A Timeline Of Pivotal LGBTQ+ Political Moments In The UK
Pride is held in June to mark the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York (Alamy)
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From the groundbreaking Wolfenden Report to the first same-sex marriage, the landscape of legislation affecting the LGBTQ+ community has changed drastically over the last 70 years.
As two MPs were calling upon the government to review prohibitive laws relating to homosexuality in 1953, famed codebreaker Alan Turing was being subjected to chemical castration after he was convicted of “gross indecency” for having a sexual relationship with a man.
It took 15 more years before, in 1967, some same-sex acts between men over the age of 21 were legalised. Female same-sex relationships were not mentioned in the legislation as — though societal stigma still remained — it was not illegal for two women to conduct a relationship.
The civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s set the stage for rafts of legislation in the early 2000s and 2010s aimed at levelling the many inequalities in UK law.
As the UK celebrates Pride Month, PoliticsHome looks back at some of the key moments of the fight for LGBTQ+ rights in Parliament and beyond.
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