1981 laws against gays nother island

The first step was to submit your case to the European Commission of Human Rights. They were ignored. People returning from London shared stories of gay liberation activities. Inthe British Government published a draft Order in Council to decriminalise homosexual acts in Northern Ireland in line with the reforms in England and Wales.

Thirteen years after that an amendment to the Criminal Justice Scotland Act brought the law in Scotland in line with England and Wales. He argued the British Government was invading his privacy and discriminating against him when compared to a heterosexual man.

NIGRA knew the court case would take a long time. The group tried to get the government in London to extend the Act to Northern Ireland. There were representatives of institutions from England, Wales and Scotland but none from Northern Ireland.

Decriminalisation Of Homosexual Acts

Campaigning groups started much later in Northern Ireland than in other parts of the UK. This was partly due to the hostile attitudes of the Catholic and Protestant Churches and also because of The Troubles. InJeffrey Dudgeon, a gay man living in Belfast, Northern Ireland, complained that Sections 61 and 62 of the Offences against the Person Act and Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, criminalising same-sex acts between consenting adult males, was a violation of Article 8 (right to privacy) of the European Convention on Human.

It came into force on 8 December In the Home Office asked Sir John Wolfenden to form a committee to advise on the reform of laws around homosexuality. A small but very active group of men set up a number of organisations. In June they attended a joint meeting with MPs in London to talk about employment protection.

They set up Cara-Friend — the gay befriending and counselling service. However, it failed without the support of any of the twelve Northern Ireland politicians in the Westminster Parliament. Ten years later the Labour Government turned the Wolfenden report recommendations into law in England and Wales.

[1] The case was significant as the first successful case before the ECtHR. All the groups argued there could be no employment protection for men whose behaviour was criminalised. At that time you could not take a complaint directly to the ECHR.

They continued to put pressure on the government in Westminster. At that time, the law regarding homosexuality in Northern Ireland was contained in the Offences against the Person Act (which made “buggery” an offence) and the Criminal Law Amendment Act (which made “gross indecency” between two men in public or private an offence).

They published newspapers including Gay Star. Dudgeon v the United Kingdom was a case heard by the European Court of Human Rights in It ruled that the law in Northern Ireland that penalised sex between men in private was incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.

Its ground-breaking judgment led to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Northern Ireland, the United Kingdom and Europe at large, recognising the human rights to millions of people. The group started to fundraise throughout the UK and Ireland to support the case.

In they became part of the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform. The European Commission of Human Rights only accepted submissions from individuals. David Norris at the University of Dublin had started this. Dudgeon v United Kingdom () was a European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) case, which held that Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Actwhich criminalised male homosexual acts in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, breached the defendant's rights under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.