[vertex-four]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Wildeblood

Have one who was prosecuted simply for gay sex. According to the organisation Stonewall, there's thousands more - although obviously, there's not going to be a pre-made list somewhere, you'd have to go over court records.

[barking]

OK, thanks. I'd suggest that this was quite an unusual example. It seems that his lover must have made a complaint to the police.

[vertex-four]

"In the early 1950s, the police actively enforced laws prohibiting sexual behaviour between men. By the end of 1954, there were 1,069 gay men in prison in England and Wales, with an average age of 37."

"1952 - Sir John Nott-Bower, commissioner of Scotland Yard began to weed out homosexuals from the British Government at the same time as McCarthy was conducting a federal homosexual witch hunt in the US. During the early 50's as many as 1,000 men were locked up in Britain's prisons every year amid a widespread police clampdown on homosexual offences. Undercover officers acting as 'agents provocateurs' would pose as gay men soliciting in public places. The prevailing mood was one of barely concealed paranoia."

It's a well-documented thing. Claiming that the targeted harassment and prosecution of the LGBT community never happened is a very dangerous form of denial. You can find anecdotal stories all over the Internet, and in modern media including mass market films. This is the entire reason we have gay pride. I'll see if I can find a book on the subject.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-20522465 - "It was something that gays had to go through in those days. If you were gay you were in trouble with the police."

[DanBC]

You seem to be saying that men were not prosecuted merely for being gay men or just for having consensual sex with other adult men in private, and that the men must have been having sex with children[1] or in public.

Thousands of men each year were arrested and locked up. Police were acting as agent provocateurs (thus entrapping these men) so obviously many of those prosecutions involve sexual activity in public -- where that's defined as "being approached by a police officer acting as a gay man and having a conversation with that officer".

You appear to be applying stricter standards of conduct to gay men than to heterosexual people. We can see very many convictions of gay men for gross indecency in public. But this definition of "public" included (until the year 2000) anywhere where a third person may be present - two adult men in one of their homes would have been having sex in public if one of those homes was rented lodgings; this was an additional restriction on gay sex that heterosexual couples didn't face. This extra restriction was included in law in 1968, and overturned in 2000.

Finally, around younger people: laws for heterosexuals had the age of female consent at 16 for heterosexual sex. But for gay men the age of consent was 21. Thus a 25 year old man having sex with a 16 year old woman was fine, but a 25 year old man having sex with a 20 year old man would be arrested and imprisoned.

[1] children need to be protected from sexual predators. Suggesting that gay men are more likely to be sexual predators is not supported by any evidence and is a homophobic slur that needs to end.

[barking]

I don't know how you can say from anything I wrote that I am applying a stricter standard of conduct to gay men rather than heterosexual couples. I don't understand how the downvoting/banning system works but I think it might be best if I shut up now.