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[[File:David Maxwell Fyfe.jpg|thumb|Lord Kilmuir in his robes as Lord Chancellor]]'''David Maxwell Fyfe, 1st Viscount Kilmuir''' (later '''Earl of Kilmuir''') (1900&ndash;1967) was a British lawyer (born in [[Edinburgh]]) and [[Conservative]] politician. He was an opponent of gay rights, and led the opposition in the House of Lords to the decriminalisation of homosexuality, despite having set up the Wolfenden Committee which recommended decriminalisation.

==Post-war Europe==
After World War II he took part in the prosecution of Nazi war criminals at Nuremburg, and is remembered for the cross-examination of Hermann Göring.

In 1950, as a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, he played a leading role in drafting the [[European Convention on Human Rights]], which has had consequences that he would not have liked.<ref>http://www.glapn.org/sodomylaws/world/united_kingdom/uknews24.htm Graham Stewart, "The Accidental Legacy of a Homophobic Humanitarian", from ''The Times'', 2 October 2000.</ref>

==Wolfenden Committee==
In 1954, as Home Secretary, he appointed the [[Wolfenden Committee]] to look into the questions of homosexuality and prostitution. It has been speculated that he expected the Committee to come out against relaxing the law on gay sex.<ref>http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/jun/24/communities.gayrights Geraldine Bedell, "Coming out of the dark ages", ''The Observer'', 24 June 2007.</ref> Later that year he was raised to the House of Lords and became Lord Chancellor. When the Wolfenden Report was published in 1957 he was strongly opposed to its recommendations, saying to [[Robert Boothby]] "I am not going down in history as the man who made [[sodomy]] legal."<ref>David Kynaston, ''Family Britain 1951-1957'' Bloomsbury 2009 p370 ISBN 978-1-4088-0083-6</ref> 

He died in 1967, the year in which the Wolfenden recommendations were partially implemented.

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[[Category:Opponents of LGBT rights]]
[[Category:Conservative politicians]]
[[Category:Peers]]
[[Category:Lawyers]]
[[Category:Knights and Dames]]