Speaking Out : Writings on Sex, Law, Politics and Society, 1954-95

In 1997 it will be thirty years since the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 made sex between two men aged over 21 in private no longer a crime. It also marks the seventieth birthday of Antony Grey, who was one of the leading campaigners for homosexual law reform in the 1960s. The articles and talks reprinted in this book (together with others published here for the first time) cover the whole span of Grey's campaigning life, ranging from his first, anonymous, letter to the press about homosexuality written in 1954 to his thoughts on present-day sexual politics in the 1990s. Topics covered include law reform, religious and social attitudes to homosexuality, sex education, young people and sex, and the gay movement. The book concludes with a newly-written essay reviewing the progress achieved since the middle of this century and assessing what remains to be done as we enter the coming one. Never afraid of controversy, Antony Grey provides a unique summary of a pioneering campaigner's forty years of gay activism. For over 40 years, Antony Grey has been a leading campaigner, not only for gay rights, but also for better laws about, and more sensible attitudes towards, sex generally. As Secretary of the Homosexual Law Reform Society during the 1960s, Director of the Albany Trust in the 1970s, and later as a freelance writer and counsellor, he has worked publicly and consistently for individual sexual emancipation and collective common sense. Discussion includes law and morality, pornogaphy and free speech, the Church and homosexuality, young people and definitions of consent, sex education, gay politics from the homophile movement to queer, and outing.