In 1921 a new Criminal Law Amendment Act was introduced into the House of Commons as a Private Member's measure. During the report stage, after the Bill had been considered by a standing committee, a Scottish conservative lawyer and son of the manse, Frederick Macquisten, representing one of the Glasgow divisions, moved the following new clause under the heading of "Acts of Indecency by females"

Any act of gross indecency between female persons shall be a misdemeanour and punishable in the same manner as any such act committed by male persons under section eleven of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885.

According to Macquisten the new clause was "long overdue in the criminal code of this country" and he referred with some relish to "an undercurrent of dreadful degradation, unchecked and uninterfered with." Sir Ernest Wild, supporting the clause, declared it "an attempt to grapple with a very real evil." The clause was passed in the Commons on 4 August 1921 by a vote of 148 to 53, but defeated in the Lords.