LSE Library’s spring exhibition is Glad to be gay: the struggle for legal equality. It marks the pivotal piece of legislation, the Sexual Offences Act, and uses unique material from the Hall-Carpenter Archives and the Women’s Library collection to consider the difficult legal struggle by gay people to achieve equality over the last half century.  

This exhibition follows the LGBT story from the ‘hidden’ years when homosexuality was a taboo subject, to the passing of the Sexual Offences Act in 1967 highlighting key items from this campaign, to the emergence of gay liberation in the 1970s when the first Gay Liberation Front meeting was held at LSE in October 1970.  The exhibition looks at the campaigns to lower the age of consent for gay men to 16 (only achieved in 2001), to repealing section 28 which prevented ‘promotion’ of homosexuality in schools (only achieved in 2003) and for legal recognition of trans people and civil partnerships in 2004.  It is assumed that this is a male story but women feature throughout even in the campaign to decriminalise homosexuality.

There are a number of events planned around the theme of the exhibition. More details can be found here  http://www.lse.ac.uk/Events/Search-Events?collection=lse-events-xml&query=%22lse%20library%22&f.Time%20period%7Cd=d=2017&sort=adate

The exhibition is open Mon-Fri 9am-7pm and Sat-Sun 11am-6pm in the Library Gallery at the entrance to the Library. More information can be found here http://www.lse.ac.uk/library/exhibitions/home.aspx