For some reason, there has never been a detailed account of the last remaining corner of the United Kingdom to accept homosexual law reform- which was Northern Ireland. 

About ten years after England and Wales had passed the Sexual Offences Act 1967, which ushered in a highly restrictive partial decriminalisation of male homosexuality (with a grossly unequal age of consent at 21, no multiple partner sex, no lesbian or gay sex in the armed services), the Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association was founded in 1977.

Three years later, fundamentalist Free Presbyterian zealot Ian Paisley founded his own “Save Ulster from Sodomy” group to oppose reform, just after Scotland had passed its own decriminalisation legislation within the Criminal Justice Act 1981, but the writing was on the wall. When one Ian Dudgeon, a civil servant, objected to Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) homophobic treatment, he decided to take a case to the European Court of Human Rights. In 1981, the Court reported back (cf Dudgeon v United Kingdom) that Northern Ireland was breaching Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights by failing to decriminalise male homosexuality.  Backed into a corner,  Westminster passed the Homosexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Act 1982, much to the ire of the wrathful Reverend Paisley.

Since then, times have changed apace, as Paisley has become Chief Minister of Northern Ireland, and given that it wants to remain affiliated to the United Kingdom, Ulster has had no choice but to accept age of consent equality, Clause 28 abolition, civil partnerships, hate crime legislation, same sex parenting rights and the whole gamut of progressive reforms that the Blair and Brown administrations have initiated over the last decade.