I was watching a Panel of people discussing the history of injustices and discrimination that our indigenous population had endured and felt more than a twinge of anger when a White women said "of course the white population couldn't identify what it's like to experience that sort of injustice.
Well I'd like all heterosexual and homosexual men and women to watch this account of the shameful and cruel injustices handed out to homosexuals in Britain and the same happened in New South Wales until 1984 when homosexual acts between consenting males over 18 was decriminalised.
This excellent film deals with Britain's Gay rights history and the penalties and aversion treatments dealt out in Prisons where men like me were humiliated in Court and were prey to blackmail and bashing's that's were totally ignored by Police.
It's the true story of Peter Wildeblood played by Daniel Mays in one of the best roles I've seen him play .
Peter Wildeblood was jailed in 1952 for having an affair with Eddie McNally a soldier who is given a plea bargain to testify against him so the Court can send Peter and his friends to Prison.
On release Wildeblood hears of Lord Wolfendon who is interviewing men like Peter for his report with a view to decriminalisation of consenting homosexual acts with men over 21 years old .
The report was published in the United Kingdom on 4 September 1957 after a succession of well-known men, including Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, Michael Pitt-Rivers, and Peter Wildeblood, were convicted of homosexual offences.
It took another 10 years to implement The recommendations eventually led to the passage of the Sexual Offences Act 1967, applying to England and Wales only, that replaced the previous law on sodomy contained in the Offences against the Person
One aspect of Peter Wildeblood's testimony to Wolfendon that upset me was his categorising of Straight acting Gay men and monogamous relationships and his total sell out of his more flamboyant brothers who slept around .
Those men suffered more in my view they were bashed some killed many suicided.
The film includes some of the actual men who were alive at the time now in their 80's and 90's facing the camera and telling their experiences and impressions.
This movie is well acted directed and written and deserves to be seen.
It reminded me of the terrible injustice endured by famous mathematician Allan Turing who now is acknowledged as helping Britain to victory in World War 2.
Turing was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts; the Labouchere Amendment of 1885 had mandated that "gross indecency" was a criminal offence in the UK. He accepted chemical castration treatment, with DES, as an alternative to prison. Turing died in 1954, 16 days before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning. An inquest determined his death as a suicide, but it has been noted that the known evidence is also consistent with accidental poisoning.
In 2009, following an Internet campaign, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for "the appalling way he was treated". Queen Elizabeth II granted Turing a posthumous pardon in 2013. The "Alan Turing law" is now an informal term for a 2017 law in the United Kingdom that retroactively pardoned men cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts.
I hope that person who said no white person could know what it's like to experience the injustice and discrimination that Black People have endured watches "Against the Law" our lives are much improved and we have Equality today but it was a hard fought and painful journey.
I hope we are at last entering the same result and an era when our Indigenous brothers and sisters and that the violence injustice and deaths in custody in Australia and the U.S.A.comes to an end.
