Victorians
As I write now, there seems to be a good chance that Mr. Humphry Berkeley's Bill to'implement the Wigfendeb PropoSils on-the law relating to homosexuality will succeed in getting through the Commons—although quite possibly only by a small majority. If so, the credit should pro- bably be divided more or less equally between Humphry Berkeley himself. Mr. Roy Jenkins for the notably encouraging speech I believe he intends to make, and the two Tory MPs who produced that monstrous and inept circular against the Bill.
But even after this reform, as Giles Playfair points out in a letter on page 164, there will still remain the disparity of one law for homosexual behaviour involving a sixteen- to twenty-year- old youth and another law for homosexual be- haviour involving a girl in the same age-group. This owes its origin to the notorious Labouchere amendment of 1885, when on to a Bill to stop the abduction of girls to work in brothels was somewhat irrelevantly tacked an amendment to outlaw 'gross indecency' between consenting males. But why just males? No one seems to know. My favourite explanation is the probably apocryphal one that Labby originally intended both sexes to be brought within the law. But Queen Victoria struck the ladies out. The Dear Queen's common sense told her that Lesbianism was a physical impossibility.
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