I had a conversation with a former politician recently who said when talking about Civil Partnerships: "the tragedy in all of this is the bill that made homosexuality illegal during Queen Victoria’s time was passed by just one vote"
I have read up on the 1828 and 1861 Offences Against the Person act and the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 and cannot seem to find a way to work out how many yeas or noes there were. Does anyone know if this fact is true?
Your politician saying
the bill that made homosexuality illegal during Queen Victoria’s time
seems to be implying that homosexuality was not illegal in Britain until some law was passed during Victoria's reign. This is not correct. She reigned from 20Jun1837 to 22Jan1901. During her reign, the 1861 change reduced the punishment from execution to life imprisonment, and the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 reduced it further to three years imprisonment. Which of these changes does s/he consider a tragedy?