MI6, Britain’s Secret Service, issues public apology for excluding gays from recruitment until 1991
The apology comes three days after the UK Ministry of Defense announced former servicemen who were fired from the military because of their sexual orientation or gender identity could now recover their lost medals.
Posted
Update
Reading time : 1 min.
Until 1991, the MI6, the British foreign intelligence, excluded homosexual candidates from its recruitment procedures. Thirty years later, theSecret Service Chief Richard Moore has issued a public apology for the treatment “unfair and discriminatory”, in a video posted to Twitter on Friday February 19.
“Today I apologize on behalf of MI6 for the way our LGBT + colleagues and fellow citizens have been treated”, he said, expressing his regret to “those whose lives have been affected”.
Marking the 30 year anniversary of lifting the vetting bar to LGBT + employees in intelligence agencies in 1991, I apologise on behalf of # MI6 for the way LGBT + colleagues and fellow citizens were treated, and express my regret for everyone whose life was affected # LGBTHM21 pic.twitter.com/bLsnNeY8RJ
– Richard Moore (@ ChiefMI6) February 19, 2021
Same-sex relationships were decriminalized in 1967 in the UK. But the ban on recruiting homosexuals into intelligence agencies for security reasons has remained “because of the misconception that they would be more likely to be blackmailed than heterosexual people”, recalls Richard Moore. “Committed, talented people concerned with the public interest have seen their careers and their lives wasted, because they have been objected that being LGBT + is incompatible with the intelligence profession,” he added. “Because of this policy”, others “saw their dreams of joining MI6 shattered”.
The apology comes three days after the UK Ministry of Defense announced former servicemen who were fired from the military because of their sexual orientation or gender identity could now recover their lost medals.
