Thank you, Meghan, for boosting diversity

It's proving to be a beautiful spring here in England. Let's hope it continues.

Yesterday, then, in glorious weather, the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle was celebrated in Windsor.

To me this lays to rest a ghost in British history and helps usher in an era that I hope will be rather more positive than Her Majesty's current Government seems to want.

Unlike King Edward VIII, who abdicated in 1936 in order to marry an American divorcee (according to the official version), Prince Harry has now been able to marry... an American divorcee. OK, so the prince is not a reigning king with an empire like his forebear, but the fact that this has been accepted by the establishment and the church with relatively little fuss is a new attitude. It also suggests the old rivalry between the two powers is dying out.

Meghan, like President Obama, is mixed race and that to me is a sign of a more humane acceptance in high circles that you don't have to be white to be worthy, in the same way that you don't have to be male, or straight, or have some specific attribute over which you actually have no control at all. The poisonous racist filth that has been spewed online by English supremacists about having a mixed-race person even coming to the country, let alone marrying royalty, has been beyond vile. "Meghan Markle's Mum peels bananas with her feet" is their favourite horrible meme. These same white supremacists rail against the fact that the Mayor of London happens to be a Muslim (despite the much better job he's actually doing than the two narcissists who preceded him). The same goes for for the new Home Secretary (i.e. the person responsible for policing and immigration), not to mention his opposite number in the House of Commons, who is a black woman and is often judged on that.

There are two reasons why I mention racism. One is that the same people who are racists are almost always homophobic and transphobic, too, and frequently misogynistic, with all the unhappiness that that causes women like me. It's a pity that racist TGirls and their supposed allies whom I have come across can't see the connection between hatred for foreigners and the rise in attacks on gay and trans people, including themselves. There's a significant degree of stupidity here. The other reason is that it's now five years since I last spoke to my father whose race hate I can only describe as feral. Naturally, he also hates gay and trans people, like my "Lugbutt"-hating sister, his daughter, whom I wrote about last autumn. The pig-headed insistence on not wanting or feeling the need to understand the perspective of people who are different from them, or even that another perspective exists, shows an absence of human empathy. This hatred stems so often from jealousy and from a fear of losing a privileged position. The inferiority complex of racists and homophobes is pathetic.

So I hope that Meghan, who is a beautiful woman and could make a super and popular princess, will defy the haters and have a long and happy marriage and be much loved. Her presence will help all of us who, through no fault of ours, don't fit a narrow mould. Maybe it's wrong of me to appropriate her in this way for the benefit of trans women, but her being embraced by the establishment sends a much-needed signal to the haters.

Sue x