THEGAYUK

Day: 19 October 2018

  • When did it become legal to be gay in the UK?

    When did it become legal to be gay in the UK?

    Laws around homosexuality differ from region to region in the UK meaning that gay people in Scotland and Northern Ireland had to wait a lot longer for equality.

    (C) BIGSTOCK

    Homosexuality was legalised in England and Wales on the 27th July 1967, a decade after the Wolfenden Report recommended that homosexuality should be decriminalised. The Sexual Offences Act was changed to decriminalise homosexuality, up to a point and only if three conditions were met:

    1. that the act was consensual
    2. that both parties were 21 or over
    3. and the act was done in private.

    Up until that point, men who were found to be having sex with other men were often charged with Gross Indecency or Buggery charges.

    Thousands of men were criminalised because of this law. They were often sent to prison.

    In 2017 a pardon was issued, as an apology to those men who served time for their “crime”.

    When the law changed being gay still wasn’t equal to being straight. The age of consent was 21 and all sexual acts had to be done in private. it wasn’t until the new millennium, that laws pertaining to gay and straight sexual acts were equalised.

    Not all gay people in the UK were equal

    But not all of the UK’s men were able to be openly gay. The law wasn’t changed until 1981 for homosexuals in Scotland and 1982 for guys in Northern Ireland.

    As it stands today, it is currently legal to be gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender across the UK, whether you’re in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales. Laws surrounding discriminating because of sexuality or gender expression are very strict in the UK and include employment and business services.

    Gay people are permitted to have civil partnerships (since 2004) and get married (2013/14) except in Northern Ireland – the only region in the UK which does not have full equality for LGBT+ people.

     

     

  • Taxi driver who raped male passenger in Leeds jailed

    Taxi driver who raped male passenger in Leeds jailed

    Mohammed Ilyas has been jailed for 12 years after being convicted of rape by a Leeds Crown Court.

    A taxi driver who orally raped another man who got into his car has been jailed for 12 years. Mohammed Ilyas, 44, was found guilty of raping a  passenger in the early hours one morning in May 2016. The unnamed victim, who had been drinking at a pub in Leeds, was put into the cab waiting outside the New Penny, in Leeds, by his friends, who assumed he would be safe.

    The court heard how LLyas drove his cab to a remote farm area where he orally raped his victim.

    The court heard how the victim had been driven to feeling suicidal following the attack. The impact state read, “Because of what the taxi driver did to me that night I have at many points been suicidal.

    “I never go to town alone anymore and will never get a taxi alone again.

    “I will never forget this. I don’t know when or if I will ever get over it.”

    “Engineering a situation”

    Jailing Ilyas for 12-years, Judge Tom Bayliss QC said, “I’m quite sure that you deliberately parked your taxi outside what you knew was a gay pub, thus deliberately engineering a situation where you found yourself alone in your taxi with a passenger who was incapacitated by drink.

    “That passenger had come from a pub, you then committed rape on him, a homosexual rape upon a man who you had seen coming from a gay pub. “I’m quite sure that you targeted (the victim).

    “It may not have been long in the planning, but once you saw, you him stopped your taxi and you targeted him.”

    Mr Llyas pleaded not guilty during his trial in September.

    Judge Bayliss also banned LLyas from contacting his victim and from returning to work as taxi driver in the future.

     

    If you need to speak to someone about sexual assault or rape, please contact Survivors UK for help and support.