'The Good Fellow': Negotiation, Remembrance, and Recollection - Homosexuality in the British Armed Forces, 1939–1945
Title 'The Good Fellow': Negotiation, Remembrance, and Recollection - Homosexuality in the British Armed Forces, 1939–1945
Authors Vickers, Emma
Editor Herzog, Dagmar
Book Title Brutality and Desire: War and Sexuality in Europe's Twentieth Century
City Basingstoke, UK
This chapter explores the sexual politics toward gay soldiers in the British army during World War II. The year 1967 marked a watershed in English law. Twenty-two years after the end of the Second World War, homosexuality was decriminalised in England and Wales by the Sexual Offences Act. Prior to the introduction of the new legislation, the hero of Alamein, Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, urged the House of Lords not to sanction the legislation. Montgomery could not slow the momentum of the civil law nor the rumours that he himself was a homosexual, his concerns were shared by policy-makers within the Armed Forces. Indeed military chiefs and the Wolfenden committee agreed that decriminalising homosexual acts in the forces would affect discipline and threaten the safety of lowranking servicemen. As a result, homosexual acts remained punishable by military law even though they were made legal for civilian men over the age of 21.
Anthology/Edited Volume
Military & Men/Masculinity
War, Politics/Citizenship & Gender
War & Sexuality
War & Men
War, Combat & Gender
War Memories & Gender
Postwar Societies & Men/Masculinity
Second World War (1939-45)
Britain/British Empire
28. Post-1945 Western Military Masculinities, Female Soldiers and Gay and Lesbian Rights
https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9780230542532