The U.K. is finally restoring honor to veterans harmed by its anti-LGBTQ+ military ban

The United Kingdom has announced its plans to build a memorial for LGBTQ+ veterans who were persecuted and discharged under the country’s ban on queer military members, which remained in place from 1967 to 2000. The bronze memorial will resemble a crumpled sheet of paper and contain phrases from LGBTQ+ people affected by the ban. The announcement of the monument follows a government pledge to give £70,000 ($85,159) to military members harmed by the ban.

The memorial — whose design was chosen from 38 submissions and five finalists — will be constructed at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, a county about 145 miles northwest of London, just north of Birmingham. It will include phrases collected from LGBTQ+ soldiers during a recent investigation into the policy spearheaded by Terence Etherton, a member of Britain’s House of Lords.

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The phrases include ones like “A battle for love,” “a place to belong,” and “together we stand.” Though most of the letters will be gray in color, some individual words — like “respect,” “strength,” and “pride” — will be highlighted in gold.

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The memorial received a £350,000 grant from the Ministry of Defense’s (MoD) Office for Veterans’ Affairs. Its construction is being overseen by the LGBTQ+ military charity Fighting With Pride, The Hereford Times reported.

“The trustees are delighted that we have such a strong winner for the LGBT+ armed forces community memorial,” said Ed Hall, chairman of Fighting With Pride. “It’s been incredibly important to all of us at Fighting With Pride that we held a rigorous creative process to find the right design that will provide a place of peace and reflection for the LGBT+ armed forces family.”

The lasting harm of the UK’s anti-LGBTQ+ military ban

While the U.K. decriminalized same-sex encounters in 1967, it erected a ban on military members under the pretense that queer service members harmed morale and threatened preparedness.

The ban, which affected hundreds of thousands of military members, resulted in military members facing intimidation, blackmail, discrimination and harassment, the seizure of personal letters and photos, intense psychological interrogations, invasive medical examinations that sometimes involved sexual assault, forced resignations and outings to family members, dishonorable discharges, prison time, alienation from military supports and benefits, and even suicides over the shame, isolation and poverty that resulted from all of the above.

Several military members discharged under the ban told researchers that the policy, “Made me [feel] embarrassed of my own sexuality. Made me feel a lesser person, one who was open to abuse and ridicule.” Some LGBTQ+ military members told the BBC that staying closeted felt like a “self-betrayal” and that they hid their same-sex relationships, often censoring themselves in private letters and referring to their partners in public by names often used by members of the opposite sex.

Another said the policy made them feel “lonely, dirty, outcast,” and left them “severely gay bashed … threatened, robbed, deprived, imprisoned, mind games, loss of confidence, removed the joy of sex, self-hate, made to feel ashamed of being me, nervous.”

“It took away my career, it took away my pension, it took away my future,” yet another said. “It just, it just utterly destroyed it, and it took away a job I know I was good at… it just took away my home, my livelihood, my future, career, pension. It doesn’t really get much worse than that, does it?”

Finally, some justice nearly 25 years after the ban’s repeal

A group of ousted LGBTQ+ veterans and allies eventually formed an activist group called the Rank Outsiders. Together, along with other U.K. LGBTQ+ groups like Stonewall, successfully raised public awareness about the ban’s inherent unfairness and pressured the MoD to repeal the ban in 2000.

In July 2023, then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, apologized on behalf of the nation for the ban. In December 2024, the government said that veterans who were discharged and “negatively affected” by the ban could receive up to £70,000 ($85,159) as compensation. Veterans can also apply to have their rank restored and discharge reasons amended.

Lt. Cdr. Duncan Lustig-Prean, who was blackmailed for his homosexuality and discharged under the ban, told the BBC that seeing the monument will be “an intensely emotional experience – not just because we never expected to get this far, but also because for anyone who serves, remembrance of those who gave their lives is profoundly important to us.”

“That’s one of the reasons why I really want to go and see that memorial and contemplate the LGBTQ people who died for this country, as well as those who gave their careers because of this policy,” he added.

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