Queen Elizabeth II isn’t having any of the anti-LGBTQ rhetoric being spewed by Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and other Republicans.
In an address to the UK parliament today, the 91-year-old monarch said her government was pledging to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination.
“My government will make further progress to tackle the gender pay gap and discrimination against people on the basis of their race, faith, gender, disability or sexual orientation.”
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The Queen also informed the public that the rumored state visit by Donald Trump would not be happening.
Theresa May had originally invited Trump for a visit when she met with him at the White House back in January. But after Trump’s brutish behavior, outlandish tweets, and the recent Twitter fight he picked with London’s Muslim mayor over the terrorist attack on London Bridge, it appears that invitation has been rescinded.
Related: This Christian Facebook page banned rainbow emojis. They should have known what would happen next.
The monarch’s address to Parliament, which is written by lawmakers and delivered by the Queen, typically mentions all planned state visits, but her majesty made no mention of Trump whatsoever, only saying she would be welcoming King Felipe and Queen Letizia of Spain in July.
Cue Trump’s angry hate tweet in 2, 3, 1…
Watch the Queen’s speech to Parliament below:
MrStilton on June 21st, 2017 at 21:57 UTC »
I feel I should point out that the Queen's just reading a speech written by the current Conservative government.
We've got a weird system in the UK whereby the leader of the political party which wins a general election must ask the Queen for permission to form a government, all our members of parliament swear allegiance to the Queen and technically she’s the one who signs off on all laws passed. In theory, she could just walk into the house of commons and declare that she’s dissolving the government of the day. However, in practice, if she were to ever use any of these powers (for example, by refusing to give royal assent to a law) she’d be out on the street by the end of the day. By convention she remains politically neutral at all times. There’s massive controversy whenever there’s so much as a hint of her expressing a political opinion.
I’m assuming that most folk on this sub are from the USA, so I feel I should point out that the UK Conservative party is often said to be more left wing than the US Democrats (as our Overton Window) is well to the left of yours.
In fact, same sex marriage was introduced (in England and Wales) by a Conservative lead coalition government. With the then Conservative PM explaining the reasoning thus:
In saying that, it was their coalition partners (the Liberal Democrats) who really pushed for legalisation and more Conservative MPs voted against it than in favour of it at the final reading. So I think they often get too much credit for this.
Anyway…
There’s a reason this is being included. It’s because the Conservative Party doesn’t have a majority in parliament and so is having to essentially beg a smaller party (called the Democratic Unionist Party) to prop them up and help them form a government.
Now these guys are as homophobic as it’s possible to be. Their leader wrote a letter to the Scottish government objecting to same sex marriage being legalised there, they ran a political campaign titled Save Ulster from Sodomy and have described homosexuality as abhorrent. There manifesto was described as “The old Testament with added bin collections”.
So, although this is being heralded as a positive thing, I suspect it's only being included to try to kill of some of the unease that many feel seeing the Conservatives enter into negotiations with the DUP.
gelbkatze on June 21st, 2017 at 19:39 UTC »
Thats great and all but as an American the only Queen I recognize is Freddy Mercury.
alegxab on June 21st, 2017 at 18:40 UTC »
The Conservative government wrote the speech, as is tradition, not the queen