The Queen turns her back on queens

First and foremost I sincerely apologise for the use of such a poor and unoriginal joke as the topic title, but I hope this gathers more users to the thread.

The issue at hand is whether the Queen of Great Britain has a responsibility to the gay community given the current political climate.

To give some context, a consultation process is taking place which aims to legalise same sex marriage. The bill is very likely to pass in parliament despite opposition from some sections of British society. This article I recently read raises some interesting points about the Queen’s response. Notably that she has always been vocal in support of measures targeting racial discrimination, but has been noticably muted when it comes to the gay community.

This isn’t a topic about the law, since the Queen isn’t obliged to say anything, merely read the Queen’s speech once a year outlining the government’s proposals (a speech written for her by the British Cabinet). Rather, do you think the Queen as head of state has a moral responsibility to do so.

Here’s the article I mentioned earlier, worth a read if you’re interested in this.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/01/queen-gay-community-homophobe

You reading the Grauniad? I hope it was a copy you found on a train and not one that you bought. Nice to see you back BTW.

Peter Tatchell is a professional political agitator with a reputation for anti-semetism. And this article shows him at his disingenuous best.

While portraying the Queen as “often referring to the value of a diverse multicultural, multifaith society” may not strictly speaking be a lie, it is certainly misleading. She may well have referred to it during her annual speeches to Parliament (I’m not about to read them all to check), but that was simply her reading a speech written for her, as you have already pointed out. If those speeches failed to refer to gay rights, then Tatchell should be pointing the finger at the government of the day, especially the Labour Party which projected itself as the true champion of minority rights, and of which Tatchell himself was a member.

The Queen is totally non-political. She doesn’t do political interviews and she doesn’t do chat shows. About the only time she comes close to speaking her mind in public is during her Christmas Day broadcasts. You can imagine the uproar if she used them to take up cudgels on behalf of the gay community.

You must also bear in mind that buggery was illegal in England and Wales until 1967, Scotland until 1980 and Northern Ireland until 1982. So for much of her reign any mention of homosexuality would have been unthinkable. The subject is still a bit of a political hot potato. Civil partnerships were introduced as recently as 2005. In his article, Tatchell is trying to give the impression that the Queen has had 60 years of opportunity to speak out on behalf of gays, and that is simply a bare faced lie.

Now quite why she failed to visit the victims of the Admiral Duncan bombing I have no idea. She didn’t appear to have any pressing engagements which couldn’t have been put off for a few days (I checked the Court Circular), so I can only assume that she was badly advised. It was back in 1999, and the royal courtiers are notoriously conservative.

As for moral responsibility, that’s the government’s job, not the Queen’s. Our Head of State has a big advantage over most others, in that she can represent the country without representing its government. If she started to meddle in politics, however well intentioned, that would all come to an end, and I think that would be a very bad thing.

Ah, Peter Tatchell. If ever a man deserved a freshly-caught haddock across the face every morning, it’s you.

Like beauval said, she’s non-political and doesn’t interfere at all in the process. Her moral responsibility is to keep doing that.

But supposing she ever stopped doing that… no one has a moral responsibility to adopt any political position and call it correct. Including political positions relating to gay marriage.

You reading the Grauniad? I hope it was a copy you found on a train and not one that you bought. Nice to see you back BTW.

Haha. Well, living in Holland, the Guardian and the Telegraph are the only two broadsheets that I know of which are free online. Would prefer the Times if I was honest (a reprehensible thing for a student to say I know). I also have to admit that I’m really missing the Evening Standard, despite its relatively poor quality. Guess it’s a london fing innit.

In his article, Tatchell is trying to give the impression that the Queen has had 60 years of opportunity to speak out on behalf of gays, and that is simply a bare faced lie.

I would say this is probably the strongest counter argument to the article. Whether or not the Queen can speak out is a different question as to whether she would given past attitudes towards homosexuality. Or indeed whether she should to which the answer is probably no.

The example of the bombing aside, the only other issue I see is her lack of using the word gay in an official capacity. It’s knitpicking for some, but it does seem odd. What I’d like to know is how much influence she has over the Christmas speech. Of course she cannot simply avoid the topic because the government is pressing ahead with its plans. On the other hand I wonder if she has any negotiating power and requested that she didn’t have to talk about the gay community in explicit terms. My point being that if the speech isn’t her authorship why would the authors who represent the government be afraid to use the word gay? It is their own policy after all.

Ah, Peter Tatchell. If ever a man deserved a freshly-caught haddock across the face every morning, it’s you.

Haha, I clearly haven’t been reading newspapers for long enough to understand the disdain you two clearly hold for him. Do you just dislike his journalism or do you just think he’s a twat?

My point being that if the speech isn’t her authorship why would the authors who represent the government be afraid to use the word gay? It is their own policy after all.

The Queen goes to great lengths to avoid being controversial in the eyes of any of her subjects. And that includes those who still regard homosexuality with suspicion. Remember that the monarch is still the Defender of the Faith, the head of the Church of England, many of whose members do not approve of gays. Gay rights is not a humanitarian issue, it’s a political issue, and the Queen has to steer clear of expressing any opinion, just as she has never given us her opinion on the Iraq war of the Eurozone crisis.

While the Queen may not write the complete Christmas message herself, she decides upon its content. You have to bear in mind that it is aimed at the entire Commonwealth, not just Britain, and is therefore not a suitable vehicle to talk about purely British issues – especially homosexuality, which still attracts the death penalty in some Commonwealth countries. This may be another reason for her reluctance to speak out on the matter.

Do you just dislike his journalism or do you just think he’s a twat?

A bit of both, but mainly the latter. He’s a bull in a china shop. He doesn’t seem to understand that sometimes a little gentle persuasion can result in a small change for the better. Instead he rants and raves, conducts one man protest movements, goes out of his way to be rude to anyone who disagrees with him, and generally annoys a lot of people. He’s a loser, and achieves very little.

Gay rights is not a humanitarian issue, it’s a political issue, and the Queen has to steer clear of expressing any opinion, just as she has never given us her opinion on the Iraq war of the Eurozone crisis.

I understand this point but I think it is very arguable that the right to marry who you want is a human right and not a political issue. After all rights for women to vote and indeed most men before that used to be a political issue and now these have come to be considered human rights. Thus, I’ll ask the question again in slightly different way with an analogy. Should the Queen be sensitive to these issues and respond to them? To use the analogy, if there was a monarch in the US who had the same relationship with the state as ours in Great Britain and she was alive in the segregation era, would this monarch have had a responsibility to speak out against black discrimination which was at the time a political issue?

No. The whole point of having a constitutional monarchy is that the monarch does not get involved in politics. She appoints a Prime Minister to do that for her. The Queen has a weekly meeting with the Prime Minister, during which she has a duty to make her views known, but the details of those conversations always remain confidential.

You must bear in mind that she is also queen of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Kitts and Nevis. If she started pontificating on political issues, she would be causing diplomatic incidents on an almost daily basis. So she wisely remains silent.

Interesting that you bring up the American segregation era. It wasn’t politicians who were the catalyst for ending that, it was television. If the US had had a constitutional monarchy at the time, and that monarch had decided to speak out against discrimination, it probably wouldn’t have had any effect other than to make the monarch extremely unpopular in the south of the country. So no, I don’t think a hypothetical monarch in that situation would have had any obligation to speak out personally.

The idea of votes for women was political and not humanitarian because the modern idea of human rights hadn’t really taken root 100 years ago, certainly not among the great unwashed. The idea of human rights has been around for hundreds of years, but it was for philosophers and political thinkers. It’s only in the last few decades that it has become such a buzz word. Back in the sixties we took a keen interest in the civil rights movement in America, but I don’t remember the subject of “human rights” ever coming up; for us it was all about politics and bigotry, and that’s how I see the drive for gay equality now.