Craig Griffiths, Manchester Metropolitan University; Raphael Samuel History Centre (Web)

Time: 29.11.2017
Venue: Birkbeck, University of London
Proposals due: 01.05.2017

2017 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the passing of the Sexual Offences Bill, which partially decriminalised male homosexual acts in England and Wales. But what is the position of legal reform in the field of queer history? Does homosexual law reform in the UK and elsewhere represent a rupture in queer politics and the context in which same-sex desiring men made their lives, or does focusing on legal thresholds obscure continuities and other factors? What was the impact of homosexual law reform on those sexualities that had not been criminalised in the same way or to the same extent (including female homosexuality)? Should we read homosexual law reform as the culmination of post-war processes of liberalisation and democratisation, or did decriminalisation in fact play its part in the “privatisation” of (homo)sexuality, in the policing of public spaces, in the solidification of private and public spheres? Read more and source … (Web)