Save PDF (1.9 MB) - CORE

property rights (Watney, 1994). More explicit forms of recognition came in the early
1990s in the shape of commitment registers for same-sex couples, created by local
authorities in London, Brighton and elsewhere. Although entirely lacking legal
status, these registers foreshadowed a number of the functions of civil partnerships
in terms of providing couples with opportunities for affirmation, ceremony and
celebration (Cook, 2007).
In the UK, while there was little prospect of progress on lesbian and gay rights during
the Conservative era that began in 1979, the Labour landslide of 1997 heralded a
long series of LGBT rights reforms that began almost immediately after the election,
as foreign same-sex partners of UK citizens were granted limited immigration rights
for the first time. Section 28 of the Local Government Act, 1988 was repealed in
Scotland in 2000 and in the rest of the UK in 2003. Although the age of consent for
male homosexual acts had been lowered to eighteen in 1994, equality was not
achieved until 2001 in England, Wales and Scotland, and 2009 in Northern Ireland
(Stonewall, 2009). The Adoption & Children’s Act 2002, enabled same-sex couples to
adopt jointly and anti-discrimination legislation followed; covering employment
rights in 2003, and extended to the provision of goods and services in 2007. The
Sexual Offences Act, 2003 repealed offences of buggery and gross indecency and,
more recently, the Protections of Freedoms Act 2012, allows for historical
convictions for consensual gay sex predating 1967 to be deleted (Home Office,
2012).
Despite this unprecedented progress towards legal equality for the LGBT
communities in the UK, hostility towards homosexuality appears to remain an
entrenched aspect of social life. Data from the 2008 British Social Attitudes Survey
show that only 39% of respondents agreed that sexual relations between two adults
of the same sex were not wrong at all, against 36% of respondents agreeing that
sexual relations between adults of the same sex were always or mostly wrong
(National Centre for Social Research 2010). Empirical studies show that LGBT people
continue to face hostility and abuse, even if this is sometimes normalised as
‘something you just have to ignore’ (Browne, Bakshi and Lim, 2011). Enduring social
10