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Professor Frank Mort tells the story of how the legal taboo against male homosexuality was gradually broken down. Lisa Power recalls the push for full gay equality that followed.

In this episode, Phil Tinline asks Professor Frank Mort about the journalist Peter Wildeblood's prosecution for homosexual offences in 1954, Wildeblood's risky decision to be open about his homosexuality - and how this intersected with the work of the committee appointed by Churchill's last government to explore the possibility of changing the law.

Stonewall founder Lisa Power recalls how it was only after male homosexual acts were partly decriminalised in 1967 that the movement for gay liberation took off. And how, after the failure to stop Section 28, the late 1980s saw the birth of a new approach - which began a mainstream political struggle to win the freedoms of today.

First broadcast in 2019.

Producer: Phil Tinline

Available now

14 minutes

Last on

Sun 21 Mar 2021 11:45

Broadcasts

  • Thu 17 Jan 2019 13:45
  • Sun 21 Mar 2021 11:45