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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."
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.
There is no reason to pardon him. Apologize for making a bad law sure, but pardon no. It was illegal at the time, and there were no exigent circumstances requiring him to break the law for the public good. There is really no reason to offer a pardon.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
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.
Why permit such revisionist history at all? If you're going to pretend he was not a criminal, then you must also pretend the government didn't convict him. Are we going to pretend the US never had slavery if Congress passes a law to posthumously free all slaves back to 1776? It's absurd. That Alan Turing was convicted of the crime of homosexuality is a historic fact and his "crimes" only reflect badly on the UK government, not on the man himself.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
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.
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."