at the time claimed would place such an individual outside of wider society. The law was extended to Scotland in the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1980, which took effect on 1 February 1981. As a result of the 1981 European Court of Human Rights case Dudgeon v. United Kingdom, the law was extended to Northern Ireland in the Homosexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 1982. In 2020, a Freedom of Information request by journalists at The Mail on Sunday found that the Royal Mint Advisory Committee had rejected plans to issue a commemorative coin to mark the 50th anniversary of the passing of the act in 2015, concluding that it would not be "commercially viable" due to a perceived "lack of appeal" for the coin amongst collectors. Amendments The age of consent of 21 for homosexual males set by the 1967 Act was reduced to 18 by the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 after an attempt to equalise the age of consent with that of the heterosexual age of consent of 16 introduced as an amendment by the then Conservative MP Edwina Currie narrowly failed. This law also extended the definition of rape to include male rape; until then the latter had been prosecuted as buggery. In 2000, the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 were invoked to ensure the passage of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2000, which equalised the age of consent to 16 for both homosexual and heterosexual behaviours throughout the UK. The privacy restrictions of the law meant that while two men could have sex, a third person could not participate in the sex or even be present. These restrictions were held to be in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights by the European Court of Human Rights in 2000. The UK Government brought the law in England and Wales into compliance with that ruling by the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which omitted the privacy requirements relating to same-sex male sexual activity. (Sexual activity in a public lavatory was made a separate offence). The Sexual Offences Act 2003, though subject to some controversy, overhauled the way sexual offences are dealt with by the police and courts, replacing provisions in the Sexual Offences Act 1956 as well as the 1967 Act. The offences of gross indecency and buggery were repealed from statutory law. As a result of the 2003 Act, the vast majority of the