Wolfenden report

On this matter, the Moral Welfare Council of the Church of England recently stated, "It is not the function of the state and the law to constitute themselves guardians of private morality, and thus to deal with sin as such, which belongs to the province of the church.

On the other hand, it is the duty of the state to punish crimes, and it may properly take cognizance of, and define as criminal, those sins which also constitute offense against public morality." The now famous Wolfenden report was presented to the British Parliament in the fall of 1957 by a committee drawn from the clergy, medicine, sociology, psychiatry, and the law, under the chairmanship of Sir John Wolfenden, CBE.

The Wolfenden committee not only included members of the clergy, it sought advice and guidance from others in both the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches.

Thus, seven Catholic clergymen and laymen appointed by the late Bernard Cardinal Griffin, Archbishop of Westminster, submitted a report to the committee that stated, "It is not the business of the state to intervene in the purely private sphere but to act solely as the defender of the common good.

Morally evil things so far as they do not affect the common good are not the concerns of the human legislator.

Sin as such is not the concern of the state, but affects the relations between the souls and God.

Attempts by the state to enlarge its authority and invade the individual conscience, however high-minded, always fail and frequently do positive harm." The official Wolfenden report to Parliament reflected these same views.

As yet no significant British legislation has resulted.

The timing of the novel is particularly significant.

It appeared two years after the Wolfenden report recommended that homosexual acts between consenting adults, uh, in private should no longer be criminalized, but eight years before the partial decriminalization introduced by the Sexual Offences Act of 1967.

It therefore comes from a fascinating transitional moment when homosexuality was increasingly being discussed publicly in Britain while gay men continued to live under the threat of criminal prosecution, censorship and social stigma.

Courage himself has already encountered censorship in his, his 1938 play Private History was refused a West End license because of its homosexual subject matter, and A Way of Love was subsequently banned in New Zealand in 1961.

Uh-huh

... themselves talked about their lives, but about how other people talked about them.

And one of the movements after the Wolfenden report, uh, which was appointed in 1954 to look into homosexuality and indeed heterosexual prostitution, um, it shows that these were considered two major problems that were sapping the energy of the country.

Um, it, it's interesting that, that, um, uh, the, one of the things that the pioneers who tried to get the law changed or were determined to get the law changed was that they, to some extent or, uh, for p- purely pragmatic reasons, um, there was an argument that, um, homosexuality should not be a crime.

Excellent.

Well, let's hear from the opening of the collection, which, as you say, begins in 1957 with the publication of the Wolfenden Report into prostitution and what was then the sexual offence of homosexuality.

Mise en scène.

The sky above HMP Martyrs Hill, 1957.

Well, if we look at Jeff's story first, now, Jeff is Jo's gay best friend.

The Wolfenden Report had recommended decriminalisation of private consensual acts between men back in 1957, but by 1961, Nothing had changed in law.

Full decriminalisation was still six years away.

And in 1960, parliamentary motion to endorse the report's findings on homosexuality had failed.