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Alan Turing Likely To Be Given Posthumous Pardon
pegdhcp writes with news that the UK government has signaled its intent to support a bill that would issue a posthumous pardon to Alan Turing, who is known for his work in defeating the German Enigma code machines in World War II and widely considered the father of computer science. Turing was charged with and convicted of "gross indecency" in 1952 for being gay. He was sentenced to chemical castration, and he committed suicide two years later.
"The announcement marks a change of heart by the government, which declined last year to grant pardons to the 49,000 gay men, now dead, who were convicted under the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act. They include Oscar Wilde. ... [Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon] told peers: "Alan Turing himself believed that homosexual activity would be made legal by a royal commission. In fact, appropriately, it was parliament which decriminalized the activity for which he was convicted. The government are very aware of the calls to pardon Turing, given his outstanding achievements, and have great sympathy with this objective That is why the government believe it is right that parliament should be free to respond to this bill in whatever way its conscience dictates and in whatever way it so wills."
Microsoft's Bill Gates, the worlds richest man and a former boy scout, wants the boy scouts to lift the gay ban. Gates said he had enjoyed being a Scout. When Allen turned the conversation to the organization's ban on gay members and leaders, Gates said the policy "absolutely" needed to be scrapped. "Why," prodded Allen. "Because it's 2013," Gates replied, prompting a spontaneous burst of boisterous applause from the audience.
ThinkProgress notes that Gates has shown his support for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) equality measures in the past, donating hundreds of thousands of dollars toward the Washington state marriage equality campaign.
The Boy Scouts has come under increasing fire lately for its longstanding ban on gay members, with poll numbers and a host of celebrities lending support to the cause.
He gets pardoned for his "outstanding achievements". Yet again, it isn't the Rule of Law or ethics that rules Britain, but fame. If you are famous, you get off. And if you are not famous and the law is horribly immoral, then you are fucked.
The government argues that they can't pardon everyone because it would open the floodgates for anyone convicted of any crime subsequently legalized to ask for the same. To my mind that's a lame excuse for not pardoning every gay man convicted of this one specific crime.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Why let them clear their conscious now?
Them?, the people and society responsible for his conviction are long gone (admittedly with ageing straggling remnants in places) so if any of the current batch of politicos are countenancing this action, it has bugger all to do with conscience (as it wasn't on their watch he was convicted and hounded) and has more to do with both appearing to be politically sensitive/correct (Read: spin) and, as a fringe benefit, a desperate attempt to try win a percentage of the 'Gay' vote.
It doesn't help him any.
Indeed, in a lot of respects, it's better for the conviction to stand as a bloody reminder of how intolerant we were once.
These post humorous pardons, and official decision changes, are stupid.
Last year The government officially voted to not send Japanese citizens to the internment camps during WWII.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
...to clear Turing of having an official criminal record. The law and the criminal justice system regard you as a criminal if you break a law, whether that was a "good" law or a "bad" law. Essentially, under the legal system, there can't be any such thing as a law that's invalid because it's bad; that would undermine the whole idea of what law is. So what the pardon does is erase Turing's record of being a criminal lawbreaker without making any statement about the validity of the law he broke. That is something that can be done without undermining the very idea of law itself.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Society was better when "The state is mother, the state is father" were just words on a page.
Next year the US can retroactively free all the slaves and claim that therefore there was never a slavery problem.
Geeks are the ones explaining in detail what GCHQ has been recording on Brits. Geeks are the ones who thought Turing was given a bad deal. So this is a fob to pretend that Cameron is somehow the friend of geeks, even as he's destroying the privacy right and making 'democracy' a joke word.
Seriously, fuck off Cameron, you were elected to fix the surveillance state, no token honor to Turing will fix what you've done Cameron, *no*, what you're *doing* Cameron. It's on-going. We get it, we voted for your to end the surveillance state and you let the policy decided by New Labour lead you. You are not a leader sir, you are an embarrassment.
Fuck off and resign. Turing would be ashamed to see how computers have been turned against the voters. Do you think he made a machine that could be used to persecute him? No.
Many people think Turing cracked Enigma, but this is only partially true.
The Poles were the first to crack Enigma. Turing's lot later cracked naval Enigma. It took the capture of a downed U-boat to crack an updated naval Enigma.
I'm sure that will make him feel better.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I think it's meaningless and a waste of time. The people in charge today didn't commit the offense, and if you want to address past offenses in UK history, a more important place to start would be at Smithfield anyway. I am more in favor of finding people whose rights are being violated today and doing something about that.
I then spend time with open mined smart people when I get sick and tired of the ignorant, bigots, and Bible thumpers.
I am horrified at your embrace of environmentally unsound mineral extraction practices.
... because his suicide was a direct result of his prosecution and punishment. So unless they can return Alan Turing to life this pardon doesn't mean shit.
Society was happier when people were focused on family and behaved in a (relatively) chaste manner.
Part of maintaining that structure requires a clear sexual values system, including a sense of what is normal.
When we go pluralistic, or make "anything goes" the new normal, this traditional order is threatened.
While I will never support the persecution of someone for being quietly gay, I think a lot of the excesses of that time were designed to counter-act the rising sexual liberation movement.
You suffer from the terrible misapprehension that there is such thing as "normal" when it comes to human sexuality, and that people have ever done anything more than pretend to conform to your mythical "chaste" behaviors. All of recorded history shows us that A) human sexuality is a spectrum that has always included things like homosexuality and B) humans are really not very good at being "chaste".
Also, last time I checked there were an awful lot of people inhabiting those "happier" time periods you refer to who were not happy at all. Quite the opposite in fact, since they were busy being persecuted for what they felt was perfectly normal.
It certainly sounds very much like you do support the persecution of anyone who doesn't fit your personal definition of "normal" or threatens your idea of harmonious social order.
More on topic: This whole thing with pardoning just Alan Turing because he happened to be a genius and helped to win a war makes me want to puke. If the law and the resulting persecution was wrong they should be apologizing and pardoning every single person who was ever prosecuted under that law. Not just Turing. What, those 49,000 others aren't good enough for a pardon? They weren't genius enough to earn an apology for being persecuted? Give me a break. If it was wrong, it was wrong. Otherwise it's just favoritism.
this is just a waste of parliamentary time, time that should be spent solving current problems and dealing with extant matters. The crown can pardon Turing and all others convicted of this crime - and they can do so without wasting the time of the legislature. They could, for example, debate how "austerity" is based on bad maths and the current spending cuts are actually worsening the situation and putting more and more people beyond the ability to feed themselves, but no, they waste time on this.
"... We both pray for an hour, and see if God can tell the difference." - The Long War by Pratchett and Baxter.
So unless they can return Alan Turing to life this pardon doesn't mean shit.
What is means is that the people in power are pandering to those currently living in the hopes of getting future votes.
how can you tell if a 6 year old is gay?
Ask his mother...?
Moms know.
No sig today...
This might be an unpopular sentiment, but why.
Don't get me wrong, I am all for sexual equality, and have nothing against gay people. But why go through and change history. At the time, it was considered illegal, and the world was a much more conservative place. Pardoning him posthumously does nothing for him, and only makes the current generation of politicians and people feel good and they did something, which in reality has no real meaning.
It is like South Africa, where I grew up. Today, they are changing all the street names, removing all the monuments of the past, removing historical references all over the place. Just because you hide your past, does not change your history.....
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
Duh, it's because they like Barbie dolls and dressing sharply.
Because males who like other males want to spend all their time looking at naked plastic women.
support a bill that would issue a posthumous pardon to Alan Turing ... was charged with and convicted of "gross indecency" in 1952 for being gay.
The announcement marks a change of heart by the government, which declined last year to grant pardons to the 49,000 gay men, now dead, who were convicted under the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act.
One down, 48,999 pardons to go.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Indeed, in a lot of respects, it's better for the conviction to stand as a bloody reminder of how intolerant we are.
FTFY
Don't think that because some gay people get to have the joy of marriage and subsequent divorce that we are now post-intolerance.
Pardoning a dead person of a no longer illegal act when everyone is in favor of it is more like moral masturbation. I guess it has to be done or someone might blow their top, but you didn't actually get anywhere with anyone else.
Moms know.
Sometimes they do, sometimes they blissfully put up blinders and pretend that nothing's happening. When I told my mom I was a lesbian, her first words were "no you aren't", and it was 5 years and many girlfriends later that she finally acknowledged that I might be queer. To this day, she still hopes I'm going to find some guy and start popping out grandkids.
fucking time
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Part of maintaining that structure requires a clear sexual values system, including a sense of what is normal.
OK, if we need a sense of what's normal, I propose that sex that starts when the hour of the day is an even number is normal and sex that starts when the hour of the day is an odd number is not normal.
A pardon is the government forgiving someone for doing something wrong. What the British government should do in this case is admit that the government was wrong to ever enact the statute in question, and exonerate everyone ever punished under it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Society was not happier.
Just quieter. People were afraid to say they're unhappy.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
hopes I'm going to find some guy and start popping out grandkids
And why not? It's not like you have to marry him. Or even have sex with him. Two words: Turkey baster.*
* Note that the child will technically be a baster'd
Society was happier when people were focused on family and behaved in a (relatively) chaste manner.
When was that exactly? Because I know I'm very happy to be living now as opposed to any other time in history you'd care to mention.
When we go pluralistic, or make "anything goes" the new normal, this traditional order is threatened.
This is the same argument they were making in the 20's, 30's and 50's. We've accomplished a lot since then, and our society is better in most ways. If anything, I'd say it's more restrictive in many ways, rather than "anything goes".
They should NOT pardon him for his "outstanding achievements". They should pardon him simply because its the right thing to do.
About. Goddamn. Time.
So how are you enjoying being groped by random strangers every time you travel? Do you like living in a police state? Well, at least the gays can have their marriages. Who cares if everyone lost their most fundamental rights and privileges just as long as some group that makes up less than 1% of the population got their way right?
A police state that doesn't persecute gays is, ceteris paribus, better than one that does.
And a state that's not a police state and that doesn't persecute gays is vastly better than either of them.
PS. Maybe they will start sending around anal rape squads in the future to ensure that everyone is forced to be a sodomite.
If I'm not in a nasty mood, I'd say "not likely". If I'm in a nasty mood, I'd say "only in your dreams". :-)
More on topic: This whole thing with pardoning just Alan Turing because he happened to be a genius and helped to win a war makes me want to puke. If the law and the resulting persecution was wrong they should be apologizing and pardoning every single person who was ever prosecuted under that law. Not just Turing. What, those 49,000 others aren't good enough for a pardon? They weren't genius enough to earn an apology for being persecuted? Give me a break. If it was wrong, it was wrong. Otherwise it's just favoritism.
Alan Turing did indeed a lot to help win the war, and at the time he was convicted it wasn't known. Not to the judge, and while whoever would have been responsible for a pardon might have known, his role in the war would have been top secret. Imagine back in 1955 it had been common knowledge that Turing was singlehandedly responsible for saving thousands of British lives. Would he have been pardoned, or should he have been pardoned? You call it "favoritism", but it really isn't. It would have been deserved.
I really don't think it is wrong to pardon someone because he was a not just a war hero, but in fact responsible for saving thousands of lives. Should he be treated better than for example someone he spent the war time looting bombed houses? I think so.
If I'm not in a nasty mood, I'd say "not likely". If I'm in a nasty mood, I'd say "only in your dreams". :-)
Yeah because there's nothing more embarrassing than enjoying male/male sex?
No, but being some cranky homophobe (somebody whining that "Maybe they will start sending around anal rape squads in the future to ensure that everyone is forced to be a sodomite." sure sounds homophobic) who really has gay rape fantasies (which is rather different from just "enjoying male/male sex") would be embarrassing.
What does a pardon say? It says "We recognise that you did something wrong, but we'll let you off.". That is still totally wrong.
Instead he should have his sentence quashed. That would say "We recognise that the law was an ass and you should never have been prosecuted in the first place.".
-- Dave