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?”
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