Richard Ammon
Queen Elizabeth II of England takes a half-step forward against discrimination–signs a 2013 charter addressed to members of the Commonwealth of present and former British-controlled colonies and states. But by not directly mentioning sexual orientation or homosexuality she continues the age-old glacial movement of positive human rights against the darkness of politico-religio-based homophobia.
When England colonized virtually half the world in the 17-19th centuries it imposed it’s cruel puritanical anti-buggery (anti-gay) laws across its enormous empire and suddenly millions of LGBT native subjects were rendered criminals in one of the most arbitrary, bigoted and devastating blows to human rights in modern history.
In the hundreds of years since, the world-wide LGBT community on all continents have suffered persecution, torture and death because of those laws–some of which still exist in more than 41 countries of the 54 within the commonwealth. (Last year in former-UK-colony Jamaica a friend of GlobalGayz was murdered because he was a gay activist.)
The photo on the left is of Daniel Zamudio, murdered by skinheads because he was gay.
Surely after so much suffering of countless LGBT people the Queen could have at least taken the full step of including sexual orientation to the list of gender, race, color, creed, and political belief of protected groups.
Bravo for the Queen for the half-step but many still suffer. Good but not good enough.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/11/queen-gay-rights-commonwealth
http://www.petertatchellfoundation.org/lgbt-rights/queen-supports-gay-rights-commonwealth
