped these humiliations, an inequity that infuriated the feminists and allied churchmen who were part of the Social Purity movement. The feminists believed that the Contagious Diseases Act was wrong to blame fallen women for prostitution and venereal disease. The real culprit was male lust, a force they found so powerful that they demanded enforcement of a strict moral code to contain it. A man who yielded to his animal passions risked a personal descent into depravity, according to the crusaders, but the danger to society was even worse. Lust threatened to force more girls into prostitution and to destroy families when husbands brought syphilis home, and any threat to the family was a threat to the health of the nation. The combination of a law against male-male sex with a law against sex with young girls seems odd in retrospect, but it made sense to the feminists. Sex between men, still the "crime not to be named among Christians," seemed the supreme expression of sexual lust unleashed. According to the feminists, a man who could commit an act as abhorrent as gross indecency had foresworn the most basic restraints of civilized Christian morality. Such a morally deranged man seemed likely to commit more crimes, including the sexual abuse of girls and women, and was best locked away to protect the innocent from his predation. The Labouchere amendment remained on Britain's law books unchanged for more than 80 years. The Wolfenden Committee, a Parliamentary committee charged with studying homosexuality, challenged the law in 1957, but England's gays had to wait until 1967 for their sex lives to become legal. The 1967 law set the age of consent at 21 for homosexual sex, and today the age of consent for heterosexual sex (16) is still lower than that for gay sex (18). Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labor government supports legislation that will equalize the age of consent at 16, but the House of Lords is expected to oppose the initiative. Wik Wikholm produces gayhistory.com, an introduction to modern gay history. He can be reached on the site's discussion boards, or by e-mail at wik@gayhistory.com. For more Past Out, visit www.planetout.com. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 10, No. 10, July 28, 2000. |