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Homophobia, Class and Party in England*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

David M. Rayside
David M. Rayside
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Abstract

Institutionalized homophobia in England has been intensified over the last decade, linked to concerns about “permissiveness” so prominent within the lower middle classes so courted by the modern Conservative party. However, anti-gay norms have long been embedded in working-class and middle-class cultures, more than in continental European and North American societies. Moralistic crusades against homosexuality have been common in England, and are still reinforced by the police, the courts and especially the tabloid press. Opposition has been roused within Labour party and Liberal/Liberal Democratic circles, but often reluctantly, and framed by a limited form of tolerance.

Résumé

L'homophobie institutionnalisée en Angleterre n'a fait que croître au cours des 10 dernières années; ceci est lié au « laxisme » qui préoccupe tant la petite bourgeoisie, présentement la cible du parti conservateur. Cependant les classes ouvrières et moyennes ont toujours rejeté l'homosexualité, plus que dans les autres parts de l'Europe et en Amérique du nord. En Angleterre, il n'a pas été rare de voir des véritables croisades « morales », qui ont eu et ont toujours, l'appui de la police, des tribunaux et de la presse populaire. À l'intérieur du parti travailliste et des cercles libéraux et libéraux démocrates, une certaine opposition s'est manifestée mais souvent avec réticence et seulement dans le cadre d'une tolérance très limitée.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , March 1992 , pp. 121 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1992

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References

1 The final wording of section 28 was as follows: “A local authority shall not: (a) intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material for the promotion of homosexuality; (b) promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretend family relationship by the publication of such material or otherwise; (c) give financial assistance to any person for either of the purposes in paragraphs (a) or (b) above.” Until the Local Government Bill was passed into law, this section was referred to as Clause 28, although various changes in the bill during its parliamentary passage altered the number to 27 and 29. The amendment was thought to be encouraged by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (The Guardian, April 8, 1988).

2 Section 25 includes as crimes “indecency between men” and “procuring others to commit homosexual acts.” According to one critic, the legislation would prohibit allowing two men to stay overnight and have sex, “cruising” or chatting up other men in public, having any form of gay sex with more than two people, and other things. See Rites, April 1991, 9, and Angles, May 1991, 4.

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29 Surveys have shown that there was an increase in moral condemnation of homosexuality between 1983 and 1987, the number of Britons thinking that homosexual relations were “always” or “mostly” wrong increasing from 62 to 74 per cent. Asked whether lesbians and gay men should have the right to adopt children, overwhelming majorities of 86 (for lesbian couples) and 93 per cent (for gay male couples) rejected the notion, those opinions if anything hardening in the late 1980s. See Jowell, Roger et al. , eds., British Social Attitudes: The 5th Report (London: Gower, 1988)Google Scholar; and Rayside, David and Bowler, Scott, “Public Opinion and Gay Rights,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 25 (1988), 649–660CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 This conclusion is inspired by Hobsbawm, Eric (Workers: Worlds of Labour [New York: Pantheon, 1984], chap. 10)Google Scholar and Thompson, E. P. (The Making of the English Working Class [Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968], chap. 12)Google Scholar, although they differ with one another in dating the foundations of working-class culture.

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39 Wainwright argues that public opinion currents are often more contradictory than party leaders recognize, and that in any event the party should be challenging the prevailing interpretations of events that swing public opinion in non-progressive ways. She offers considerable evidence of left-wing Labour MPs and councillors doing as well electorally as mainstream candidates. She notes, however, that resistance to policies dealing with women and blacks is very strong in sections of the party's supporters, and that point could be made even more strongly with regard to gay issues.

40 The support for what the authors of British Social Attitudes call a left-wing position on homosexuality is less widespread among middle-class Liberal and Social Democratic partisans than among Labourites (29% as compared to 43%). See Table 1.

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61 Altman, The Homosexualization of America, ix, 35. To a degree, what is claimed here about the US could also be said of Canada. As D'Emilio and Freedman argue, a large portion of the gay activist population in the US had shifted its focus during the few years after the explosion of gay liberationism activity in 1969, in ways that dovetailed with the mainstream American notion of equality rights. See Intimate Matters, 323, and Watney, Policing Desire, 15.

62 This included early 1890s amendments which followed the lead of the 1885 Labouchere amendment in England. On this and related questions, see Kinsman, Gary, The Regulation of Desire: Sexuality in Canada (Montreal: Black Rose, 1987), chaps. 5, 6Google Scholar.