King Charles III unveiled Britain’s first national memorial for LGBT troops. The king, the ceremonial head of the armed forces, laid flowers at the monument in the National Memorial Arboretum.
Between 1967 and 2000, military personnel believed to be homosexual or transgender were considered unfit to serve and were either dismissed or discharged, the Associated Press reports.
The memorial was recommended by the late Lord Etherton in The Etherton Review. The report urged for there to be a “public memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum to all LGBT people who have served and continue to serve in the military, possibly including a specific reference to those who suffered the consequences of the Ban on serving homosexuals prior to January 2000,” a government response to the independent review explained.
The government, led by former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the time, issued a formal apology for the pre-2000 ban on LGBT personnel.
The memorial presents a stark contrast to actions taken by the Trump administration, which renamed a Navy ship previously honoring a gay rights activist. The UNSN Harvey Milk is now called the USNS Oscar V. Peterson.
“We are taking the politics out of ship naming,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced. “We’re not renaming the ship to anything political, this is not about political activists, unlike the previous administration. Instead we are renaming the ship after a United States Navy Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient.”
Prior to the renaming, a memo reportedly stated that the action is designed to support “alignment with president and SECDEF objectives and SECNAV priorities of reestablishing the warrior culture.”
