Queen Elizabeth has always been a champion of the LGBTQI + community

In Italy we have just witnessed to the sinking of the DDL Zan in the Senate, a bill whose path has been long and troubled and for which certainly many expected a different ending. A happy ending. Many blame the umpteenth failure of our country in matters of civil rights on the polarization of the debate that has plagued our nation for many years now. The continuous division of people into teams with inexpressible opinions if not with the tones of stadium cheering, the lack of grays in a scale that goes from white to black without passing through the halftones, makes people rather than placing themselves in one team that they do not feel is their own prefer not to play the game, e if the game is that of rights, it is clear to everyone that when you lose, not a faction is defeated but a nation. Our. For the umpteenth time.

So today, to keep the mood high, we decided to fly across the Channel, to remind us of what a 95-year-old lady, theoretically therefore anchored to a less inclusive worldview, did for the LGBTQI + community in the last few years. If this lady is also the head of the Anglican Church, the matter becomes complicated, because in addition to her own possible mindset, she has to struggle with the precepts of the religion she heads. So let’s see what Elizabeth II did in civil rights matters.

We start from July 17, 2013 when the queen granted the Royal Assent to the Equalitarian Marriage Act in the UK, moment about which turns a rather “romantic” anecdote. Stephen Fry, a multifaceted British artist and activist, in fact reported rumors of the Palace according to which “After having countersigned the law on equal marriage, allowing homosexuals to marry for the first time”, the queen would put down her pen saying “Who would have Could you ever have imagined 62 years ago when he ascended the throne, that I would sign something like this? Isn’t it wonderful? ‘ Who knows if the sovereign passed in front of her whole life when she signed the law. Who knows if for a moment that permission not granted to her sister who wanted to marry Peter Towsend all those years ago flashed through her mind. It would not have been a same-sex marriage, but it certainly was an opposed love, like that of millions of homosexuals in history.

Who can tell. What we certainly know is that a few months later the Queen will perform a very powerful gesture: she will “forgive” Alan Turing, the mathematical genius thanks to whom the course of the Second World War changed. That cinematic gem it is inspired by the story of Turing The imitation game, which, among its various merits, has that of having made known to the new generations a forgotten history. In fact, it was he who discovered the code of the Enigma machines, used by the Germans to communicate, giving the Allies a help that will prove fundamental in the victory of the War. The man who helped the world to defeat the greatest criminal in history, was however condemned and subjected to chemical castration, because he was homosexual (in England it was a crime to be so and it will be until 1967), and he apparently committed suicide in 1954. This ” forgiveness », however, will turn out to be the chrysalis of a wonderful butterfly: the Turing Law. It is in fact 2017 when England will enact a law that will rehabilitate tens of thousands of convicted of homosexuality. The rule provides for ‘posthumous pardon’ for all gay people sentenced in the UK. Are battles made of symbols? Well, this was perhaps one of the most powerful and not even Elizabeth herself could possibly imagine, that a few years later Alan Turing’s face would appear next to his, on the new £ 50 note that has been running since this summer.