The UK Should Automatically Expunge Records of LGBTQ+ People Targeted by Old Homophobic Laws
Shockingly, British women who were arrested and convicted for being gay still have those charges on their records! Under a 2012 law, men could apply to have authorities remove those convictions. But for some reason, the law did not make women eligible.
The UK criminalized queerness for generations. It should automatically expunge all those records now! Sign the petition to demand justice!
Now, the UK government is preparing to expand its Disregards and Pardons Scheme law to finally include queer, lesbian, and bisexual women. This is long overdue! The UK must also expand the law further, to automatically expunge these LBGTQ-related convictions from people’s records!
These individuals never should have been arrested to begin with, so requiring people to go out of their way to actively apply for pardons or expungements is unfair. This creates a huge bureaucratic burden for people, which explains why very few people have even applied in the past decade.
The burden for righting this injustice should not be on the people victimized by the law. That burden should fall on the government that targeted them in the first place!