Peter Tatchell has refused an invitation to be declared a “national treasure” at the Queen’s platinum jubilee because of the monarch’s “neglectful stance towards the LGBT+ community”.
Tatchell, who has been campaigning for gay rights and equality since 1967, had been invited to attend the pageant outside Buckingham Palace as one of more than 100 “national treasures”.
But he declined, stating his lifelong republicanism and also that: “To my knowledge, [the Queen] has never publicly acknowledged that LGBT+ people exist. The words lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender have never publicly passed her lips and she has never visited or been a patron of any LGBT+ charity.”
He added: “To be ignored for 70 years feels like a deliberate snub.”
In a letter to the platinum jubilee co-chair, former publishing titan Nicholas Coleridge, Tatchell also claims that for many years palace staff were prohibited from bringing same-sex partners to the Christmas ball.
He also claims that “after the 1999 Soho gay pub bombing, which killed three people and injured over 70 others, the Queen did not visit the scene or the victims in hospital”. » | Helen Pidd | Sunday, May 15, 2022
No thanks, Ma’am. For LGBT campaigners like me, your jubilee is nothing to celebrate : I was asked to join the Queen’s pageant as a ‘national treasure’, but I won’t take part in this public relations exercise »
