(Transcript of presentation by Professor Pride / Powered by Rainbow -
Link below the text)
Being gay was made illegal in the United Kingdom in the 16th century with anti-sodomy laws: The Buggery Act.
Gays were arrested just for attempting to commit actions, or for actually committing sexual, or romantic, actions with same sex partners.
The punishment for attempting to commit a sexual act with the same sex partner was years in prison.
The punishment if the police could prove you had committed a sexual act with a same sex partner was execution.
But still, historians note that plenty of gay men still had relationships, with certain public parks being great places to meet other gay individuals for these actions.
But suddenly, in the 18th century, a new middle class model of domestic heterosexuality emerged.
So British people began massively looking down on homosexual members in their society, and because of this, blackmail started to emerge.
Soldiers in the Royal Army would proposition gay men to have sex, and then threatened to report and arrest the gay men for sodomy if they didn't pay the soldier tons of money in exchange for their silence.
Many times, soldiers would simply pick a man off the street, simply walking by, and threaten to arrest them for sodomy if they didn't pay the officer in return.
The worst part was, these soldiers didn't just blackmail members of the LGBTQ community once.
They kept going back, time and time again, to the same people demanding more money in exchange for not arresting them.
Some gay men continued to pay the outrageous blackmail cost, but others rebelled and started reporting the officers to their magistrate to get them in trouble.
These stories made headlines in local press, and after a long time of public pressure, magistrates began to treat sexual blackmail as a form of robbery.
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