UK extends pardons for historic cases of consensual gay sex

Team Udayavani, Jan 4, 2022, 7:45 PM IST

File photo (Source: AFP)

London: Britain’s Home Secretary, Priti Patel, on Tuesday said that anyone convicted or cautioned for consensual homosexual activity under now-abolished laws in the UK can apply to have their record wiped under a new pardon scheme.

The Indian-origin Cabinet minister said she hoped the expanded Disregards and Pardons Scheme as an amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill ”would go some way to righting the wrongs of the past”.

The amendment to the law, dubbed “Turing’s law” after World War II code-breaker Alan Turing’s posthumous pardoned for “gross indecency” in 1952, will broaden the criteria to include any repealed or abolished civilian or military offence that was imposed on someone purely due to consensual same-sex sexual activity.

”It is only right that where offences have been abolished, convictions for consensual activity between same-sex partners should be disregarded too,” said Patel.

”I hope that expanding the pardons and disregards scheme will go some way to righting the wrongs of the past and to reassuring members of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans) community that Britain is one of the safest places in the world to call home,” she said.

“Turing’s law” so far only covers nine former offences included on a specified list, largely focused on the repealed offences of buggery and gross indecency between men. Following the amendment, all those whose cautions and convictions are disregarded under the scheme will also receive an automatic pardon. Anyone who has died before the changes came into place, or up to 12 months afterwards, will be posthumously pardoned.

The UK Home Office said conditions would still need to be met in order for a disregard and pardon to be granted, including that anyone else involved must have been aged 16 and over and the sexual activity must not constitute an offence under the legal system today.

House of Lords peers Michael Cashman and Alistair Lexden and Professor Paul Johnson, who campaigned for the change, said in a statement: ”Parliament has a duty to wipe away the terrible stains which they placed, quite wrongly, on the reputations of countless gay people over centuries.”