ABSTRACT
The Montagu trials are widely regarded as pivotal to the decriminalisation in England, of consensual same-sex sexual activities between adult males in private. The Montagu has put into the context of a new discourse, imported from the United States, casting homosexual statesmen and governmental employees as either inclined to disloyalty or as security risks. The case of Ian Harvey, a junior minister who, only four years after the Montagu trials, resigned his post after being caught red-handed while engaged in sexual conduct with a guardsman in London. First, it is evidence of widespread societal assumptions that homosexuality disqualifies from public office. Secondly, it is indicative of the power of these assumptions, to which Harvey, epitomising modernity’s docile citizen engaged in self-management and self-discipline, responded by tendering his resignation from public office. The homosexual couple could limit their sexual activities to the private sphere but flaunt their homosexuality in public in a way that was offensive or demoralising.
