"When writer and composer Hugh Sheehan came across the case of the Bolton 7, which saw seven gay and bisexual men convicted of gross indecency offences for engaging in consensual sex with each other in a private residence in the Greater Manchester town, he thought he'd read the date wrong. "1998. It's so recent. It's such archaic laws being used," Sheehan says today."
"Owing to vigorous campaigning from the likes of activists Peter Tatchell and Allan Horsfall and groups including Amnesty International, Stonewall, and OutRage!, the men didn't receive custodial sentences. Then, in 2001, the Home Office offered six of the men up to £16,000 as part of an out-of-court settlement, after they took an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights."
""Peter Tatchell calls the trial the last show trial of gay men in Britain. It became the nucleus of equalising the age of consent and causing a paradigm shift so as to abolish Section 28," says Sheehan, referencing Margaret Thatcher's law against the "promotion" of homosexuality which was wiped from the statute book in 2003. The Sexual Offences Act 2003 also enshrined in law that sex between more than two men is no longer a crime."
The Bolton 7 case involved seven gay and bisexual men convicted of gross indecency for consensual sex in a private residence. Although the Sexual Offences Act 1967 partially decriminalised gay sex, laws still prohibited sexual activity involving more than two men and set the homosexual age of consent at 18. Private footage was obtained by police, leading to arrests, charges and convictions. Activist and organisational campaigning avoided custodial sentences, and in 2001 the Home Office offered up to £16,000 to six men after a European Court of Human Rights appeal. The case prompted legal reforms including equalising the age of consent, abolishing Section 28, and removing the offence of sex between more than two men under the Sexual Offences Act 2003.
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