I understand but 1953 London wasn’t Manila, the act was consentual (today 17 would be legal), and to jail men for it even then was imo ridiculous.
The criminalization of sodomy is the basis for all laws regarding homosexuality, like laws forbidding the adoption of children by homosexuals and laws forbidding the normalization of homosexuality in government schools.
We were played.
Persecution doesn't necessarily follow from criminalization. In the United States, no doors were ever broken down in a hunt for homosexuals.