Queen Elizabeth II, a quiet supporter of LGBTQ rights, has died at age 96
Related: The queen of England’s gay cousin got married. No one from the royal family attended.While the royal family endured many scandals throughout her time as Queen, the British public held her in high regard.
Even as many increasingly questioned whether the monarchy should continue to exist, Queen Elizabeth’s approval ratings remained high.Throughout her reign, the Queen saw Britain transform from a nation that threw gay men behind bars to one where they could legally marry.When the Queen first came to power, police were still enforcing the country’s strict anti-sodomy laws that had first been implemented by Henry VIII in 1533.While gay men were no longer put to death as they were in the 1500s, their sexual acts were criminalized and many were subject to chemical castration or imprisonment.
Homosexual acts weren’t fully legalized in the country until the mid-90s.While the Queen notoriously maintained an air of political neutrality, she is generally recognized as a supporter of LGBTQ rights.
For most of her reign, she was rather quiet about LGBTQ issues, but in the last few decades, she began to take a more publicly pro-LGBTQ stance.Her public support seems to have begun in 2013.That year, she granted a pardon to Alan Turing, who is widely considered to be the father of computer science and is most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes during World War II.
