Isle of Man
From LGBT Archive
Revision as of 16:53, 1 October 2012 by Ross Burgess (Talk | contribs)
The Isle of Man (Manx: Ellan Vannin) is an island in the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Ireland. It is self-governing, with its own parliament (Tynwald) and is not part of the United Kingdom or the European Union; as a crown dependency it has the King or Queen of the UK as its head of state, and the UK is responsible for its defence and foreign relations.
LGBT History
Sexual relations between men were illegal until 1992. As late as 1991, "twelve men were found guilty of buggery and gross indecency in a group trial. Five of the men received suspended sentences of one-year prison terms and the remining seven were sentenced to two hundred hours of community service"[1]
The Sexual Offences Act 1992 decriminalised gay sex between men with an age of consent of 21, but also introduced the equivalent of Section 28. The age was lowered to 18 by the Criminal Justice Act 2001, and to 16 by the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2006. All of these changes were several years later than in the UK.
The Civil Partnership Act 2011 introduced civil partnerships in a form very similar to the UK.
References
- ↑ Mark Thompson, Long Road to Freedom: the Advocate History of the Gay and Lesbian Movement, St Martin's Press, New York, 1994, ISBN 0-312-09536-8, page 377
