When Queen Elizabeth II ascended the British throne in 1952, her empire from the West Indies to the Far East was in its final stages of decline, having lost the crown’s leading dominion, India, five years prior.

Having reigned for 70 years, she was the longest-serving of any British monarch, beating Queen Victoria’s 63 years. Just this spring, she celebrated a Platinum Jubilee in 2022, marked by four days of festivities. If the two queens were widely popular figureheads, both seen as national grandmothers by the end of their reigns, they ruled over very different Britains. Queen Victoria oversaw a period of industrial and military change – and the rapid expansion of the British Empire to global domination.

Queen Elizabeth oversaw the empire’s diminishment and Britain’s struggle to define itself in the postwar era from a superpower to a bit nation in the British Isles. Her death, at the age of 96, comes at a time of great uncertainty with war having returned to Europe, a major economic crisis looming and threatening to plunge many into poverty, and turbulence in British politics in the wake of Brexit and the pandemic.

Yet through all of the tumult that has led to so much self-reflection in British society about the country’s place in the world, Queen Elizabeth’s legacy has been to maintain a sense of forward-moving purpose – and faith that the monarchy itself serves a purpose – when pessimism and insecurity could have caused Britons to turn their backs.

AP/File

Princess Elizabeth (right), as a teenager, appears with her sister Princess Margaret before giving her first radio broadcast in London on Oct. 13, 1940.

She accepted the weight of decolonization – which hung so heavily over her father, King George VI, who lost India during his rule – and turned it into a positive force in the shape of the Commonwealth of Nations. In doing so, she embraced a changing Britain, both as it became a multiracial, multicultural society at home, and as it found a place on the global stage. The grouping of former dependencies was her beloved project from its earliest inception. Within five months of her coronation, she embarked on the most ambitious Royal Tour of the Commonwealth the world had yet seen. She kicked off her Diamond Jubilee 60 years later in the city of Leicester, Britain’s most diverse. That was no coincidence.

Ultimately, Queen Elizabeth managed to keep opinions of the monarchy steady, despite internal sagas and mishaps. In an age in which mainstream politics has fallen victim to the protest against the status quo, the ancient monarchy – the epitome of the establishment – is as popular as ever, so much so that it’s easy to forget that the monarchy is actually “a fragile institution,” says Philip Murphy, professor of British and Commonwealth History at the University of London.

Without Queen Elizabeth, he says, the monarchy’s march into the modern era could never have been so seamless. “What we have had since 1952 is a monarch perfectly attuned to the kind of needs and role of a modern constitutional monarch,” he says. “You can’t take the monarchy for granted. It’s got to be reinvented the whole time.”

Elizabeth was born in 1926 and never expected to take the throne. But all of that changed when her uncle King Edward VIII abdicated to marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson, leaving her father as king.

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King George V, Princess Elizabeth waving to the crowd, and Her Majesty Queen Mary appear on the balcony of Buckingham Palace in London on May 6, 1935, after attending the Jubilee service at St. Paul's Cathedral.

Elizabeth’s natural inclination for order, which her nanny noted in the 1950s, was shaken by the constitutional and family crisis. The abdication, and her deep spirituality, fortified her sense of mission and dedication. At age 21 she solemnly made a speech to the Commonwealth: “I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great Imperial family to which we all belong.”

It was only four years later that she became queen, a role she assumed without question for nearly three-quarters of her life. While she was initially seen as boring and uninspired, over time these traits were redefined as constant and unflinching, her most enduring strengths. “Boring can be comforting,” says Karina Urbach, a biographer of Queen Victoria. “You can rely on her appearing on TV at Christmas, always calm and composed. Some people need that.”

As a young queen, her first prime minister was Winston Churchill. Since then she has held weekly audiences with 14 additional heads of government (as she did with Liz Truss, appointed by the queen at Balmoral, her private retreat in Scotland, just days before her death). Most Britons were not alive when she took the throne and thus can’t separate their views of the monarchy from the queen herself, says Roger Mortimore, director of political analysis at Ipsos MORI. The firm has been conducting polls since the 1990s, and they have remained consistently favorable of her. The last, in May 2022, conducted for her Platinum Jubilee showed 86% of respondents saying they are satisfied with the way the queen did her job, while 68% favor Britain remaining as a monarchy. This represents little change over the past two decades.

Queen Elizabeth II has not just ruled the transition from empire to small nation, but from backwater economy thwarted by statism and unionism to a world-leading entrepreneurial and financial center, and from a conservative and class-based society to one that has embraced liberal social policies.

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Maoris of the northern part of the South Island dressed in traditional costume to welcome Queen Elizabeth II when she visited Ship Cove, Queen Charlotte Sound, on March 15, 1970. Ship Cove was Captain Cook's favorite anchorage in New Zealand waters, and the Royal occasion saw an enactment of a landing by Cook and an exchange between him and Maoris of the area.

For many of her subjects, she, as a symbol, “holds together everything we feel good about and that makes us feel good about ourselves,” says Professor Mortimore. “Part of why it works and part of her popularity is that we recognize a little bit of ourselves in her. At the same time we can see some things that aren’t there enough that we wish were there and that we admire in her, [like] the dedication and hard work that’s gone into being queen for so long.”

It is not that Queen Elizabeth did not have to navigate the bumpy turns and twists of the 20th and 21st centuries. The royal family has lived through sagas and scandals, many involving her own children and their marital woes. Her own marriage was not without contention – she married the late Prince Philip, with whom she fell in love when she was 13, and he was never a man who easily conformed. Still, none of his well-documented frank talk seemed to impact opinions of her.

Her biggest personal mishap was seen in her choices after the death of Princess Diana in 1997 in a car crash in Paris. Initially the queen stayed in Balmoral, her estate in Scotland, with her grandchildren Prince William and Prince Harry. Her family argued that this protected them from the media spotlight after their mother’s death. But she was portrayed as aloof and uncaring, a rare flash of public anger directed at the House of Windsor.

She quickly changed tack, coming to London to walk among the throngs of flowers that mourners placed in Diana’s memory. It marked the beginning of the royal family’s adaptation to the 24/7 media scrutiny, which has only become more intrusive in the age of social media.

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Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, view the floral tributes and other mementos to the late Diana, Princess of Wales, at London's Buckingham Palace, Sept. 5 1997. Princess Diana died in a car crash in Paris a few days earlier on Aug. 31.

Yet the changing media landscape has served to highlight the queen’s ability to stay above the political fray.

More scandals followed in the final years of her life. Diana’s son Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, walked away from their royal duties and relocated to the United States in 2020, before giving a controversially televised interview about it to Oprah Winfrey in 2021. Both Harry and Meghan made allegations against “the firm,” including comments made about the skin color of their first child Archie. While sections of Britain’s tabloids showed much hostility to the pair, the queen maintained her relationship with her grandson and reportedly showed a degree of sympathy to his young family.

That does not seem to have extended to her son, Prince Andrew, mired in allegations of involvement within the social circles of convicted sex offenders Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. While he has denied those allegations, Andrew was forced to step away from his royal titles, duties, and patronages, a decision most likely enforced by his mother.

The queen’s final years were also marked by loss. The death of Prince Philip during the COVID-19 pandemic showed the first signs of her vulnerability and fragility – alone by her husband’s casket as she said her goodbyes under “social distancing” rules. At that moment, she came to symbolize many of the agonies people faced during the pandemic up and down the country. Even during a moment of personal grief, the queen observed rules flouted by her then prime minister, Boris Johnson, bringing her closer to the hearts and minds of her people.

Despite the constant attention on the family, the public barely knew anything about her – aside from a public love of dogs and horse racing. “That has been her secret sauce,” says Sally Bedell Smith, who has written extensively about the royal family. The queen has managed to keep her own opinions and those of the people around her about the most mundane issues private.

AP/File

South African President Nelson Mandela stands with Britain Queen Elizabeth II on his arrival at Buckingham Palace, in London, for a state banquet in his honor, July 9, 1996.

Throughout much of her reign she was overshadowed by more excitable – and exciting – members of the royal family. It was her own mother who dazzled crowds and monopolized press coverage, as well as her sister, Princess Margaret, and later Princess Diana. It was only after the queen mother’s death in 2002, says Ms. Bedell Smith, that the queen’s relationship to the people seemed to shift.

“There was something that happened when she was coming back from Westminster Hall where her mother’s casket was on display, ... and as she drove through Parliament Square, there was this spontaneous burst of applause,” she says. “It was a moment when the respect and admiration for her shifted over into genuine love. … At that moment she became the beloved grandmother figure.”

From then on Queen Elizabeth softened: smiling more, loosening up, letting some of her reported quick wit, seen in private, more visibly show. With the widely adored marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, Ms. Bedell Smith says the queen relaxed more, perhaps confident in the longevity of the monarchy in a post-Elizabethan world.

But not everyone is sure about the future of the monarchy without Queen Elizabeth at its head.

Dr. Murphy notes that the monarchy is always at its most popular when there is broad political consensus in the U.K. But the Britain left by Queen Elizabeth is perhaps as riven as it has been since the 1980s and the union-busting era of Margaret Thatcher. Hard divisions have formed between generations, first over Brexit and now with rising inequality and political strife.

Jane Barlow/Reuters

Britain's Queen Elizabeth waits in the Drawing Room at Balmoral Castle in Scotland before receiving Liz Truss for an audience, where she invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become prime minister and form a new government, Sept. 6, 2022.

While a change on the throne – especially when Prince William succeeds his less popular father, the now ascendant King Charles III – might bring a breath of fresh air to the royal family, for now it is still associated with older, stiff-upper-lipped Britain.

Outside Britain, the queen’s Commonwealth has been overshadowed by other intergovernmental organizations, such as the European Union, at the same time that anti-colonial sentiment has grown in former colonies. The Commonwealth might not find itself as cohesive without the unifying force and passion of the queen at the head.

Indeed, without its queen, Britain could learn just how fragile its monarchy really is.

Editor's note: The original version misstated how many prime ministers served during Queen Elizabeth's reign.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent announcement that Moscow must increase the size of its military was greeted as good news – not by his supporters, but rather by those who are rooting for Ukraine. 

It’s a sign, they say, that Mr. Putin’s war isn’t going well for him. 

This point was driven home by the development this summer that officials from the Wagner Group – the Russian government’s defense contractor of choice – were offering prisoners parole in exchange for fighting on the front lines.

“It’s a sign of desperation,” says retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe. “These are not the kind of people who will show up and contribute to the fighting capability of any Russian unit.”

This is not bad news from the perspective of Ukrainian forces, though the use of prisoners also raises the risk of more Russian war crimes, analysts add.

Yet as the war grinds on, it’s clear that Mr. Putin is anxious to avoid bringing the protracted conflict to the attention of the greater Russian public, which has, up to this point, largely been able to continue life as usual. The question is whether he will be able to carry on with this domestic shielding strategy moving forward.

A draft would mean “pulling people from Moscow and St. Petersburg – and they don’t want to have funerals there,” Mr. Hodges says. “Politically, it would be extremely difficult for even the Kremlin to explain all that.”

Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik/Kremlin/AP

In Moscow Russian President Vladimir Putin (center) and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff, observe the Vostok 2022 military exercise in far-eastern Russia, Sept. 6, 2022. The weeklong exercises are intended to showcase growing defense ties, especially between Russia and China, and also demonstrate that Moscow has enough troops and equipment to conduct the drills.

Vietnam War and classism, racism 

America learned from its own experience that drafts tend to cause political problems – and that conscripts generally don’t make the best soldiers. 

During the Vietnam War, soldiers pressed into service “brought in attitudes and behaviors that were contrary to good order and discipline,” including drug use and insubordination, says Brandon Archuleta, an Army strategist and an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

That said, these were behaviors often linked to outrage in the face of unfairness in the draft system, including classism and racism, analysts note. 

Indeed, such charges helped serve as catalysts for the anti-war movement. While 12% of the U.S. Army was Black, for example, soldiers of color represented 24% of casualties. 

It was an injustice Martin Luther King Jr. emphasized in meetings with President Lyndon Johnson. “It was the reason [Dr. King] was so concerned about the war,” says Ron Milam, an associate professor of history at Texas Tech University, who served in the Vietnam War.

“He said, ‘What the [heck]? Why are we dying at double the rate?’”

The closest America came to opening up service to prisoners was when young men who burned their draft cards – or predominantly Black men who had committed minor crimes – were given the chance to ship out to Vietnam to avoid jail.

After draft lotteries were put in place in 1969 in an effort to address unfairness in the system, privileged conscripts outraged at their own predicaments also started asking pointed questions about why America was at war in the first place.

Conscription tends to inspire myriad such questions, analysts note, unless the nation sees itself as facing an existential threat, as with the United States in World War II.

Alexandr Kulikov/AP

Russian army soldiers march in support of soldiers in Ukraine, at the Mamayev Kurgan, a World War II memorial in Volgograd, Russia, July 11, 2022. President Vladimir Putin last month ordered the military to increase the size of its armed forces by 137,000.

A number of zealous armchair Russian commentators are now pushing Mr. Putin to create a draft, arguing that Russia is indeed facing just such a threat in Ukraine – an argument in keeping with the official Kremlin line. 

Mr. Putin, however, is well aware of the political turmoil conscriptions tend to cause. 

Though votes are less a concern for Mr. Putin as a means of retaining power, it is likely not lost on him that “conscripts usually vote against those who conscripted them,” Professor Milam notes.

At the same time, military leaders don’t like drafts either, and in the wake of Vietnam, the top echelons of Pentagon leadership fought to put in place an all-volunteer force, which ultimately happened in 1973.

By the Reagan-era defense buildup, “You see morale, good order, and jumps in the right direction in the Army,” Dr. Archuleta says. 

In an all-volunteer force, there may be “all kinds of reasons for joining – for money, you need a job,” Professor Milam adds. “But at least you raised your hand of your own volition. In a conscript Army, you don’t want to do it – but your country is making you.” 

OK with war, but not wanting to fight

Though figures show that Russian support for war remains high – hovering at around 76% of respondents in favor, according to the Russian independent polling organization Levada – that doesn’t mean that Russians actually want to fight in it.  

When Ukrainian forces struck an air base deep inside enemy lines in Crimea last month, it sent thousands of seemingly surprised Russian tourists in swimsuits rushing from their beach cabanas to their cars, filling jammed roads along the coast.

“They hauled [themselves] out of there while Russian soldiers were dying a few miles away,” Mr. Hodges says. “They weren’t going to the local recruiting office saying, ‘Hey, I want to get into the fight.’”

Though Russia requires all men between ages 18 and 27 to serve one year in the military, the government has promised that these recruits would not be sent to the “special military operation” in Ukraine – though it acknowledged that did indeed happen “by mistake” earlier in the war. 

Still, many educated and connected citizens – not to mention sons of oligarchs – in the cosmopolitan centers manage to get out of this mandatory military service, claiming health exemptions or student deferments. 

A draft that impacts the big cities could prove “terribly embarrassing when the whole world sees that so many people wouldn’t show up” in the face of mass conscription, says Mr. Hodges. 

It would be discomfiting, too, he adds, to establish a draft for a campaign the Kremlin insists is not a war at all. 

At the same time, the Russian military will be hard-pressed to grow its ranks by 137,000, as Mr. Putin says the country intends to do.

While government officials claim to have 900,000 troops, “they don’t have what we call ‘faces in places,’” Mr. Hodges adds, estimating that the Russian military is currently at 60% to 70% of its official capacity. 

“They’ll never get there – they can’t even fill their units now,” Mr. Hodges says. 

Conscription would be a further admission of failure for Mr. Putin.

“The challenge politically that the Russians have is signaling to the Russian populace that the war is going well and as planned – while trying to replenish their depleted forces on the front,” Dr. Archuleta says. “You can’t call up conscripts without leveling with your populace that the war isn’t going well.”

This, analysts say, is what Mr. Putin is trying to avoid at all costs.

Frank Augstein/AP

British Prime Minister Liz Truss holds her first Cabinet meeting inside No. 10 Downing Street in London, Sept. 7, 2022, the day after being installed as prime minister. She was elected the Conservative Party leader in a purely internal vote involving 180,000 party members, or just 0.3% of the electorate.

It’s a tale of two women, and two political triumphs, a continent apart.

But their starkly different routes to victory highlight a conundrum facing the world’s most durable democracies, America and Britain: whether they should reform their electoral systems to attract more voters and encourage voices of compromise across partisan divides.

That’s unlikely to happen anytime soon; the two main parties in each country have too much self-interest in retaining a system hardwired to maintain their power and limit third-party challengers.

Yet reform advocates point to the steep potential costs of inaction: an increasingly angry partisan divide that has left growing numbers of people feeling politically disconnected, disillusioned, and unrepresented.

Liz Truss this week won the leadership of the British Conservative Party, and hence the prime minister’s job, in a purely internal party vote involving 180,000 party members, or just 0.3% of the electorate.

In contrast, the recent election victory of a lesser-known Alaskan politician – Mary Peltola – highlighted one variety of the less skewed electoral systems long favored by other democracies around the world, including 40 of Europe’s 43 countries.

Alaska has broken with the U.S., and British, norm of winner-take-all elections in favor of so-called ranked choice voting. Voters don’t just choose a single candidate, with the seat going to the person who comes first even if the “winner” falls far short of an absolute majority.

They list, in order of preference, whom they’d want if their favorite candidate doesn’t get at least half the votes.

Kerry Tasker/Reuters

Democrat Mary Peltola at a temporary office space in downtown Anchorage, Alaska, hours after she won Alaska’s special U.S. House election, Aug. 31, 2022. The election used ranked choice voting, in which voters list, in order of preference, whom they’d want if their favorite candidate doesn’t get at least half the votes.

In the recent election to fill Alaska’s seat in the House of Representatives, Ms. Peltola – a longtime Democratic Party state legislator with a record of working across party lines – did outpoll her opponents, former Republican governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and a more moderate Republican, Nick Begich.

But Ms. Peltola won around 40% of the vote. Ms. Palin got 31% and Mr. Begich 29%. So the second-choice votes were counted.

If enough of Mr. Begich’s supporters had made his fellow Republican, Ms. Palin, their second choice, she would have won.

Instead, nearly a third preferred Ms. Peltola, choosing a voice of compromise over strident partisanship, something polls have suggested chimes with millions of other voters.

Yet such voices are being marginalized in both the U.S. and Britain, where the major parties are bitterly at odds, disinclined to cooperate, and confident that the existing system protects them from any serious challenge to their hold on national politics.

Alaska-style ranked voting, or any other version of the system used in over 80 democracies around the world, would threaten that duopoly.

It’s known as proportional representation.

It takes different forms in different countries, but the core principle is to match seats in national legislatures as nearly as possible with the share of votes each party actually receives at the polls. The idea is to make parliaments better reflect the way the voters voted.

This isn’t just of theoretical interest. In the 2019 British election, which gave the Conservatives a big majority, Britain’s main third party, the centrist Liberal Democrats, won 11% of the national vote. Under the first-past-the-post system, that gave them just 11 seats in the 650 member House of Commons.

Under proportional representation, they would have won 71 seats.

In the U.S., the potential implications are obvious: A third party such as the recently announced Forward Party, seeking to attract moderate Democrats and Republicans, seems to have little chance of winning congressional races against the two main parties.

But if the system enabled the party to win seats in line with the actual number of votes it won nationwide, it might look like a much more attractive proposition.

That’s one reason why none of the major parties, on either side of the Atlantic, thinks proportional representation is any good.

The parties also raise a substantive objection: that it would undermine the stability and strong government that the current system provides.

There’s merit in that argument. Proportional representation does often leave no single party with a parliamentary majority, resulting in coalition governments that can sometimes prove unstable.

But the flip side – one Ms. Peltola’s voters would presumably welcome – is that the results force parties, even ones with deep differences, to come together, cooperate, and compromise in the shared responsibility of governing.

Courtesy of Young OUT Here

Crowds gather at the 14th edition of Singapore's biggest pride celebration event, Pink Dot, at Hong Lim Park on June 18, 2022, after a two-year pandemic hiatus. Singapore recently announced plans to repeal a colonial-era ban on gay sex, sparking celebration among LGBTQ communities across the city-state.

For years, Azimin Saini struggled to sing Singapore’s national anthem with pride. 

As a gay man, Mr. Azimin says his home country has long regarded him as a criminal, but on Aug. 21, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced Singapore would scrap Section 377A of the penal code, a colonial-era law from the 1930s that criminalizes sex between men. The widely anticipated move effectively legalizes homosexuality in Singapore.

“I don’t think there was a single gay Singaporean man who didn’t weep. Section 377A was the guillotine over all our heads. It made us feel a little less human, a little less welcome in this nation,” says Mr. Azimin, a branding and content specialist.

Under Section 377A, offenders could be jailed for up to two years, although the law has not been actively enforced in years.

The move is lauded by the LGBTQ community globally and rights advocates in the Southeast Asian nation. However, the change comes with a catch. In a compromise with conservative and religious groups, Singapore will also be revising its constitution to protect the definition of marriage between a man and a woman, creating significant hurdles for marriage equality.

This will make it impossible for LGBTQ advocates to mount constitutional challenges in the courts, like those that led to the legalization of same-sex marriage in Taiwan, the first country in Asia to do so, and in the United States.

Writer and LGBTQ rights activist Ng Yi-Sheng says that for LGBTQ communities and allies, the challenge will be rethinking the path to equality. “The way [lawmakers] have constructed a big barrier to marriage makes a lot of people think we should be fighting for marriage, but there are all these other less flashy things we can fight for that can also materially improve lives,” he says.

He adds that Singapore’s two-pronged approach could have far-reaching consequences, noting that the city-state is often regarded as a model for developing nations and Section 377 remains in force in other former British colonies in Asia such as Malaysia, Brunei, Myanmar, and Bangladesh.

Courtesy of Ng Yi-Sheng

Writer and LGBTQ rights activist Ng Yi-Sheng hopes that “time and exposure” will help Singaporeans become more comfortable with LGBTQ people.

Searching for a compromise

Singapore’s pragmatic brand of secularism, which guarantees freedom of religion while also ensuring that religious views have a place in public life, is an increasingly tough balancing act for a country keen to position itself as an inclusive global business hub. In the same speech where Mr. Lee announced that repealing 377A “is the right thing to do” and “something that most Singaporeans will now accept,” he also vowed to “uphold and safeguard the institution of marriage” through constitutional amendment.

“This will help us to repeal Section 377A in a controlled and carefully considered way,” he added. 

The proposed amendment gives Parliament the power to determine the definition of marriage, which forms the basis of many policies in Singapore from media content and advertising standards to public housing, education, and adoption.

It’s less extreme than enshrining the heterosexual definition directly into the constitution, as requested by some religious groups. Yet, with the conservative People’s Action Party holding a supermajority in government, marriage equality is not likely to happen in the near future.

For some queer couples, the compromise is a stark reminder that they still face significant barriers to equality.

“What matters is that my partner and I can be recognized as a legal unit, because there are very real issues at stake here,” says Mr. Azimin. “Can we buy a house together as a couple rather than as two unrelated singles? When one of us passes away, what happens then?”

LGBTQ counseling nonprofit Oogachaga responded in a statement that “there is no need for families and marriage to be protected from the LGBTQ community, as many of us are already in them.”

But in a country known for its conservative values, Mr. Lee’s announcement still came as a welcome surprise to many Singaporeans.

“Actually, I think the government is brave about this,” says content editor Dorothy Tan. “I’m a moderate, so I don’t expect sweeping changes overnight. It makes sense that it is a series of compromises – as long as it is in the direction of tolerance.” 

“If the government is committed to going down this path,” the mother of two young children opines, “it should think of alternative legal partnerships to reduce discrimination against gay couples without antagonizing people who are so caught up in what ‘marriage’ is.”

Imagining the path to equality

Despite the marriage setback, for LGBTQ rights advocates, the repeal of 377A marks a long-overdue, pivotal moment after decades of advocacy. More than 20 LGBTQ groups issued a joint statement, calling it “the first step on a long road towards full equality.”

Courtesy of Young OUT Here

Henry Kwek, from the People's Action Party, became the first member of Parliament to attend Pink Dot on June 18, 2022. Despite growing acceptance for LGBTQ people in Singapore, his party has vowed to uphold the traditional definition of marriage.

Moving forward, co-founder of LGBTQ youth group Young OUT Here Benjamin Xue believes it will be key to establish a common space for religious conservatives and the LGBTQ community to talk frankly about Singapore’s future. “Right now we’ve seen a lot of hurtful rhetoric coming from religious conservatives, invalidating our lived experiences, hurt, and trauma,” he says. “LGBTQ people are religious too, and are also a part of Singapore’s social fabric.”

Despite the government asserting that policies on media content will not change, the LGBTQ community still harbors the hope that the repeal will pave the way for better media representation.

“Accurate portrayals and representation on mainstream media will allow LGBTQ youth to imagine a brighter future for themselves,” says Mr. Xue, “and at the same time let the mainstream majority understand the LGBTQ community a little better, creating more opportunities for empathy.”

Mr. Ng, the writer and rights activist, agrees. “I think for a lot of people, there’s discomfort because of unfamiliarity,” he says. “It’s a similar discomfort when there’s a new form of music or technology. A lot of people still don’t have gay friends. Older generations are also more reluctant to openly express or support it. Time and exposure will change this.”

He also hopes the repeal will make more people in prominent and influential positions feel comfortable about coming out to show “straight people that there’s nothing shameful being queer.”

When asked to describe what growing up is like, the young people in the opening credits of a new Disney+ series use words like unpredictable, a chance to change the world, tumultuous, cringey, confusing, messy, beautiful, and mandatory.

“Growing Up,” debuting today, features the stories of 10 young people – culled from hundreds – talking about everything from race and gender identity to depression to advocating for often-taboo subjects like period poverty, or the lack of access to menstrual products. 

The show is the brainchild of actor Brie Larson, who pondered the ways shame can affect people and wondered about telling stories about those feelings to help others feel less alone. The “Captain Marvel” star sought out a production company to partner with on her vision for a coming-of-age series, and landed at Culture House Media.

The head of production there, Nicole Galovski, and Ms. Larson are two of the executive producers of the show, and both are among the directors. The showrunners sought out directors for each episode who have had similar life experiences to the young people being profiled, whom they call “heroes.” The shows include a mix of first-person interviews, with each hero and their relatives, and reenactments of key events. 

Writer Gregory Wakeman recently spoke to Ms. Galovski about the series, telling new coming-of-age stories, and the importance of opening up about our vulnerabilities. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

During the opening credit sequence, Amiri says, “We have the power and responsibility,” and Sage says, “We deserve to be heard.” Why was it so important to have those sayings front and center?

I think that’s a huge piece of where we are at culturally right now. As far as that being in the opening sequence, it really speaks to the stories. In the show, you’re going to hear from people that are advocating for themselves. You’re hearing the stories of activists. I don’t think that’s all there is to their stories. I think their stories are extremely personal. But I do think that advocacy is a huge pillar right now in Gen Z culture. That’s what’s happening in our world.

Anthony Artis/Disney

Executive producers guiding the series “Growing Up” are (left to right) Carri Twigg, Brie Larson, Raeshem Nijhon, and Nicole Galovski.

What was missing from conversations about growing up and adolescence that you wanted to address and bring to a wider audience?

I mean, what isn’t missing? The standard coming-of-age stories that we’re used to hearing are from a certain type of performance and a certain demographic. We thought that it would be great to come from a lot of different perspectives and backgrounds that you’re not used to seeing.

Season 1 deals with colorism, disability, ableism, mental health, and being in the LGBTQ community. When we were in development a few years ago, these stories were few and far between on screen. We wanted to be as authentic as possible. There are a lot of coming-of-age stories about adolescence. But they’re from a pretty dramatized standpoint. We just wanted to be real, while still getting to the dramatic things that happened to us.

We also wanted to keep joy at the center of the show. So it wasn’t just a show about trauma, but a show about how everybody goes through this growing up process and how we deal with the things that have happened to us.

How involved was each hero in the dramatization of their story?

The heroes were incredibly involved. We knew that, in order to be vulnerable and to share [their] story, they couldn’t really be hands off. We didn’t really want them to be. We wanted to make sure that they were still very much the authors of their own stories. We were just helping them bring it to life and give it more of a narrative arc. ... All the way through, they were part of the collaboration.

What can older viewers learn from the show?

Brie and I have been joking that we made the show for young people, but we actually think it’s for us and anybody in their mid-30s and beyond. Reflecting back on our own coming-of-age experiences is so relatable, regardless of the specific circumstances. Those underlying human feelings of what we all go through are the same.

I think the parents are the unsung heroes. Just how they were able to articulate their support for their kids as they were going through what they were going through. Young people will get a lot from directly correlating with the experience that’s on the screen. But adults will also get a lot out of watching, because the genre itself is so universal.

It’s a really interesting intergenerational experience. It’s a really great conversation starter. You get to see what other parents have done when their kids have encountered some of these issues.

What do you want audiences to take away from “Growing Up”?

Even though everyone is the most connected they’ve ever been in human history, the prevalence of loneliness is just skyrocketing. We hope that young people will resonate with the stories that they’re hearing. We hope that other people that have had similar experiences, and felt similar things, will feel less alone. Hopefully, it will make them realize that they don’t have to carry that burden.

“Growing Up” is available to stream on Disney+. The series is rated TV-PG. 

Reuters

Guests visit the 3-2-1 Qatar Olympic and Sports Museum in Doha, Qatar, Aug. 24.

Despite their friendly ties with Iran – in contrast to no diplomatic ties with Israel – leaders of the tiny Arab state of Qatar held secret meetings in recent weeks with Israeli officials. The topic wasn’t political but very practical.

Can Israel set up a consular office during the 2022 World Cup, which starts Nov. 20 in Qatar, to assist the more than 15,000 Israeli soccer fans who bought tickets for the world’s most widely viewed sporting event?

Only three months ago – under pressure from soccer’s governing body, FIFA – Qatar finally agreed to allow Israeli fans to attend the monthlong tournament. In return, Israel agreed to allow commercial flights from Europe over its territory to and from the Gulf state. The issue of a temporary Israeli office in the capital, Doha, is still hanging.

In another sign of how the universal joy of sports can melt the hearts of the most hardened leaders, Iran agreed in August to let Iranian women attend a soccer match between two domestic teams for the first time since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. That move was also a result of pressure from FIFA.

“The World Cup is magical in that it brings people together, is such a uniting event, and transcends every notion of negativity,” said Gianni Infantino, president of FIFA, during a visit to Israel last year.

In hosting the World Cup – the first country in the Middle East to do so – Qatar had hoped to simply gain international prestige and cement its role as regional mediator. Yet as almost every place has discovered since the ancient Olympics, athletic events have a way of touching people across geopolitical rivalries and opening doors that traditional diplomacy cannot.

“Nowhere has the diffusion and redistribution of political and economic power in our globalizing world had more visibility than in international sport,” wrote J. Simon Rofe, author of the 2018 book “Sport and Diplomacy: Games Within Games.”

As one of the most popular sports in the Middle East, soccer already serves to bond people across borders despite sharp differences over religion, history, and ethnicity. In 2018, two years before the United Arab Emirates officially recognized Israel, it allowed the Israeli flag to be shown during sporting events. In time, Qatar might also recognize Israel. Athletes, along with their fans, are often the best diplomats for peace.