A Dark Chapter in Dutch History

The Netherlands has acquired a reputation as a pioneer and champion of lgbt rights, but it is also a dark chapter that involves the worst secular persecution of homosexuals in European history prior to the 20th century. The news of the virtual massacre of gay men in the summer of 1730 in the Dutch republic spread across Europe resulting in similar persecutions.

As has often been the case throughout history, any natural or economic disaster is often attributed to divine retribution because of the actions (or even the very existence) of specific sections of the community. Many times in recent decades the lgbt community has been accused of bringing that divine retribution in the form of floods, famine and disease. Just last week an American religious group accused the lgbt community of bringing down the wrath of God who inflicted the covid pandemic on the world because of our continuing existence.

Such appears to have been the case in the Netherlands in the early 18th century. For a generation there had been disease that had suddenly attacked the country’s cattle herds, and parasitic worms that were breeding in the water dikes. A generation earlier there have been freak weather, and even an earthquake that destroyed much of Utrecht’s main church, the Domkerk. In general also, there was a feeling that society was becoming too immoral, lazy and weak-willed. People were looking for someone to blame for the disasters and deterioration in society and soon the gay community became their target. This became a nationwide persecution.

Where the Dutch persecution of gay men began.

An engraving of a painting by Herman Saftleven the Younger (1609-1685)

showing the ruins of Domkerk nave (Utrecht Archives).

The damaged Domkerk became a meeting place for gay men. In January 1730 the sacristan, the person who looked after what was left of the building, discovered two men having sex in the church tower. He recognised one of them as Zacharias Wilsma, and the sacristan had him arrested. Wilsma, a 23-year-old ex-soldier from Leiden, was interrogated. He revealed the existence of a network of gay men across the Netherlands, especially in Amsterdam. He probably hoped that his confession and co-operation would save him from punishment. It appears that this may have been the case because there’s no record of his execution in the ensuing “purge” of Dutch homosexuals.

Wilsma also revealed details of his own sexual activities prior to moving to Utrecht. As the foreman on the country estate of a wealthy burgomaster near Leiden he often had sex with other men in his master’s carriages.

Wilsma named four men in Amsterdam as sodomites, as homosexuals were termed in those days, and they were tracked down and arrested. Wilsma testified against them at their trials and all four were executed in June 1730. But this was just the tip of the iceberg. Under interrogation the men revealed the names of forty others. The revelation that there was a thriving secret gay community in Amsterdam threw the city and the nation into a panic.

In July 1730 the Netherlands government issued an edict that went out to every city, town and village. It warned against the dangers and evils of sodomy (sodomy was considered to be an infectious disease at the time). The edict reminded people of the death penalty.

By this time word had spread among the gay community, or rather the loose network of gay men, to be more accurate. Although many men were arrested, convicted and executed, some managed to escape, at least for a short time.

One of the most prominent men hoping to avoid capture was Baron Frederick van Reede van Renswoude (1659-1738), a diplomat and magistrate renowned internationally as a peace-keeper. The London Journal described him as “the First Noble of the Province of Utrecht”. It is thought that he fled to Venice. Several men who were executed for sodomy referred to him as “the Greatest of All Buggers”. He was stripped of his legal and municipal offices, but he thought it safe for him to return a few weeks later. That seems to have been the only punishment he received.

The most notorious crack-down on gay sex networks occurred in Faan, a tiny village near Groningen. There the local magistrate arrested 24 men in the village for sodomy. He found all of them guilty and they were all hanged.

News of the arrests and executions spread across Europe. Unlike today there was no condemnation from the general public of the homophobic purge. It would be wrong to assume that the public had been scared into believing the Church propaganda against sodomy. The historical evidence says otherwise. The public believed sodomy was a moral evil just as much as the majority of Christian Churches did.

One British newspaper summed up the general view of the public perfectly. The London Journal of 6th June 1730 reported “… It is about a Fortnight since the court of Holland have had under Prosecution Seven young persons for the detestable Sin of Sodomy, formerly unknown in these Parts, and confined to the South Side of the Alps: Several have been seized upon the Score at Leyden, Utrecht, Amsterdam, Campen, and in short in almost all the Province…” The report indicates the view in northern Europe that sodomy was only practiced in Italy, in particular Florence. In fact, the Germans had a slang word for a sodomite – “florenzer” (we’ll encounter some actual “florenzers” next month). Additionally, the persecution of gay men in Utrecht itself gave rise to a slang name for a gay man – “utrechtenaar”.

As news of the persecutions and executions spread across Europe people began to view recent visitors from the Netherlands with suspicion. Some of these visitors were indeed escaping homosexuals but many were not.

Arrests, interrogations, trials and executions went of sporadically for decades, but none were as intense as the 1730 Dutch persecutions. What makes the whole affair so horrifying to our modern ears is the manner of the executions. The law permitted judges to choose the methods of execution. As well as hanging, some men were burnt alive, some were strangled and crushed, some had their corpses burnt and their ashes thrown in to the sea, In fact, the remains of quite a lot of these men ended up being thrown into the sea. It is estimated that there were about 300 men were convicted of sodomy in the summer of 1730.

History shows just how much nations and public opinion can change over time. This change in the Netherlands has been recognised. In 1999 the authorities in Utrecht placed a memorial stone, called the Sodomonument, in the street outside the Domkerk tower, the only surviving part of the church, to commemorate the lives of the persecuted men.

80 More Gays Around the World: Part 14) Colonial Roots

Last time on “80 More Gays”: 36) Frederik Gotthold Enslin (c.1740-after 1778) , a Dutch colonist, escaped the death penalty for being gay, unlike an earlier Dutch colonial, 37) Joost Schouten (c.1600-1644), a merchant and envoy to the court of the Japanese shogun 38) Tokugawa Iemitsu (1604-1651), father of the “Dog Shogun” 39) Tokugawa Tsunayoshi (1646-1709), who introduced a festival based on an ancient harvest celebration, another version of which was Thanksgiving, created by the colonial Americans during the lifetime of 40) William Plaine (c.1595?-1646).

40) William Plaine was neither the first to be convicted or executed for what they called sodomy in the American colonies. Richard Cornish was the first to executed, but he was an English merchant and not a settler. William Plaine was the first settler to be executed for sodomy.

New Haven colony was founded in 1637. The township of Guilford, which was originally called Menunkatuck after the native tribe from whom the land was bought, was founded in 1639. Several ships from England carried Puritan colonists, farmers and their families. One ship, the “St. John”, carried three colonists who are worth mentioning – William Plaine, Francis Chatfield and John Parmalee (also referred to as Parmalin or Permewly). Francis Chatfield will become a significant figure in a future article on the coat of arms of his 9-times great-nephew, the gay Olympic swimmer Mark Chatfield.

Guilford township experienced a difficult first few decades, at least spiritually. The original Puritan pastor moved away and the settlers were left with no spiritual leader, vital for the Puritans, for a number of years. Several settler families moved away, including that of Francis Chatfield’s brother George, the Olympian’s direct ancestor, to avoid living in what they regarded as an increasingly godless township. During the events that transpired in 1646 it appears that William was probably one of these “godless” people that settlers wanted to get away from. William made it clear that he doubted the existence of God. At first, however, William Plaine seemed to be a trusted member of the town.

Unlike some of the other colonists we know nothing of William Plaine’s origins. We assume he was born in England and can definitely assume that he was an adult when he embarked on the “St. John” in 1639 because he was one of the signatories, with Francis Chatfield and John Parmalee, of the Covenant made on the voyage which founded Guilford. On arriving in Guilford William was allotted two acres of land to settle and build a home. You can actually visit the site today. The buildings have gone but the site is now occupied by Page Hardware store and the old Guilford Trust bank building to the south of Guilford green. William’s house was situated in the car park behind the old bank.

The Guildford Covenant stone placed outside Henry Whitfield House Museum in 2018 to commemorate the 375th anniversary of the signing of the covenant in 1639. William Plaine’s name is included.

William Plaine may have been married before he arrived in Guilford. His wife was called Anne (surname unknown). They had only one known child, a daughter and heir called Hannah. William was appointed inspector of chimneys to check they were constructed properly and not able to set fire to property or spread. He was well known to the people of Guilford. Just what they knew about his private life is unknown but everyone soon got to know very quickly when he was accused and tried by the town council of sodomy and sexual abuse of boys.

Court records are missing so most of what we know of William’s trial or examination comes from the journal of John Winthrop, the governor of the neighbouring Massachusetts Bay colony. He writes how the governor of New Haven colony, Theophilus Eaton, had written to seek advice on what action to take with William Plaine, who had been accused and found guilty of having sex with two men in England, and abusing boys in Guilford more than a hundred times. Governor Winthrop agreed with the law, that Plaine should hang and this is exactly what happened in or around 6th June 1646.

But that’s not the end to his story because he left a widow and daughter, and it’s what happened to them that takes us to the next of our “80 Gays”.

It was common in early colonial times for a widow like Anne Plaine to remarry in order to ensure she could keep possession of her late husband’s property. Her new husband couldn’t even sell it without her permission. In a small community like Guilford there was a relatively small number of “available” husbands, and in about 1650 Anne married the recently widowed John Parmalee, the son of the John Parmalee who had travelled with William Plaine on the “St. John”. The Parmalees were a prominent family and the marriage indicates that there was no stigma attached to Anne for her executed husband crimes. The marriage lasted until Anne’s death in 1658, leaving Hannah as her sole heir.

Again, marriage would ensure Hannah’s continued occupation of the property, and who stepped up to marry her? It was another recently widowed man, her own stepfather, John Parmalee. They married in 1659. Historians assume this was the case because John had to ask his wife’s permission to sell some of the land that she inherited, some of the Plaine property. He wouldn’t do that if Hannah wasn’t the heir to William Plaine.

People may cringe at the thought of a man marrying his stepdaughter but there were no objections and it seems not to be regarded as incest under the Puritan colonists’ laws. There was no blood link and the marriage was more of a property alliance. However, John Parmalee and Hannah Plaine had nine children. The first, John Parmalee III, was born in 1659, and the youngest in 1678.

Today there are several thousand people who are descended from John and Hannah, and thus from William Plaine. There are several famous descendants - First Lady Barbara Bush and her son President George W. Bush, and actors Ben Affleck, Christopher Reeve, Humphrey Bogart and Jodie Foster.

Descended from the eldest son, John Parmalee III, is 41) Vincent Price (1911-1993).

Next time on “80 More Gays”: Hollywood horror, a daughters’ revelation, Latina art, homophobic Baptist, and a reporter on the Daily Planet.

Dog Days of the Shogun

This time of year is often referred to as the Dog Days of summer. This is a traditional name for the hottest and sultry days of the year, so named because the brightest night-time star the Dog Star, Sirius. The Romans believed that when Sirius rose in the sky before dawn in the summer months its heat was added to that of the Sun.

I have to admit that I’m not good with dogs. I was attacked by an alsatian when I was about 7 (when you’re that young an alsatian is as high as your shoulder) and I still have nightmares about dogs. As a complete contrast, there’s one historical lgbt individual who is said to have loved dogs so much that he acquired the nickname of “the Dog Shogun”. His actual name was Tokugawa Tsunayoshi (1646-1709) and he was the 5th shogun of the Tokugawa dynasty.

Tokugawa Tsunayoshi

In recent decades the reputation of Tokugawa Tsunayoshi has undergone a bit of revision. For centuries he had the reputation of being a bad ruler, a tyrant who eccentricities included favouring the welfare of dogs over humans and of elevating his many male lovers into positions of power.

As I have found out time and time again in the 40 years that I have been a dedicated historian what is written and accepted as historical fact often concentrates on one culturally biased opinion. In the case of Tsunayoshi that bias was contained in a very influential document called “Sanno Gaiki”. This had been accepted as the authoritative account of Tsunayoshi’s reign. It was written after he had died and was more of a critical parody than a history of his reign, and even though people recognised this as the time, people and historians gradually began to believe every word of it.

Despite the fact that Japanese historians just a century after his death had tried to rehabilitate Tsunayoshi’s reputation “Sanno Gaiki” had become too fixed in the popular mind for it not to take root. By the end of the 20th century many historians were attempting to “correct” this fake history.

Perhaps the biggest effect on Tsunayoshi’s reputation is his fondness for dogs and his famous nickname “the Dog Shogun”. From being an insult to being turned into a by-name for animal compassion this nickname has various legends surrounding it.

The origin of this nickname centre round the “laws of compassion” introduced by Tsunayoshi from 1687 onwards. These were a series of laws which gave protection to animals and punishments for animal cruelty, including death. Even though later historians concentrated on the protection of dogs the laws also included protection of cruelty against other animals - birds, horses and even grasshoppers. Protection for abandoned children was also a large part of these laws.

The dog connection is compounded by the fact that Tsunayoshi was born in the Japanese Year of the Dog. The “Sanno Gaiki” added to this by fabricating the legend that a Buddhist priest had told Tsunayoshi’s mother that the shogun had mistreated dogs in a former life and the death of his son and heir was a punishment. The priest said that only laws against cruelty to dogs would lift the curse of a childless shogun.

Dogs seemed to have a dual identity during the rule of the shoguns. On the one hand dogs were closely associated with the samurai and were a symbol of their ferocity. The samurai would breed and train hundreds of dogs for hunting. Over time there were too many for the samurai to keep and many dogs were either killed or left to stray the countryside.

Cities were often overrun with stray dogs. They attacked other animals and even children in search of food. Cruelty to dogs was already punishable and Shogun Tsunayoshi’s laws of compassion added an additional condition which stated that not feeding stray dogs was also cruelty and punishable. Most people, however, were under the impression that feeding any dog would make them legally responsible for the animal and avoided them. This led to an increase in stray dogs. The solution was to build massive dog shelters and kennels. When I say massive I mean that the kennels housed over 100,000 stray dogs.

Unfortunately for these dogs, when Tsunayoshi died his son and successor closed down all the kennels. It’s not certain what happened to all the dogs. The location of these kennels is commemorated today in a set of statue dogs outside Nakano City Hall in Tokyo (pictured below). The kennels may be the main reason why the Japanese went on to associate Tsunayoshi with them more than any other animal.

So that’s why Tokugawa Tsunayoshi became known as the Dog Shogun as a name of shame – a man who preferred dogs to people. But his reputation was smeared further by accusation of him promoting his male lovers to high office. What’s the truth about that?

As a samurai Tsunayoshi was no stranger to same-sex activity. In something very much like the ancient Greek practice whereby soldiers take younger male lovers the samurai had a similar system called shodu. As with the Greek practice shodu was more a rite of passage for the younger partner and, also as with the Greeks, it developed into a life-long platonic friendship. Neither practices can be said to be truly homosexual in our modern sense of the word but was strongly homo-social. The fact that both practices saw the man-youth sexual relationship as normal is what makes it a big part in lgbt heritage of our understanding of human sexuality.

Tsunayoshi is known to have had several young male lovers as well as a wife and several concubines. That, too, was normal. The claim made by a ruler’s critics of lovers and favourites being promoted to high office is common in most societies, even if there’s no evidence of same-sex activity. However, there seems to be hints in Tsunayoshi’s behaviour that may indicate that he did prefer male partners.

One of these hints is his friendship with Yanagisawa Yoshigasu, one of the many attendants at the shogun’s court. Yoshigasu was from a samurai family of imperial descent. He and the future shogun Tsunayoshi met in 1665 when he was 7 years old and Tsunayoshi was 19. Later historians also painted Yoshigasu as a bad court official though his reputation has been undergoing the same revision as the shogun.

Yoshigasu was a general attendant at the court. In 1675 he became a page at Tsunayoshi’s residence. Five years later when Tsunayoshi became shogun Yoshigasu joined him in Edo palace and soon began to rise in the hierarchy of attendants. He had no formal training in government or politics yet in 1688 shogun Tsunayoshi appointed him as his Great Chamberlain. This angered many officials and samurai families.

While there’s no actual evidence of a gay relationship between the two men in our modern sense, one may have been carried out in the form of the traditional samurai shudo before Tsunayoshi became shogun. There was a strong personal connections between the two through a shared interest in Confucian classics, though this alone is hardly enough to propel a humble attendant to the high office of Great Chamberlain. So, perhaps there was more going on between them.

As in a lot of historical instances evidence to prove a relationship one way or another is lacking, and the change in social attitudes to everything from sexuality to politics changes with each generation.

Given that the samurai code of shudo with its same-sex relationships was common in 17th century Japan it is unlikely that the Dog Shogun, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, didn’t have male lovers.

The Forgotten Victims of Franco

Eighty years ago this month the Spanish Civil War was nearing its end. On 27th February 1939 Britain and France recognised the government of Gen. Francisco Franco and his Nationalists as the legitimate government of Spain. The war went on for several more months until Franco declared the war had ended on 1st April.

Until Franco came to power Spain’s lgbt community had “enjoyed” a higher degree of freedom than most of Europe. Sodomy had been decriminalised in 1882 and the Second Republic (1931-1939) had been more liberal than the preceding monarchy. The power of the aristocracy and the Catholic Church had been reduced.

All that changed when Franco took over. The Catholic Church regained its political powers and things like abortion and divorce were made illegal. Although there was no new law re-criminalising homosexuality or sodomy the lgbt community saw an increase in opposition and victimisation.

In 1954 Franco reformed Spain’s 1933 Vagrancy Law to include homosexuality, thereby making it illegal once more. To the Nationalist government this was a step made to “correct and reform” homosexuals rather than punish them. But punish them they did with harassment, arrest and torture. In 1971 homosexuality was declared a mental illness rather than a crime with the introduction of the Law of Dangerousness and Social Rehabilitation. Gay men were sent to “correction camps” for “corrective treatment”, or physical and psychological abuse, as we would recognise it today.

Even after months of this forced “therapy” convicted homosexuals had little chance of finding employment afterwards as the police would inform employers of their employee’s record as a homosexual.

When homosexuality was legalised once more in Spain in 1979 (40 years ago this year) several years after Franco’s death, democracy, the monarchy and more liberalism were introduced. However, men and women who had been still convicted for their homosexuality were still being discriminated against. In 1976 the Spanish government issued pardons to all political prisoners under Franco, but not to homosexuals as it was still classed as a “mental Illness” that required “correction”.

It wasn’t until this century that the Spanish government decided to finally wipe out the convictions of all those who were convicted of homosexuality or underwent treatment. Homosexuality had been legalised two years earlier. Those who had been affected felt that there should be more than a pardon. More than anything, many of them called for financial reparation to cover the hardships they had endured because of their convictions.

In 2004 the Association of Ex-Social Prisoners of Spain was formed. Antoni Ruiz, its president and one of Franco’s victims, had been arrested and convicted of homosexuality in 1975. He was jailed, raped by other prisoners and subjected to psychological torture by the prison authorities. After years of campaigning the government agreed to give financial payments to Ruiz and all surviving victims of Franco’s homophobic laws. In 2009 Antoni Ruiz was the first to receive any of this compensation, receiving 4,000 euros.

Each case for compensation that goes before the Commission for Compensation of Former Social Prisoners is treated individually. As of January 2018 only 116 people had been successful in their case. I have no data for the thirteen months since then.

While the persecution of gay men and women by the Nazis has become deeply engraved into lgbt heritage the persecution in Franco’s Spain, which went on long after the Nazis were defeated, has gone largely unnoticed outside Spain. Unlike the Holocaust there are no memorials to Franco’s lgbt victims and many people today are surprised that Spain, a nation that has been in the forefront of lgbt rights in the 21st century, has had such a recent homophobic past.

Suffrage Centenary

Last year I wrote a series of articles to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in England. This year sees another momentous anniversary in the fight for equality. It’s the centenary of the Representation of the People Act which received royal assent on this day in 1918. It gave women the right to vote in UK general elections for the first time.

Other countries had given some women the vote before 1918 (e.g. Sweden in 1718 and New Zealand colony in 1893), but I’ll concentrate today on my home nation. What the Representation of the People Act provided wasn’t a universal right. It was restricted to women over the age of 30 who were property owners (or her husbands were), graduates voting in one of the university constituencies, or listed on the Local Government Register (or her husband was). The right to vote was extended to all women in 1928.

The first general election at which women could vote was later in the year in 14th December. By this time another Act had been passed giving women the right to stand for election. The first woman to be elected was at that 1918 general election. She was Constance, Countess Markiewicz, the sister of Eva Gore-Booth (1870-1926). Both were prominent suffragettes and Irish nationalists.

Eva Gore-Booth is one of the many lesbian and bisexual women who were prominent in the suffragette movement. Unfortunately, as with the lives of so many gay men in the same period, absolute proof of a woman’s sexual relationship with another woman is difficult to establish. However, there are diaries and biographies of many of the suffragettes which provide clues. To quote Hilary McCollum, a writer, playwright and lesbian historian, “As somebody who was very active in the second wave of feminist [in the 1970s], it was full of lesbians. Why on earth would the first wave of feminism have been so much different?”

To the general British public, even a century afterwards, the names of very few suffragettes are remembered. People may know about the Pankhurst family but no other. They may know of the woman who was fatally wounded in a famous incident at the Derby races, but not her name (Emily Wilding Davison, see below).

The Pankhursts were the leading figures in the movement. There was the widowed Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928) and her three daughters Sylvia, Christabel and Adela. In 1910 Mrs. Pankhurst met (the future Dame) Ethel Smyth (1858-1944), who became quite smitten by her. A close friendship developed and it is known that they shared a bed at times (I want to avoid using the phrase “slept with” because of its modern sexual connotation – people often shared beds with people of the same gender with no sexual intent). Even though we are sure Ethel Smyth was lesbian there’s nothing to suggest Mrs. Pankhurst was. However, the bisexual writer Virginia Woolf believed they were lovers, and Hilary McCollum says Mrs. Pankhurst was “likely” to have been a lesbian. I’m yet to be convinced.

As for Mrs. Pankhurst’s daughters there’s more evidence that one of them, (again, the future Dame) Christabel Pankhurst (1880-1958), had relationships with several women. She was one of the most active and militant of suffragettes. She was also very anti-working class, believing that the suffrage movement should not be used to support any other cause effecting working class women. Yet her strongest relationship was with a working class woman called Annie Kenney (1879-1953).

Christabel and Annie were arrested and impriosned after disrupting a political meeting in 1905. They unfurled a banner bearing the words “Votes for Women” and heckled the speakers, who included Winston Churchill. Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst said that “it was the beginning of a campaign the like of which was never known in England”. Christabel was one of the first women to stand for parliament in the 1918 general election. She was defeated by the Labour Party candidate by only 775 votes.

A leading source of information regarding the close or sexual relationships of the suffragettes come from the diaries of Mary Blathwayt (1879-1961). Those diaries, which Mary wrote between 1908 and 1913, was studied by Prof. Martin Pugh of Liverpool John Moores University for a biography of the Pankhurst family. He suggested that Mary Blathwayt was Emmeline Pankhurst’s sexual partner before Annie Kenney. Mary Blathwayt had the support of her parents. They opened their stately home to any suffragette who needed accommodation. Though this soon stopped when some suffragettes assaulted the Prime Minister.

Another lesbian suffragette whose family disapproved of her belief was Mary Sophia Allen (1878-1964). In 1908 she left home after an argument over women’s suffrage and joined the Pankhursts. Mary Sophia was an active protestor and was imprisoned several times. She became more famous as being one of the founders of the women’s police force with her partner Margaret Damer Dawson.

Apart from the Pankhursts the suffragette British people may have known about is the woman killed by throwing herself in front of the king’s horse at the Derbys races in 1913. She was Emily Wilding Davison (1872-1913). Again, Hilary McCollum says that any positive evidence of her sexuality is circumstantial and impossible to prove. Emily had a very close relationship with Mary Leigh (1885-?). Mary Leigh is credited with being the first to use an act of vandalism as a form of protest following the police brutality she witnessed at a suffragette gathering in Parliament Square. She went straight to 10 Downing Street and threw stones through the windows. In 1909 she and Emily Wilding Davison were arrested for disrupting a political meeting.

Hilary McCollum regards Emily’s and Mary’s relationship as almost certainly lesbian. Mary visited Emily at her deathbed. She also kept the suffragette flag which Emily had carried with her on that fateful day in 1913, and brought it with her every year when she visited Emily’s grave.

There are many more suffragettes whom Hilary McCollum and Prof. Martin Pugh list as lesbian, likely lesbian or lesbian-like. They include Lilian Lenton (1891-1972), Olive Bartels (1889-1978), and Grace Roe (1885-1979). Many of these and other suffragettes have been commemorated in recent years with plaques and statues, and several have received honours from the Crown for their contribution to female suffrage, including Christabel Pankhurst who was made a Dame in 1936.

The Last Homophobic Law in the UK?

In this year in which the UK celebrates the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexual acts it also commemorates the 20th anniversary this month of the origin of the last homophobic law passed by the UK parliament, what was to become Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988.

The UK still reels at the mention of Section 28. It created more protest than any other piece of legislation since, perhaps, the 1970s. It galvanised the lgbt community into unified action for the first time since the Sexual Offences Act 1967, and was the catalyst for the creation of several leading lgbt pressure groups and organisations, of which Stonewall is the most well known.

The Local Government Act contained legislation on a variety of matters that were the responsibility of local authorities, such as planning permission, council contracts, and dog licenses. Section 28 stated that no local authority in the UK (except Northern Ireland) was allowed to “intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality”.

There are several theories as to why Section 28 was introduced. Most people just cling on to the idea that Mrs. Thatcher, the Prime Minister, was homophobic. But that doesn’t explain why she was one of the MPs who, in 1967, voted in favour of the Sexual Offences Act (the Labour Prime Minister at the time didn’t). My theory encompasses the vibrant British music scene, youth culture and trade union machinations in the 1980s.

Social attitudes to gay men were changing in the 1960s and 70s. The era of glam rock probably helped to encourage the acceptance among the younger generation that a visible gender-bending and androgynous look was fashionable. Bowie and Bolan set the trend in make-up and flamboyant dress that appealed to many young men who had not come out as gay which allowed them to still express their sexuality visually. Many of the older generation thought this was unmanly but never overtly labelled these youngsters of being gay. After all, there were many straight young men who dressed the same way. But then the AIDS crisis emerged.

In the 1980s glam rock virtually disappeared and was replaced by the New Romantics. Any man now seen wearing make-up in public was denounced as a “puff” and often beaten up because of the misguided belief that AIDS made it okay to victimise gay men. Many gay men were assaulted and murdered during the early years of AIDS and being gay was unacceptable to the majority of society. In 1987 before the Local Government Act became law a national survey revealed that 75% of the UK population considered homosexuality was “always or mostly wrong”.

Mrs. Thatcher and her Conservative government seemed to have the backing of the British public. The Labour Party in opposition cannot be regarded as being any different. In fact the national survey also found that 67% of Labour Party members also said that homosexuality was “always or mostly wrong”, the highest percentage of any political party (the Conservative’s were 61%).

What gave the false impression that the Labour Party were opposed to Section 28 was the after-effects of the events of five years earlier during the Miner’s Strike. Thatcher’s government had ordered the closure of many coal mines. The trade unions and Labour Party fought back with a strike that turned many coal mines into battlefields as violent picket lines developed in many areas. I, myself, was on the receiving end of one such battle. As I was travelling by bus into a local town we passed a coal mine where there was a picket line. A brick was thrown through the bus’s windscreen purely because it was a bus that was used by miners to get to work. Thankfully, no-one was injured though we all felt very intimidated.

Many members of the lgbt community supported the Miner’s Strike and several support groups were formed during its run. Among the most famous is the “Lesbian Support the Miners” group. A recent film about this period called “Pride” distorted the facts for the sake of entertainment yet people believe what they see in the film is true. It isn’t, except for the fact that there was a strike. Very quickly left-wing activists jumped on the bandwagon (as they did during the recent protest against the UK leaving the European Union) in what became a general anti-Thatcher campaign that continued after the strike ended. Other political issues pushed the two sides further left and right, and that, I believe is how Section 28 came into being.

The subject of Section 28, the education system, was also very anti-Thatcher at the time. Unpopular reform had been taking place throughout Thatcher’s first years in power. In 1980 guidance was published for local education authorities to help them formulate their curriculum policies. It included “advice” that no sex education lesson should include homosexuality. The next year the government made a firm decision to ensure all schools followed that “advice”.

In the next couple of years several school libraries began stocking pioneering lgbt education books for young people. The most famous of these was “Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin”, a photo story about a gay couple and their daughter. Many parents were offended and their views were echoed in the still very homophobic British press which itself influenced the views of many other people. The lgbt community felt they were being accused of being a threat to what was generally called “family values”.

By 1987 the Thatcher government began to worry that they might not be re-elected in that year’s General Election. During the election campaign they took advantage of the feeling of the majority of the electorate’s anti-gay attitudes and used scare tactics by saying that teaching about homosexuality could turn children gay. With the public still very much opposed to a homosexual lifestyle Mrs. Thatcher was able to win her second term in office.

By December 1987 Conservative MPs Jill Knight and David Wilshire succeeded in introducing Section 28 into the Local Government Bill that was going through parliament. The efforts of Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes, Labour peer Lord McIntosh of Haringey and the Bishop of Liverpool to introduce a compromise amendment to replace Section 28 was defeated in both Houses of Parliament. There was now nothing to stop Section 28 from becoming law on 24th May 1988.

It was May 1997 before the Conservatives were voted out of office and a new Labour government took over with the express aim of repealing Section 28. That moment took time, due to the large, lingering, pro-Section 28 faction in parliament and the public. Eventually, in 2003 a new Local Government Act which would repeal the original one was introduced and approved by parliament. It became law on 18th September 2003 and Section 28 was at last consigned to the dustbin of history.

Out of Her Tree : An American Legal Eagle

This week sees the start of the judicial year. In the UK it was celebrated with a service at Westminster Abbey attended by many judges and lawyers. This year is special because, for the first time in history, England has a woman as the most senior judge in the country, Lady Hale. The mark the start of the judicial year I’ve looked into the ancestry of the most senior out lgbt female lawyer in the USA, Eleanor D. Acheson.

Eleanor D. Acheson was an Assistant Attorney General of the USA. The Attorney General is the head of the Department of Justice and the chief lawyer of the US government. Within the department the Attorney General has a number of smaller departments which are all headed by an Assistant. Eleanor Acheson was appointed Assistant Attorney General of the Office of Policy Development by President Clinton in 1993 and served until 2001.

Both sides of Eleanor’s family contain lawyers and legislators. We’ll start with her paternal line. Her father is David Acheson (b.1921) who was a lawyer and US Attorney for the District of Columbia in the 1960s. His father was the more famous Dean Acheson (1893-1971) who was US Secretary of State under President Harry S. Truman. The legal profession is not known in the Acheson family further back. Dean Acheson was the son of an Episcopalian Bishop of Connecticut, but the bishop’s wife Alice had legal roots. Alice’s father was Louis Crandall Stanley (1855-1945) who was a lawyer with the Grand Trunk Railway System based in Detroit for 40 years.

Mrs. Alice Stanley Acheson (Dean’s wife) herself exhibited another family talent, painting. This she inherited from both parents. Her own mother Jane was another accomplished artist who exhibited at several prestigious galleries. Alice’s grandfather, John Mix Stanley (1814-1872) is one of America’s leading painters of Native American life in the “Wild West”.

There’s conflicting evidence on the ancestry of the Stanley family. There are several families John Mix Stanley could be descended from. All of them are of pioneer colonial stock. What is definite, however, is that DNA analysis of descendants of the aristocratic, royal-descended, Stanley family in the UK and descendants of the pioneering American Stanleys do not show that they share the same roots.

The situation regarding the ancestry of Eleanor’s great-grandmother, the above-mentioned Jane (née Mahon) (1863-1940) is different. Her surname clearly suggests Irish roots, and indeed that is where her ancestors came from. We can trace Jane’s mother’s family, the Le Stranges, through County Roscommon to Norfolk in England, where there is a direct bloodline to King Edward III. Also through the Le Strange family Eleanor Acheson is descended from Adam Loftus (1533-1605), Archbishop of Dublin, and ancestor she shares with Oscar Wilde.

Moving on to Eleanor’s maternal ancestry we see a lot of politicians and statesmen. Since American independence Eleanor’s ancestors have served in an almost unbroken line as Governors, Senators and Congressmen. Many of Eleanor’s cousins through this side of her family still hold political office.

From the pre-independence era one ancestor of note was Hon. David Owen (1732-1812), Chief Justice and Lt-Governor of Rhode Island. The US National Archives contains a letter written by Owen to George Washington confirming that Rhode Island has ratified the US Constitution and Washington’s reply.

Eleanor Acheson’s colonial settler ancestry connects to my own life. Eleanor’s maternal great-grandmother, Mrs. Anne Bailey James Smith (1866-1933) was descended from the Ripley family. Joshua Ripley (1658-1739) married Hannah Bradford (1662-1738), the grand-daughter of the Mayflower Pilgrim William Bradford, Governor of Plymouth Colony. A large number of Mayflower passengers came from the area where I was born and raised.

There were two main groups of Puritan worshippers who became Pilgrims – the Scrooby group and the Gainsborough group. The Gainsborough group worshipped in secret at the home of a local aristocrat. This building now known as Gainsborough Old Hall and I worked there for ten years. The Old Hall is currently preparing for the big 400th anniversary of the Mayflower sailing in 1620. A leading preacher of the Gainsborough group was Rev. John Robinson. He helped to organise the Mayflower voyage but was unable to join it, and he died in Holland in 1625. John Robinson’s son Isaac is a direct ancestor of Eleanor Acheson. Gainsborough commemorates this gentleman in the town’s United Reformed Church (pictured below) which is known as the John Robinson Church, another building I know well.