This week's post is a short one, mainly because the archives have reopened and I have been out and about more. Last week I looked briefly at a pair of men who were executed for sodomy. But during the 20th century the justice system's persecution of gay men was wide ranging and attempted to control far more than what happened in the bedroom. This is one such case.
Born in 1910, Mary Whitehouse married, had five sons, and worked as an art and sex education teacher. In 1963, she became concerned about the behaviour and attitudes that her students exhibited in relation to sex and believed that the root cause of it was a general moral decline, precipitated by the media (specifically, the BBC). Despite a meeting with the deputy director-general of the BBC, Whitehouse became increasingly alarmed by the output of television programming and, in 1964, she founded the Clean Up TV Campaign. Clearly, there was something about Mary - thousands of people attended the first public meeting the group held that May. Her campaign against the BBC hit the ground running and at one point she was able to gather 500,000 signatures supporting her cause. The Director-General at the time. Sir Hugh Greene, saw Mrs Whitehouse's activism as a dangerous form of censorship and many agreed with him, considering her to be a relic from a bygone era. Sir Hugh Greene even bought a portrait by James Lawrence Isherwood that depicted Mary Whitehouse with five breasts; you can Google it, if you want, but it isn't that amusing.
The Clean Up TV Campaign was replaced in 1965 by The National Viewers' and Listeners' Association and Whitehouse became even more heavily involved in campaigning. Whitehouse's targets were wide-ranging, including a piece by Panorama showing the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. As late as 1994, Whitehouse maintained that the coverage had been 'an awful intrusion. And it's very off-putting'. Legal action became her weapon for the first time in 1967, when she sued a writer for libel after he referred to her and the NVLA as fascists. It would not be the last prosecution Whitehouse would bring.
The Guardian, 24th November 2001
In 1976, a year before the NVLA gave Jimmy Savile an award for 'wholesome family entertainment' on his show Jim'll Fix It, a poem was brought to the attention of Mrs Whitehouse. Entitled The Love That Dares to Speak its Name, the poem was written by James Kirkup and published in Gay News, the first independent gay publication in the country, which had begun circulation in 1972. The poem, according to a legal appeal in 1979, 'purports to describe in explicit detail acts of sodomy and fellatio with the body of Christ immediately after His death and to ascribe to Him during His lifetime promiscuous homosexual practices with the Apostles and with other men'. If you Google it, you will find it very easily.
James Kirkup
An unknown somebody had posted a copy of this particular edition of Gay News to Mrs Whitehouse, with a note directing her to the relevant page. She was horrified. The poem was an affront to her Christian beliefs and, in her eyes, amounted to blasphemy which, Mrs Whitehouse discovered, was an offence still on the statute books, though it had not been used since the early 1920s.
In December 1976, Whitehouse began the process of bringing a private prosecution for blasphemous libel against both Gay News and its editor, Denis Lemon. The law was murky, not least because it was so archaic, but many individuals had rallied to the cause and raised funds to assist the defence. The two barristers who were hired to defend the newspaper and its editor were John Mortimor, author of the Rumpole of the Bailey books, and Geoffrey Robertson, the latter a well-known liberal barrister. Robertson's 1979 book on the law around obscenity is very interesting as a piece of history in itself.
Denis Lemon
The poem has not gone down in history as a great work of literature and I have yet to come across someone who would argue seriously for its artistic merit. But that was the line of argument that the defence chose to pursue, insisting that there were many ways of interpreting the poem, and they gathered a host of writers and theologians to argue this point as witnesses. The trial opened in July 1977 before Justice King-Hamilton, who almost immediately ruled the defence's expert evidence to be inadmissible; there would be no discussion of the poem's artistic merit, nor the myriad interpretations that there may be of the nature of Christ's divinity. Instead, the focus of the jury was squarely on the view of the prosecution; that it was not a love poem, but 'a poem about buggery'.
The defence adjusted their strategy and called character witnesses who could attest to the responsible nature of the publication itself, but the prosecution bor down hard on them, so that 'it soon appeared that homosexuality itself was on trial'. When the jury brought in a guilty verdict, Justice King-Hamilton, who had directed the jury to disregard the intent behind the poem, was reportedly very pleased. The newspaper was handed down a fine of £1000, while Lemon was ordered to pay a fine of £500 and given a 9 month suspended sentence. Though the suspended sentence was quashed at appeal, the fines were upheld.
Aberdeen evening standard July 12th 1977
Clearly, the blasphemous libel was brought because the poem in question depicted Christ having engaged in homosexual activity. Partial decriminalisation of homosexuality did not mean an end to prosecutions of gay men, for a whole range of activities. Indeed, even consensual sex in private could still be prosecuted. In 1993, one case came before the courts in which five consenting men were prosecuted for sex acts carried out with each other. In another example of infuriating double standards, next week, 'Dodgy Defences Part One: Consent".
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