The effect of the 1969 decriminalization is overstated, largely because of this last requirement that sex had to take place in private. The kind of sex between two men that took place quietly in the bedroom was already effectively legal, or at least it was impossible to police, as historian Jeffrey Weeks has pointed out in the U.K. context. For practical reasons as much as for moral ones, the state’s over-involvement in queer sexuality rarely targeted that kind of sexuality, and so it was not the kind of reform that would have resulted in more freedom for queer and trans people. Rather, perversely, partial decriminalization of gay sex in the United Kingdom and Canada resulted in an uptick in policing that targeted sexual activity anywhere it took place outside the bedroom.

— Park Cruising by Marcus McCann (Page 142 - 143)