Twenty years ago, consensual sex between sixteen or seventeen-year-old young men was considered a crime. The laws governing sexual offences were a mess: the age of consent for gay men was eighteen, but for everyone else it was sixteen. And it gets worse. If a sixteen-year-old man had sex with another man aged eighteen or nineteen, the older teenager could face a jail sentence.
There were crimes that only gay people could commit. To make it easier to penalise homosexuals, the Victorians came up with the offence of gross indecency, which effectively criminalised any form of intimacy between gay men. In theory, gross indecency could only be committed consensually, otherwise the sexual act would amount to sexual assault, but lazy prosecutors would prosecute non-consensual sex as gross indecency because it was so easy to prove.
Over time, defences to gross indecency emerged. If both parties were over eighteen and the acts took place in private, a crime was not committed. But a snog and fondle in the park, a rite of passage for most teenagers, could result in a two-year prison sentence for young, gay men.
