Gay Life, Straight Work by Donald West

Author:Donald West
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography
ISBN: 9781904585350
Publisher: Paradise Press UK
Published: 2012-11-01T16:00:00+00:00

SEXOLOGICAL ADVENTURES

Ventures into Courts and Prisons

Academics are given some liberty to pursue activities beyond their strict employment obligations. This enabled me to accept, now and then, invitations to act as a psychiatric expert. Having published the book Homosexuality, which had three subsequent editions and a final version Homosexuality Re-visited in 1977, followed by Sexual Crimes and Confrontations in 1987, most of the requests concerned sexual issues. One of the more interesting commissions was to provide expert testimony at a 1978 trial instigated by David Norris, at the time a lecturer at Trinity College, Dublin. He was pleading that, being a homosexual, his constitutional rights had been abused by the criminalisation of buggery and gross indecency adopted from British laws enacted before Irish Independence. He maintained that the state of the law, obliging him to hide his sexual orientation for fear of dismissal from his employment, had caused him great stress. This was a brave attempt by a public figure, later to become a senator, to try to overturn discriminatory laws.

The questions put to me at the High Court hearing about the effects of the 1967 decriminalisation in England did not seem very pertinent to the constitutional technicalities at issue. I was not in a position to quote any systematic research, but was able to say that there was no known evidence that decriminalisation had had an appreciable effect on the prevalence of male homosexuality, despite the fears of “opening the floodgates” that had been expressed in parliamentary debate. It was known from my writings that I was a supporter of decriminalisation, but I explained that I had tried to weigh the known evidence about the effects of homosexuality objectively. The judge intervened to say he was doing the same.

In the event the Norris plea was dismissed and that judgement was upheld on appeal to the Supreme Court in 1983. Undeterred, Norris referred the issue of breach of his rights of privacy to the European Court of Human Rights. The Court confirmed that the law penalising consensual homosexual acts in private amounted to a breach, and dismissed the Irish government’s pleas of necessity for the preservation of morals. The Irish government finally acknowledged the decision and reformed the law. I cannot claim to have made much contribution to the process, but at least I supported it and possess a fine Waterford jug given in return for my trouble.

It was usually defence lawyers who asked me for an opinion. After seeing an offender in prison, my opinion was not necessarily what they were hoping for, in which case, as in the following example, I would not be asked to testify. The offender was a persistent confidence trickster and imposter whose grandiose manner and plausible misrepresentations had deceived his numerous, mostly elderly, victims over many years. Previous imprisonments had done nothing to deter him. Here are some quotations from my report.

“He insisted that he had been told several times that he needed treatment, but he had never received any help … He denies all incidents of wrongdoing save for those established by legal process.

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