Queen Elizabeth II's legacy on LGBTQ rights is complicated
In 1952, when Queen Elizabeth II took the throne after the death of her father, same-sex sexual relations were criminalized in Britain.
In 1952, when Queen Elizabeth II took the throne after the death of her father, same-sex sexual relations were criminalized in Britain. The same laws were also brought to the Commonwealth countries that it colonized.
By the time she died, the landscape for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer rights looked dramatically different — at least in the United Kingdom — in part because she approved of many pro-LGBTQ measures, such as same-sex marriage. That support has led some to argue that she was a “quiet” supporter of LGBTQ rights, but to others she was just doing her job.
Queen Elizabeth II waves to the crowd from the balcony of Buckingham Palace in London following her coronation, on June 3, 1953.AP fileCharles Upchurch, a professor of British history at Florida State University, said that the 1950s, when the queen was coronated, were “one of the worst times for LGBTQ people.” The British government was using the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act — which was used to send playwright and poet Oscar Wilde to prison in 1895 — to arrest and prosecute queer people, particularly men, for same-sex sexual relations.
After years of gay activism, Parliament passed the Sexual Offences Act of 1967, which partially decriminalized same-sex sexual relations. Nearly 40 years later, it passed the Sexual Offences Act of 2003, which repealed the 1885 measure and decriminalized gay sex completely.
Queen Elizabeth II gave both of the measures her royal assent and went on to continue to approve pro-LGBTQ policies. She signed a historic equal rights charter in March 2013, and just a few months later, she gave her royal assent to the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act, which legalized same-sex marriage in England and Wales.
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