aug 15, 1921 - Criminal Law Amendment Act

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England remembers lesbians exist!

The Criminal Law Amendment Act was amended in the House of Commons to include a section to make sexual "acts of gross indecency" between women illegal, and was passed in the House of Commons. However the section was defeated in the House of Lords, in part due to the belief that criminalizing lesbian sex would only increase the frequency of such acts.

"Let me point out to your Lordships that in passing a clause of this sort you are going to do a great deal more harm than good. You are going enormously to increase the chance of blackmail without in the slightest degree decreasing the amount of this vice. I think your Lordships will bear me out when I say—and it requires some moral courage to discuss a subject of this sort—that the domestic habits of men and of women are entirely different. Women are by nature much more gregarious. For instance, if twenty women were going to live in a house with twenty bedrooms, I do not believe that all the twenty bedrooms would be occupied, either for reasons of fear or nervousness, and the desire for mutual protection. On the other hand, I know that when men take shooting boxes the first inquiry is that each shall have a room to himself if possible; and a comfortable room, too."

It also raised the age of consent from 13 years of age to 16 years of age and strengthened existing legislation against prostitution and homosexuality.

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