Every New Year’s Day, the Queen hands out a load of honours (MBEs, OBEs) to people who’ve done good in her eyes. And they’ve always been political. Oodles of people have refused the awards, including Nigella Lawson, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French and David Bowie, to name just a very few.
However, even though they’re contentious back-rubs or perhaps useless in a time when we have the phrase ‘national treasure’ handed out to whoever becomes Vine-famous overnight, the awards rarely cause a stir among Canadian actresses. So why is Ellen Page tweeting ‘Fuck that’ to the Queen?
Because the Queen has given an MBE to Maurice Mills, a Northern Irish politician who blamed Hurricane Katrina on gay people. Yep, Hurricane Katrina, which killed 1,300 people in 2005.
See, according to this guy, the massive natural disaster was caused by New Orleans playing host to an LGBT pride festival called Southern Decadance. ‘Sure this is a warning to nations where such wickedness is increasingly promoted and practised,’ he said.
So no wonder Ellen Page did this after seeing an article about Maurice on Vice:
Oh, and for the record, Mills also once said that Aids is caused by ‘the filthy practice of sodomy’. Ostensibly, the Queen gave born-again Christian Mills his award because he’s done a lot for local politics as a Democratic Unionist in his constituency of Ballymena, reports The Independent.
We get Northern Ireland has had problems that are bigger and more complex than we could ever properly wrap our heads around, but something tells us a man who thinks gays can cause floods and bumsex causes disease might not be the best person for official recognition from the Queen.
You’d sort of think, as the royal family ‘strenuously’ denies serious allegations of rape made against Prince Andrew, it would also look to damn those who judge people who have consenting sex with one another. But apparently not. So yeah, we’re with you there, Ellen. Fuck that, indeed.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.