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There have been enormous changes in the way that society has responded to LGBTI+ people over the past half century, and these have been mirrored in numerous changes to law and policy.

1967: Male same-sex acts in certain circumstances were decriminalized, but full legal equality remained a long way off: according to a Guardian article published in 2007, between 1967 and 2003, 30,000 gay and bisexual men were convicted for behaviour that would not have been a crime had their partner been a woman.¹²⁷ In the 1970s, in particular, there were still frequent prosecutions for homosexual activity, often following entrapment by the police.¹²⁸

1988: The Conservative Government passed the Local Government Act. Section 28 ruled that local authorities ‘shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality’.

1994: The male homosexual age of consent, which had been set at 21 in 1967, was lowered to 18.

2000: Following the election of a Labour government in 1997, there was an increased liberalization of the laws concerning homosexual activity. The age of consent was reduced again to 16. The bar to LGBT people serving in the armed forces was removed. Until then, military personnel found guilty of same-sex activity could be immediately discharged for gross misconduct. The army, navy and air force subsequently introduced many changes to their procedures, including representation on Pride marches and recruitment advertisements in LGBT magazines.

2003: Section 28 was repealed.

2004: The Civil Partnership Act was passed with overwhelming support in the House of Commons. The first civil partnerships were created in 2005.

2004: In the same year, the Gender Recognition Act passed into law. It enabled, for the first time, trans people to achieve legal recognition of their affirmed gender.¹²⁹

2010: The Equality Act both combined and extended earlier anti-discrimination legislation. It introduced the concept of ‘protected characteristics’ and made discrimination illegal on the grounds of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion and belief, sex, and sexual orientation.¹³⁰

2013: The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 was introduced by the Conservative Government. The Act passed with large majorities in both Houses of Parliament.

2018: A consultation about a Reform of the 2004 Gender Recognition Act was undertaken by the Conservative Government.¹³¹

2019: The law on civil partnerships was changed to include heterosexual couples.

2019: The Conservative Government’s requirements on relationship and sex education in schools – ‘we expect all pupils to have been taught LGBT content at a timely point as part of this area of the curriculum’¹³² – encountered opposition, mainly on the grounds of religious belief. Guidance on how to respond to ‘disruption’ over LGBT teaching/relationship education was issued by the government in October 2019.¹³³

These legal changes, which overall mean that LGBTI+ people are more able to be open about their identities and relationships, have been accompanied by a growth in the visibility of those minorities, and by rapidly changing social attitudes to them.

The first march for gay equality took place in London’s Highbury Fields in November 1970, attended by only 150 people.¹³⁴ Two years later, London’s first Gay Pride march was attended by between 700 and 2000 people. The controversy over Section 28 led to increased numbers attending Pride marches in protest. In 1983 the march was renamed ‘Lesbian and Gay Pride’, and in the 1990s it became more of a carnival, with large park gatherings and a fair after the marches. In 1996 the event was renamed ‘Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride’. An estimated 1.5 million joined the London Pride March in 2019.¹³⁵

The Government’s LGBT Action Plan, published in 2018, says that

The existing evidence base shows that acceptance of same-sex relationships among the general public is at a record high and continues to increase, with 64% of the British public saying same-sex relationships were ‘not wrong at all’ in 2016, up from 47% in 2012, and 11% in 1987.136

A more recent report suggests a slight decline in acceptance of premarital sex and same-sex sexual relationships.¹³⁷

In recent years there has been a significant growth in public awareness of trans people, helped in part by such celebrities as Caitlyn Jenner, Andreja Pejic, and Laverne Cox. This has prompted some critical reactions. Controversy has surrounded issues such as the access to women’s bathroom facilities,¹³⁸ or to women’s sporting events,¹³⁹ by trans women, as well as about treatment of children and young people experiencing gender dysphoria.¹⁴⁰ There have also been debates amongst feminist thinkers.¹⁴¹ Some focus on the differences between the socialisation and experience of cis women and of trans women before they transition, and on that basis question whether trans women are truly women. Others have argued that women’s experience is very diverse, and that the experience of trans women is part of that diversity. Public debate on these matters is often polarised and strongly expressed, especially in social media.

The growth in public awareness of LGBTI+ people has not made life safe for LGBTI+ people. Reported LGBT hate crimes doubled between 2014 and 2018, and reported transphobic crimes more than trebled.¹⁴² Recent data obtained by the BBC indicates that the number of reported hate crimes against trans people recorded by police in England, Scotland and Wales has risen by 81 per cent from 1,073 crimes in 2016/17 to 1,944 in 2018/19. Reported crimes are likely to be only a fraction of all incidents, however, and it is unclear what proportion of these increases reflects greater awareness and higher rates of reporting, and what proportion reflects an increase in the number of incidents themselves.

Drawing on a YouGov poll of more than 5,000 LGBTI+ people in Britain, the charity Stonewall estimated in 2017 that ‘Two in five trans people have experienced a hate crime or incident because of their gender identity in the last 12 months.’¹⁴³ In the same year, the Government Equalities Office received over 108,000 responses to a survey of LGBTI+ people:

• More than 70 per cent of those surveyed said they had ‘avoided being open about their sexual orientation for fear of a negative reaction from others’

• 68 per cent said that they had avoided holding hands with a partner in public for fear of a negative response from others.

• Two out of every five reported that they had experienced an incident such as physical violence or verbal harassment in the last twelve months – the vast majority of which were left unreported, because the respondents believed that such things ‘happen all the time’.¹⁴⁴

Although LGBTI+ people are now free from fear of prosecution, there is a long way to go before they are free of fear from harassment.

All the discussion above of statistics, medical interventions, and cultural trends can obscure the fact that we are always talking about people. We are talking about real individuals, each with their own rich and varied history of experience. We are often talking about people who have had to endure high levels of bullying and exclusion, in society and in the church. And we are talking about people who have too often been treated – including by the church – as problems to be resolved or issues to be debated.