UK LGBTQI Activist Rejects Queen's Honor

A prominent LGBTQI activist said Monday she turned down one of the United Kingdom's highest honors over ethical concerns.

“As a trade unionist, a working class girl, and an out Black African lesbian, I want to stand by my principles and values,” activist Phyll Opoku-Gyimah told Diva magazine.

A long time campaigner for LGBTQI rights, Opoku-Gyimah is a co-founder of U.K. Black Pride, and a member of the Trades Union Congress Race Relations Committee.

She had been nominated for the title of Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), a grade within the British order of chivalry.

Although membership is one of the highest honors in the U.K., the order has been criticized for its name being associated with British colonialism and imperialism.

“I don't believe in empire. I don't believe in, and actively resist, colonialism and its toxic and enduring legacy in the Commonwealth, where – among many other injustices – LGBTQI people are still being persecuted, tortured and even killed because of sodomy laws, including in Ghana where I am from, that were put in place by British imperialists,” Opoku-Gyimah told Diva.

Opoku-Gyimah isn't the first nominee to reject an MBE.

The British Jamaican poet Benjamin Zephaniah rejected a similar chivalric title in 2003, arguing the award was a reminder of “thousands of years of brutality.”

Other prominent figures who have rejected chivalric titles include legendary singer John Lennon, and famous author C. S. Lewis. Lennon handed back his MBE in 1969 as part of a pro-peace demonstration, while Lewis refused to accept his MBE over political concerns.