King Charles III has dedicated a memorial to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender military service members at the United Kingdom’s National Memorial Arboretum. The memorial recognizes both current LGBTQ+ members of the armed forces and those who suffered under the military’s LGBTQ+ ban.
The memorial, “An Opened Letter,” combines words taken from evidence that was used in investigations against servicemembers while the ban was still in place. The text closes with a call to “embrace our diversity & fight for our country.”
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The memorial’s website says it “serves as a place of reflection, recognition and remembrance, ensuring that the stories of those who served, and those who suffered, are never forgotten.”
While homosexuality was decriminalized in the United Kingdom in 1967, the military held a ban against LGBTQ+ personnel until the year 2000. During that time, LGBTQ+ people in the military, or those suspected of being LGBTQ+, were subject to intensive investigations filled with invasive questions about their private lives. The investigations often resulted in people being dismissed without pay or pension, and some even faced
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While the UK’s military service ban was explicitly against homosexuality, it affected all members of the LGBTQ+ community. As noted in the Etherton Review, “The view adopted in the enforcement of the Ban was that, if a person was or declared themselves to be transgender or was experiencing gender dysphoria, they were either a gay man or a lesbian. For this reason, although the ban was concerned with homosexuality and therefore with sexual orientation, it also encompassed gender identity.”
In 2023, then-prime minister Rishi Sunak and several Home Office officials publicly apologized for the ban. Sunak lamented that “many endured the most horrific sexual abuse and violence, homophobic bullying and harassment, all while bravely serving this country. He called the ban “an appalling failure of the British state.”
His comments coincided with the publication of the LGBT Veterans Independent Review, commonly called the “Etherton Review.” In addition to highlighting the horrific conditions that LGBTQ+ service members faced under the ban, the review provided 49 recommendations for repairing some of the damage done, including pardoning veterans for any related criminal convictions, providing LGBTQ+ veteran ribbons that acknowledge their struggles, returning medals and berets, and creating the LGBTQ+ Veterans Memorial.
The charity Fighting With Pride has been campaigning for justice for LGBTQ+ veterans for years, and in 2024, the group received £350,000 (approximately $467,000) to create the memorial. After reviewing submissions, they chose one from the Abraxas Academy, a Norfolk-based collective of artists. The artists, Charlotte Howarth and Nina Bilbey, say that the “concept for the memorial symbolises the personal letters of endearment collected as evidence to convict, expel and imprison LGBTQ+ personnel during the ban, and the anxiety of living in constant fear of receiving a formal letter accusation.”
The dedication of the memorial marks King Charles’s first official support of the community since he became King in September 2022. Like his mother and predecessor, Queen Elizabeth II, Charles has largely avoided discussing LGBTQ+ rights publicly. That has led activists like Peter Tatchell to say that through “his silence, he acquiesces with our tormentors.” His sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, have both supported the LGBTQ+ community through positive messages and HIV initiatives.
While some US states have memorials to LGBTQ+ veterans, there is not currently a national one to recognize the effects of LGBTQ+ bans in the military, including Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. While plans for a DC memorial were revealed in 2014, the monument was never finished due to a lack of funds.
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