In 1983, Stephen Close was arrested, jailed and expelled from the British army for having sex with a male squad mate. <\/p>\n
Three decades later, police tracked him down to the northern England city of Salford and demanded a sample of his DNA. <\/p>\n
Close, now 50 and openly gay, said he was shocked. <\/p>\n
\"I was horrified that after all these years they suddenly decided to bring this up again,\" Close said in a telephone interview from Salford, 205 miles (330 kilometers) north of London. <\/p>\n
While it is not illegal in the U.K. to collect genetic material from adults, Britain's DNA database one of the largest in the world, with some 6 million samples has long been a magnet for controversy. Human rights advocate Peter Tatchell says gay men convicted years ago under Britain's now-defunct gross indecency law may have had their rights violated recently by British police who ordered them to submit their genetic material to the database. <\/p>\n
\"It is absolutely wrong to lump a consenting, victimless offense like 'gross indecency' with rape and child sex abuse,\" Tatchell told The Associated Press. <\/p>\n
Europe's top human rights court in 2008 struck down a British law that allowed the government to store DNA and fingerprints from people with no criminal record. But in 2011, a new law allowed police to collect DNA from offenders who had been convicted of serious offenses before the DNA database was created in 1995. <\/p>\n
Amanda Cooper of the Association of Chief Police Officers' DNA database program said police forces were told that \"certain sexual offences, such as gross indecency and buggery, should not have a DNA sample taken on the grounds of a sole conviction.\" <\/p>\n
In Close's case, he was first convicted of a gross indecency charge and later theft. <\/p>\n
The \"gross indecency\" law dates back to 1885, and has been used to persecute thousands of English homosexuals, including playwright Oscar Wilde, who spent two years in prison after a trial in 1895, and World War II code breaker Alan Turing, who committed suicide after being convicted in 1952. <\/p>\n
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Excerpt from: In 1983, Stephen Close was arrested, jailed and expelled from the British army for having sex with a male squad mate. Three decades later, police tracked him down to the northern England city of Salford and demanded a sample of his DNA. Close, now 50 and openly gay, said he was shocked. Continue reading
\nUK Police Accused of Wrongly Taking DNA of Gay Men<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"