Reprinted from London Daily Mail, April 30, 1963

PETER BLACK

IF ANYONE WISHED TO DEVISE SCHOOL FOR SECRET AGENTS THE WAY BRITAIN TREATS HOMOSEXUALS COULD HARDLY BE IMPROVED UPON

CURIOUS

byproduct of the Vassall affair

may be the end in Britain of the fairly old custom of hunting the homosexual.

I was talking about this with Lord Boothby. Said he: "In the light of this case I am considering the introduction of a Private Member's Bill to the House of Lords.

"It will have just one clause. It will seek to amend the present law which makes homosexual behaviour between consenting males in private a criminal offence.

"I've talked to Sir John Wolfenden about this. He agrees that this one clause would give him the really important reform his 1957 report asked for.'

Good for Boothby.

SO THE THREAT

IS SHARPER

HE point

point is

that

though homosexuals are no more inclined

to treachery than you are, the law as it stands gives the Communists a lever against them which they have over nobody else.

If Vassall had not been a homosexual, and subject to this law, the Russians might have got him anyway. I think he had a predisposition to treachery. But they could not have blackmailed him into it.

Homosexuals are specially vulnerable to blackmailers because they cannot appeal to the protection of the law The blackmailer threatens him with exposure.

If he goes to the police exposure is what he'll get any-

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way for the police can, and sometimes do, charge the victim for participating in the offences he is being blackmailed about.

So the law sharpens the threat of exposure and sharpens the wits of those vulnerable to it.

SO WHO WANTS

THIS LAWP

AME Rebecca West observed that for seven years Vassall had been a cool, emcient, unsuspected spy, to the evident astonishment of Lord Radcliffe, who appears to take the conventional view of homosexuals as giggling queers.

But why should they be? The law forces concealment, pretence, vigilance on them in degrees which can amount to a continuous and successful double life.

If anyone wished to devise a really good secret agent training course which would place special emphasis on dissimulation, toughness and self-reliance, the way homo-. sexuals are treated in Britain could hardly be improved on.

It is, for instance, difficult to enter some public lavatories without receiving a very powerful sensation of being watched by plainclothes men. The possibility of wrongful arrest is more than enough to freeze on your lips any smile of welcome you might otherwise give an acquaintance down there.

There was the case of the unfortunate Chinese gentleman who for smiling at a man and asking the way to Earls Court was promptly arrested, charged and convicted of indecent behaviour. On appeal the conviction was quashed and two policemen Jalled for perjury; examples of the keenness which this law can rouse in some of its defenders.

Yet, does the law represent public opinion? I submit that a really decisive majority is on

the whole innocently compassionate.

It accepts that homosexuality is an unlucky condition and is vaguely and humorously sorry for homosexuals, whom it belleves to be a kind of subspecies.

Wrongly, according to the evidence of Wolfenden. In fact arguments that they are from a special type, bent or class are easy to refute.

For instance, it is observable that a lot of homosexuals are exceptionally fond of the Royal Family and Novello musicals. But nearly every. body is dotty about the Royal Family; and coachloads of mums and dads with nubile daughters and sons would be filling Drury Lane to this hour if Novello's death had not cut off the source.

This general tolerance is withheld, significantly, from acts of public indecency or seduction of young persons; in other words, from homo sexual practices that are uni versally regarded as sexual offences.

Who then does this law represent ? Sincere chumps who shut their minds to this subject at the age of 17; & minority with more complex motives, derived from authorltarian and unimaginative temperaments which are crippled by self-doubts and primitive fears of anything outside their own totem,

SO MUCH FOR CONSCIENCE

•

F they could not witch-hunt for homosexuals they would go after people with red hair or weak chins. Any recognis able difference suits them.

Lord Boothby thinks his Bill would get through the Lords but be thrown out by the Commons. I'm not so sure. It's true that the witchhunters have power as rabbleContinued on page 25