Born in Rhondda, Wales, he was educated at University College, London, and the University of Kent at Canterbury. He was then a lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent. During 1989-90 he was Simon Senior Fellow at the University of Manchester. He was Professor of Social Relations at Bristol Polytechnic.

He is among the academics in the early period of gay men's studies in Britain emerging from the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) which he joined in 1970 and the Gay Left Collective of which he was a founder member. He began by chronicling the development of homosexual politics from the late nineteenth century to the gay liberation movement in Coming Out, (1977).

He became professor of sociology at South Bank University in October 1994. He was Head of School of Education, Politics and Social Science from September 1995 to July 1998, and he became Dean of Humanities and Social Science in August, 1998.

He has been on the editorial board of several journals including History Workshop Journal, the Journal of the History of Sexuality, the Journal of Homosexuality, and Victorian Studies. He has appeared on numerous television programmes on topics related to sexuality.