In what one disgruntled UK newspaper is calling a “drunken-uncle routine,” Britain’s House of Commons Speaker John Bercow used a speech yesterday marking Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee to boldly praise gay rights advances made during her long reign.
Said Bercow at London’s Westminster Hall, as Her Majesty looked on with a royal but unmistakable “Gurl, are you seriously going there?” reaction:
This is a different Britain from 1952, but not one detached from then. We are in so many ways a much bigger, brighter and better United Kingdom.
This is a land where men and women today are equal under the law and where your people are respected, regardless of how they live, how they look or how they love.
This is a nation of many races, faiths and customs, beginning now to be reflected in Parliament.
All of this progress has occurred during your reign. You have become, to many of us, a kaleidoscope Queen of a kaleidoscope country in a kaleidoscope Commonwealth.
The kaleidoscope reference baffled many Brits. “Did he mean she should be shaken?” asked The Daily Mail. “Or toyed with?”
British gays recognized it as a shout-out to global LGBTI rights group The Kaleidoscope Trust, of which Bercow is the president — and indeed, whose website today proudly touts Bercow’s “Kaleidoscope Queen” speech.
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“We congratulate the Speaker on his words,” said Lance Price, the Trust’s executive director, “and on behalf of the millions of LGBT people throughout the Commonwealth, whether free to express their sexuality without danger or not, we offer our own tribute to the kaleidoscope Queen.”
Meanwhile, Bercow’s Conservative Party colleagues were none too pleased by his oration. One Tory pegged it “completely inappropriate for Bercow to be lecturing the Queen on gay rights at any time, let alone when we are celebrating her Diamond Jubilee.”
Photo via Office of John Bercow
I have to ask this...
So the Daily Mail (one of the most pro-Nazi papers in Britain, right up to the war) and some elderly Tories don’t like it. Who cares?
Robert in NYC
We can take comfort that subscribers to the right wing rags Daily Mail and The Telegraph are in the minority anyway. Nobody really cares what they think. Their journalism if you could call it that is the yellowest of yellow.
oska
David Cameron is giving the “what the fuck” look to Mr speaker.
Jacob
Do not think the Bercow speech actually does any good at all, it merely fuels the fire of haters and other bigots. There is a time and place for everything, the Queens address in parliament is an inappropiate choice for pushing the gay agenda.
Callum
I thought it was a rather good speech.
Xerxes
How they live , look, or love? Is this Camilla Parker-Bowles and ugly Prince Charles?
It was not even purely about gays, it seems also to include the Moslems, Hindus, Asians, blacks who landed in the UK since 1952. The typical tabloids in the UK, love to create a scandal, especially if it involves the monarchy. Anyway, isn’t the monarchy really irrelevant today?
DouggSeven
I highly doubt that old bat equated that speech as her being ‘pro gay rights’ at all. She probably equated it to a visible monority issue and drew a blank, started thinking about tea-time, and soiled herself.
Who do people in 2012 still care about what ‘royalty’ cares about anyway – she has little actual power in this day and age.
Kev C
It’s like an Abba song performed by William Shatner.
Sohobod
It was Westminster Hall, not Westmister Abbey.
Dan Allen
@Sohobod: Thanks, you’re so right. Revised above.
Dan Allen
@Kev C: LOL, that’s exactly what it is. And David Cameron is not dancing.
the crustybastard
Whereupon we celebrate the progress a great nation may accomplish by rendering its monarch a tourist attraction.
Cheers. Good show.
ggggb
well he has the only human face so whatever
fagburn
Please stop reprinting lies from the Dail Mail.
Thanks.
Andrew
I would say that the speech was about how 60 years of relative stability has enabled Britain to become a multicultural country in a way that would have been hard to imagine when the Queen came to the throne. He obviously isn’t praising the Queen for being right-on on gay issues, but for symbolising a social consensus of tolerance that we all enjoy. I think it entirely appropriate that the Speaker comment on this at this time. He was in no way “pushing a gay agenda” and even my Dad – a loyal Telegraph reader, alas! – would have no problem with the opinions expressed here. Good for you, Mr Speaker!