Wolfenden report - Definition and Overview

The Report of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution (better known as the Wolfenden report, after Lord Wolfenden, the chairman of the committee) was published in Britain on September 3, 1957 after a succession of well-known men were convicted of homosexual offences.

Disregarding the conventional psychological ideas of the day, the committee recommended that "homosexual behavior between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence". This led to the passage of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, which replaced the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act that was the previous law on homosexuality. Its publication was a turning point in the legalization of homosexuality in Western countries, most of which have now legalized homosexuality and homosexual acts.

References

• Committee on Homosexual Offenses and Prostitution, 1957. Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offenses and Prostitution. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office.
  • Reprinted 1963 as The Wolfenden Report: Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offenses and Prostitution. New York: Stein and Day.
• Eustace Chesser, 1958. Live and Let Live: The Moral of the Wolfenden Report. Taylor Garnett & Evans.
• Charles Berg, 1959. Fear, Punishment, Anxiety and the Wolfenden Report. George Allen & Unwin.

See also

• Law reform
• Sodomy law
• Homosexual Law Reform Society
• Victim - 1961 film starring Dirk Bogarde widely held to have contributed to the liberalisation of cultural and legal attitudes to homosexuality in the UK

External links

• Wolfenden (http://www.sbu.ac.uk/~stafflag/wolfenden.html) (Knitting Circle)
• Homosexuality should not be a crime (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/4/newsid_3007000/3007686.stm) (BBC).