Product Description
This book is published on the 27th of July,1991 the 25th anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act, which, after a ten-year campaign, first legalized homosexual acts between consenting men over 21, in private. A quarter of a century on, the profound significance of that change and the nature of the struggle that was waged to achieve it are not always fully appreciated. Gay people and their lifestyles are still the subject of considerable controversy and entrenched prejudice, and today's gay rights campaigners are justified in believing that sweeping changes in legal and social attitudes are still called for. This is the inside story of the battle for the Wolfenden reforms, told by one of its main protagonists who was Secretary of the Homosexual Law Reform Society during much of the campaign and for some time afterwards. Besides giving his personal account of the reform campaign, Antony Grey comments on the subsequent course of the developing movement for gay rights. He also describes the rising power of the "moral majority" backlash, with its bitter attacks on liberalizers whom it misdescribed as "permissive". Whilst expressing disappointment at the slow progress of human sexual rights during recent years, and a sense of ever greater urgency, with the advent of AIDS, for the widespread acceptance of much more frank and realistic attitudes, Antony Grey concludes on a hopeful note, foreseeing a sexually saner 21st century in which updated moral, social and legal attitudes will combine to promote, instead of hinder, human happiness.
