Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people in Northern Ireland enjoy most of the same rights as non-LGBTQ people. However, the advancement of LGBTQ rights has traditionally been slower than the rest of the United Kingdom, with the region having lagged behind England, Scotland, and Wales. Northern Ireland was the last part of the United Kingdom where same-sex sexual activity was decriminalised, the last to liberalise blood donation policy for men who have sex with men and, after intervention by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the last to allow same-sex marriage. Compared to the neighbouring Republic of Ireland, all major LGBT rights milestones had been reached earlier in Northern Ireland, with the exception of same-sex marriage. Homosexuality was decriminalised in Northern Ireland a decade earlier and civil partnerships were introduced six years earlier.
Most liberalisation of LGBT rights in Northern Ireland has been achieved under direct rule by the Government of the United Kingdom, British parliamentary legislation or court decisions rather than through laws passed by the Northern Ireland Assembly. This is due to the veto power exercised by opponents of LGBT rights, such as the Democratic Unionist Party, under Northern Ireland's power-sharing system. In 2017, ILGA rated Northern Ireland last place in the United Kingdom for LGBT people, with 74% equality of rights compared to 86% LGBT equality in the United Kingdom overall and 92% equality in Scotland, but above the Republic of Ireland which was ranked 52% the same year.
Same-sex sexual activity has been legal since 1982 and the age of consent was equalised for all forms of sexual activity in 2001. Civil partnerships have been available for same-sex couples since 2005. Same-sex couples were granted full adoption rights in 2013. Same-sex marriage was introduced in 2020. Since 1 September 2020, religious and church same-sex marriage and weddings have been permitted in Northern Ireland.
Laws regarding same-sex sexual activity
Historical persecution Northern Ireland's homosexuality laws have historically reflected the English position, given the history of English dominance over Ireland since the 12th century, culminating in official union under the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801. Following the partition of Ireland, Northern Ireland remained a part of the United Kingdom, with the remainder of Ireland forming the independent Republic of Ireland.
Homosexuality was a matter for the ecclesiastical law of the Roman Catholic Church until the reign of King Henry VIII. During his rule, the act of buggery was criminalised by the Buggery Act 1533 as part of increasing the State's role in public life at the expense of the Catholic Church. This prohibited anal sex with "mankind or beast" anywhere in England and Wales on pain of death, but did not apply to Ireland until 1634. The death penalty was retained until 1861. In 1885, the Labouchere Amendment introduced the offence of gross indecency in the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, which applied throughout England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. This broadened the scope of the criminal law to outlaw any form of male homosexual activity. By contrast, adult lesbianism was never criminalised.
The Victorian era laws criminalising male homosexual acts throughout Great Britain and Ireland, the Offences against the Person Act 1861 and Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, remained in effect well into the 20th century.
Campaigns for and against change In 1967, the Parliament of the United Kingdom voted to pass the Sexual Offences Act 1967 for the limited decriminalisation of homosexual acts, but this applied only to England and Wales. Same-sex sexual activities were legalised in Scotland on the same basis as in the 1967 Act, by section 80 of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1980, which came into force on 1 February 1981.
The British Government's failure to extend the 1967 reforms to Northern Ireland led to the establishment of organisations such as the Campaign for Homosexual Equality and the Gay Liberation Front. During the 1970s, Northern Ireland was under direct rule from Westminster, so the organisations tried to bypass the Northern Ireland parties which were hostile to their cause and petition the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland directly. Initially, this appeared fruitful, with the Secretary referring homosexual reform to the Standing Advisory Committee on Human Rights for Northern Ireland. In 1976, the Committee recommended extending the 1967 reforms to Northern Ireland but warned that public support for the change in Northern Ireland was limited. In 1978, the British Government published a draft Order in Council to decriminalise homosexual conduct in Northern Ireland between men over 21 years of age, in line with the 1967 reforms in England and Wales. However, it failed without the support of any of the 12 Northern Ireland politicians in the Westminster Parliament and the open opposition expressed by the Democratic Unionist Party representatives.
Gay men continued to face harassment from the Royal Ulster Constabulary police force throughout the 1970s and 1980s, with the Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association (NIGRA) recording instances of harassment and continuing to lobby for decriminalisation. NIGRA members also faced arrests, forced medical examinations and house raids, ostensibly for other issues such as drug searches, but also had correspondence regarding the decriminalisation campaign confiscated by police.
NIGRA were opposed by a vociferous Save Ulster from Sodomy campaign led by Ian Paisley, the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster and the Democratic Unionist Party, both of which were established by him. Initially, Paisley's campaign succeeded, with the British Government announcing in 1979 that it would not proceed with changes to Northern Ireland's anti-homosexuality laws. Although the Government promised that the laws would not be enforced against gay men, police harassment and arrests continued on the pretence of other misdemeanours. The arrest of one activist, NIGRA secretary Jeffrey Dudgeon, proved instrumental in the ultimate success of the decriminalisation campaign.
European Court of Human Rights ruling
Jeffrey Dudgeon was a shipping clerk in Belfast, who was a gay activist and secretary of NIGRA. On 21 January 1976, he was arrested by the Royal Ulster Constabulary drugs squad after they found marijuana and personal correspondence describing homosexual acts performed by him. He was interrogated for over four hours about his sex life and made to sign a statement about his sexual activities. The police forwarded the material to prosecutors to have Dudgeon charged with gross indecency, but the Director of Prosecutions decided not to proceed on the grounds that it would not be in the public interest. Dudgeon was informed in February 1977 of the decision and his private papers, which had been annotated by the police, were returned to him.
Both NIGRA and the Irish gay rights groups financially supported Dudgeon filing a complaint with the European Commission of Human Rights against Northern Ireland's anti-homosexuality laws in 1975. Dudgeon alleged that the laws were invalid on two grounds. Firstly, he claimed that the laws and resulting police investigation interfered with his right to respect for private life in violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Secondly, Dudgeon alleged that he had suffered discrimination on the grounds of sex, sexuality and residence in accordance with Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Despite having previously rejected similar earlier complaints as "manifestly inadmissible", the Commission declared the complaint to be admissible on 3 March 1978. On 13 March 1980, the Commission issued a report stating that "the legal prohibition of [homosexual] acts between male persons over 21 years of age breached the applicant's right to respect for his private life". It referred the case to the European Court of Human Rights for judgment on 18 July 1980.
On 22 October 1981, the European Court of Human Rights ruled by a 15–4 majority in Dudgeon v United Kingdom that no member nation had the right to impose a total ban on homosexual activity. More specifically, the Court held that the criminalisation of male homosexual acts for men above 21 years old in the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights by interfering with his right to private life, regardless of whether he was actually charged or prosecuted under the law. The case determined that countries no longer had a margin of appreciation to regulate adult private consensual homosexual acts in the name of morality, recognising that homosexuality was an immutable characteristic of human nature.
Legalisation by Westminster (1982 and 2003)
The 1981 ECHR decision led the United Kingdom Parliament to extend the 1967 decriminalisation of male homosexual acts to Northern Ireland the following year with an Order in Council, the Homosexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 1982, which came into force on 8 December 1982.
Anti-LGBT provisions of the criminal law were removed completely throughout Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom in the Sexual Offences Act 2003, with section 9 abolishing the discriminatory offences of buggery and gross indecency. Private gay sex between more than two people was legalised, but cottaging remains illegal.
Age of consent equalisation (2000) The homosexual age of consent fixed by the Homosexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 1982 was 21 years, higher than the heterosexual age of consent in Northern Ireland of 17. The ages of consent for homosexual and heterosexual acts in Northern Ireland were eventually equalised at 17 by the Parliament of the United Kingdom with the passage of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2000, which went into effect in 2001.
To bring Northern Ireland in line with the rest of the United Kingdom, the British Parliament passed the Sexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 2008,Statutory Instrument 2008/1769 reducing the age of consent to 16, despite the opposition of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Pardons for historical convictions (2017) In November 2016, the Northern Ireland Assembly passed a Legislative Consent Motion to extend the operation of United Kingdom's Policing and Crime Act 2017, including its Alan Turing Law, to Northern Ireland. That law enables anyone convicted of anti-homosexuality offences to obtain a pardon. The only opponent in the Assembly was Traditional Unionist Voice's Jim Allister, whose private member's motion to remove historical pardons from the Legislative Consent Motion failed on a voice vote.
In June 2019, it was revealed that only two men had sought pardons for historic gay sex offences in Northern Ireland, and that they both failed to have their convictions overturned.
Prison gay sex loophole lawsuits In July 2021, lawsuits were launched in the UK - due to all prisons in Northern Ireland still legally banning gay sex since 1982, as within a loophole exemption.
Recognition of same-sex relationships Civil partnerships have been available for same-sex couples since 2005. Same-sex marriage was voted on five times by the Northern Ireland Assembly, and although it was supported by a slim majority on the fifth attempt, it was vetoed by the Democratic Unionist Party using the petition of concern. The division over the issue eventually led the UK Parliament to directly legalise same-sex marriage in the region, which came into effect on 13 January 2020. Until that date, same-sex marriages performed outside Northern Ireland were recognised as civil partnerships within its borders. A 2018 Sky Data survey found that 76% of Northern Irish people supported the introduction of same-sex marriage.