Ask Bizarre - Queen Victoria and lesbians

DOUG : Did Queen Victoria refuse to believe lesbians exist?

DR MIKE :You seem to be referring to a popular urban legend concerning the Labouchere Amendment, a British parliamentary bill which criminalised all same-sex activity and was introduced in 1885. It's true that this amendment referred only to male homosexuality. There's no evidence, however, to support the widely held belief that when Queen Vic caught sight of references to hot lesbian action in the original bill, she struck them out because she couldn't believe such dubious practices actually existed. And British constitutional custom would have made it difficult for the queen to alter any part of a bill whatever she thought of it – the last monarch to exercise real influence over the acts of the House of Commons was Queen Anne.

The truth seems to be that those presenting the amendment chose to exclude the ticklish subject themselves (as the House of Lords certainly did nearly 40 years later), fearing criminalizing lesbianism would alert women to the fact that the possibility existed. The story of Queen Victoria's veto seems to have made its way into the popular imagination when her statue was made the focus of a 1977 demonstration promoting lesbian visibility on International Women's Day.