'From partition to decriminalisation': homosexuality in Northern Ireland, 1921-1982

Abstract

This thesis examines the legal, social, and cultural regulation of homosexuality in Northern Ireland from the partition of Ireland in 1921, to the 1982 decriminalisation of male same-sex relations in the province. Using official records, activist archives and contemporary cultural sources, this study elucidates and critically evaluates the sustained exceptionalism of Northern Ireland’s sexuality laws relative to the rest of the United Kingdom and Ireland. What emerges is a picture of the ‘half in half out’ status of Northern Ireland’s position within the United Kingdom, alongside a strongly held and distinctive culture of moral superiority that has continued to frustrate the equality of Ulster’s sexual minorities long into the twenty-first century.