From Crime to Community?

Abstract

In Scotland during the period prior to the limited legalisation of adult, consensual homosexual acts in 1980 there was a general absence of positive, accrediting discourses of homosexuality within the public sphere. As has been detailed this led to periods of intense personal conflict for many gay and bisexual men (GBM) in Scotland. Growing up within a society where same-sex intimacies were decried by legal, religious and educational institutions might have had a powerful effect on the development of sexual identities in adulthood. If the majority of non-heterosexual Scots were exposed to similar discourses regarding homosexuality during adolescence and then during adulthood, it could be argued that they might develop similar attitudes towards their sexuality. One of the first writers to engage with ‘generational theory’ was Karl Mannheim whose essay ‘The Problem of Generations’ was published in 1923.¹ Mannheim located generation within historical and social contexts and identified it as ‘a key aspect of the existential determination of knowledge’.² Mannheim was attempting to explain why members of similar generational cohorts quite often had similar weltanschauung³ (viewpoints).