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Alan Turing Pardoned
First time accepted submitter a.ferrier writes "Today's computing would be unthinkable without the contributions of the British mathematician Alan Turing, who laid down the foundations of computer science, broke Nazi codes that helped win World War II at the famous Bletchley Park, created a secure speech encryption system, made major contributions to logic and philosophy, and even invented the concept of Artificial Intelligence. But he was also an eccentric and troubled man who was persecuted (and prosecuted) for being gay, a tragedy that contributed to his suicide just short of the age of 42 when he died of cyanide poisoning, possibly from a half-eaten apple found by his side. He is hailed today as one of the great originators of our computing age. Today he received a royal pardon."
Charges should have been dropped. A pardon implies that he was actually guilty of something worthy of criminalization .
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Now he can start enjoying life, oh wait, we're just trying to make people feel good. move along, there is nothing here
Just like all politics, worried about nothing more than the image. Nothing to see here.
Take this sig and smoke it.
Charges should have been dropped. A pardon implies that he was actually guilty of something worthy of criminalization .
The poor bastard had to deal with the horseshit while he was alive. This pardoning and whatever long after he's dead accomplished nothing.
It's just PR for little political people that want to pander to the Gay and Lesbian community.
Alan is one of the smartest people on this planet. The way he was treated is a direct display of our inhumanity. He is on my wall now, framed in gold, hanging on my silk-spun wall of fame (not that it matters to anyone), but I will forever remember him as one of the most important mathematicians of his time and even our time. I've placed him next to Benoit Mandelbrot for a reason (can you figure out why?).
We as a species are very different when it comes to our mind, our culture, our background. People will always be treated according to the common public's belief, religion or politics no matter what science tells us.
I know this, because just as Alan, I am as different as the rest of you. But you would hate me for who I am, and if you knew, you would love me, as would you love your next of kin, and everyone around you...if you grew a little...kind of like Alan, but there is a time for everything, and hopefully...we're nearing that time...when you can discern between science and religion, and understand that the world is so much more.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Who literally owe their current non-occupied existence to the work performed by heroes like Mr. Turing?
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
A gesture that the UK Govt did wrong at the time ...
We must never forget that sometimes, the laws are wrong and cause great people to suffer or die.
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
This should have happened decades ago. Since the 70s his contribution to winning the WWII are known and there are very, very few humans that can rival his impact.
"a tragedy that contributed to his suicide just short of the age of 42 when he died of cyanide poisoning, possibly from a half-eaten apple found by his side"
That myth has been disproven hundreds of times. The tons of sugar in an apple beats out the miniscule amount of cyanide present in the seeds. Sugar is the natural antidote to cyanide poisoning. I eat the entire apple, core and all. 30 years, not one bit of cyanide poisoning.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I really hope this is real.. but it's a random(ish) website. The language seems rather odd even by royal proclomation standards. Are we sure this isn't a fake? I'd want to see a few serious sources ratify this.
Lots of men were charged with these insane laws. Why aren't they all pardoned? I see it as nothing more than a cute gesture. Everyone persecuted under these bullshit laws should be given full pardons.
If you can quash a conviction even though it was perfectly correct by the law at the time it happened then you can prosecute someone for something they do today if it's made illegal next year.
Retroactive law is a dangerous box to open.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Agreed! Other countries like America, Russia or Nigeria would never persecute people just for preferring to drive up chocolate lane.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
An abject apology would be a good start.
The then prime minister made one four years ago. I remember at the time that people were complaining that it wasn't enough and a pardon should be issued.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
She's still alive!
Alan Turing, like Oscar Wilde, had some sexual partners who were working class youth. Back in those days, homosexuality was homosexuality, all homosexuality was illegal, and age wasn't much of an issue. While the Gay Movement celebrates the unjust persecution of Alan Turing for "Homosexuality," they gloss over the fact that today, we would lock him up, throw away the key, and denounce him as a pedophile for consensual sex with teenagers. It's lovely that he's been pardoned, but it's a bit hypocritical how today's Gay Activists grandfather in for Historical Gay Icons, behavior they would be the first to loudly condemn in their contemporaries.
The decoding operation at Bletchley Park became the basis for the new decoding and intelligence work at GCHQ. With the cold war this became an important operation and Turing continued to work for GCHQ, although his Manchester colleagues were totally unaware of this. After his conviction, his security clearance was withdrawn. Worse than that, security officers were now extremely worried that someone with complete knowledge of the work going on at GCHQ was now labelled a security risk. He had many foreign colleagues, as any academic would, but the police began to investigate his foreign visitors. A holiday which Turing took in Greece in 1953 caused consternation among the security officers.
Turing died of potassium cyanide poisoning while conducting electrolysis experiments. The cyanide was found on a half eaten apple beside him. An inquest concluded that it was self-administered but his mother always maintained that it was an accident.
http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Turing.html
http://www.turing.org.uk/bio/part1.html
If only "being retarded" wasn't a property that could be shared by more than one entity at a time, your post would have actual relevance.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
What Mr Turing pled guilty to is not a crime.
No, it's not. But it was back then. Rightly or wrongly, it was a criminal act.
Come back in fifty years and see what's legal by then.
Anyone ever treated this way deserves a pardon and more, our most humble apologies.
It's all very well saying that, but morality is relative. You might well find our ancestors look back on us with much the same disgust.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
It is like an old episode of the Simpson: Homer, I won your respect, and all I had to do was save your life. Now, if every gay man could just do the same, you'd be set.. If only every person who the religious nuts found offensive could do something great so they are accepted.
If I may quote another show, Yes, Prime Minister, It's one of those irregular verbs, isn't it: I have an independent mind; you are an eccentric; he is round the twist. We should consider the nutters that like to deny basic human rights 'around the twist' but instead we give them a pass while those that do an honest days work gets the shaft.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Fuck the British government of Christmas past for what they did to him. Here you have a genius, a war hero, one of the greatest people of the twentieth century, and your fucking idiocy runs him straight into the ground. Fuck you forever.
He was convicted for something that was a crime when he was convicted. The judge didn't know that he was a war hero, and nobody who knew could tell him because it was top secret at the time. What you are complaining about, nobody knew about that until it was thirty years too late to do anything about it.
Now some questions: If something becomes illegal after you do it, should you be convicted retroactively? And if something becomes legal after you do it, should you be "unconvicted" retroactively? And consider that things change all the time; what you do today might be a crime in twenty years time. For example, it's not unthinkable that you would get convicted for assault for smoking in a pub in twenty years time. And that everyone talking about it would say that you fully deserve it.
The other: If you are a war hero and commit a crime, should you be convicted, or should the law not be applied because you are a war hero? Is that answer simply yes or no, or is it "depends on what kind of war hero and what kind of crime"? In that case, does it apply to war heroes only? Or to football heroes? Or entertainment heroes?
by the grace of god, of the united kindom, the queen, pardoned Alan Turing has, hmmm?
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
I'm not sure, but I do believe it has something to do with divers.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Actually, laws can be declared "illegal" retroactively. I don't know what are the circumstances in each country, but in Germany during the last 10-20 years, a lot of laws were declared "illegal" retroactively, including e.g. some tax laws. The government had to pay compensation to the effected people retroactively.
And no, I'm not talking about laws from the time of 1933-1945. These were new laws (e.g. one from 2003 that was declared illegal in, if I remember correctly, 2008 or so).
Now, admittedly, this was because these laws were declared "unconstitutional" and I don't know all the circumstances under which laws can be declared illegal retroactively, but it seems it is possible...
The thing that bugs me about this is that all you fuckers on the band wagon saying he should be pardoned in 2013 would be the first to call for his castration if you had been living in the UK in 1950. Seriously people are just as prejudiced now as they were 50, 100, or 1000 years ago.
The boogey man just changes. Today it is (Nazi|pedophiles|Muslims) , before that it was homos, before that it was commies, before that it was Jews, a long time ago being a Canaanite could get you killed. I think the apology / pardon is utter bullshit, when people are treating others like shit and continue to treat each other like shit, and apology is just a way to make people feel better about themselves, and say hey 'We are better than those assholes living 50 years ago.' Well you aren't. Sure you would not castrate someone today for being a homo, but you would surely say that pedophiles need to be castrated. Yes that is right an 18 year old man having sex with, or even seeing a naked 17 year old girl has committed a sex crime and is considered by law to be a pedo. Most people would have no problem whatsoever killing / locking up pedos.
Human nature does not change. It cracks me up when every generation thinks they are better more tolerant than those racist thugs who polluted society 20 - 30 years in the past. Those racist thugs that you hate so much are yourselves.
As long as "disobeying the law" has absolutely no place in your definition of what constitutes a crime, you are correct.
Unfortunately that's not how societies governed by the rule of law operate. So long as we have laws that try to legislate morality rather than just protecting people from each other we will continue to incarcerate such victimless "criminals". Be they polygamists, responsible users of illegal drugs, or just people who want to cross the Boston Common without carrying a shotgun in case of bears.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Really? How do you suppose you would feel if your God-given title was being besmirched by a bunch of transvestites?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
You know what's *really* perverted? All those disgusting heterosexual couples having sex for reasons other than procreation. We should lock them all up, along with everyone involved in the birth-control industry who are responsible for promoting such perversions and undermining God's will.
That's the problem with attempting to legislate morality - who gets to decide *whose* morality makes the cut? Even in a democracy, who defends the morality of the minority who don't have enough votes to defend themselves from the tyranny of the majority?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Anyone notice the fact that it is post dated for 12-24-13? Hope this doesn't turn out to be a hoax.
Doh!, misread it. "Conviction" here meant the legal sentence, of course, not the personal attitude. Disregard my previous fopar.
...Turing complete?
Don't worry, I believe the rules are very specific that it's your actions that condemn you - after all your desires were put there by God (or was it the Devil? Folks can never seem to agree). So by acting without lust you should get a free pass into Hell, without having to worry about any annoying last-minute reprieves due to supernatural influences.
Of course there are other paths as well, for example eating a nice shrimp dinner while wearing a wool suit and cotton undergarments. IIRC the Bible condemns both the eating of shellfish and the simultaneous wearing of clothing made of different fibers even more strongly than it does homosexuality. Odd that you never hear of the brave crusaders attacking such filthy degenerates, there's certainly enough of them.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Did he even plead guilty? The accounts I've looked at indicate he maintained he'd done nothing wrong.
You would think that someone referred to as “the queen” for more than 60 years would be more sympathetic to the gay population.
That was modded down to -1? Has anybody ever heard of a "joke"?
As previous commenters have noted, this is no help to Turing himself. But it's useful as a reminder for us to look around at the legal systems we have now, and try to imagine who we are currently terrorizing and prosecuting and shaming and bullying in ways that, in fifty years, a government is going to have to issue another pardon or another apology for. What's the current equivalent of the vicious homophobia we're now finally becoming collectively ashamed of?
The reason they can't just drop the charges and offer regret is mainly political.
Turing was in violation of the law at the time. The law was definitely unjust, but he was in violation of it.
Dropping the charges or showing remorse would open up a can of worms regarding liability. Doing so would create precedent and a mechanism for descendants to air grievances over historical wrong doings - it will never end and may be costly.
Practically, this is the best they will ever dare do.
Eh, everybody needs some random gratuitous celebrities mucking about in politics. Is royalty really any worse than pop stars?
Besides, if the royal family were stripped of their figurehead position then all their private holdings that are currently being managed by Parliament as part of an old negotiated concession would revert back to the family itself, and that would really hurt the UK government. IIRC the total income paid to the royal family by parliament is only a tiny percentage(like single digits or less) of the income generated by the royal holdings. And of course you can't just appropriate those private holdings into the government coffers without establishing a precedent that would have every major banker and CEO in the country fleeing for the borders.
Whatever royal negotiated those concessions did a brilliant job of making sure their descendants would live in comfortable pomp and circumstance for as long as Parliament exists. Not too bad considering their alternative was probably a bloody revolution that would likely end with the royalty all dead or dispossessed.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The charges and conviction still stand. Conviction should be quashed and a full "royal" apology
That is what in effect the pardon amounts to.
There is no such thing as "quashing" a conviction that was valid and proper under the law.
Today we may feel the law is unjust -- but the courts and legislators aren't entitled to nullify convictions on laws that existed at the time they were violated. 1000 years from now; they may well say the same thing about Disorderly conduct felons, felony Curfew violators, Public drunkenness laws, etc.
Regardless of what you think about homosexuality, he behaved against the law that was in place at the time.
It's a shame we lost a great man because of this, but law is arbitrary, and sometimes it destroys some people.
He wasn't wrongly accused or anything. This is only being done out of pressure to make a statement. It is legally entirely stupid.
It's an education degree. Not a real one.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Indeed. By only pardoning Turing, what the government is implying that they were not wrong about persecuting people - including Turing - for their sexual beliefs. Rather, they are saying that they were wrong to persecute Turing because he happened to be useful to the government.
I would have been more impressed if the government had issued a blanket pardon to any and all who were caught out by this miscarriage of justice and named the act after Turing. As it stands, it is just a bit of blatant PR intended to appease a small but vocal segment of the population.
Worse than that, security officers were now extremely worried that someone with complete knowledge of the work going on at GCHQ was now labelled a security risk.
The irony is palpable. They treat him like shit and then they are worried he's going to be mad at them for it.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
It is not widely publicized nowadays but one of the chief propaganda items leading to the US entering WW II against Germany was the assertion that the Nazis were gay.
Seastead this.
Yes and if you say "He has committed a crime" then you can pick and choose amongst those definitions to find one that fits. But you did not say such a thing. You said "He did NOT commit a crime" which without further clarification logically implies that NONE of the definitions apply. Which in fact I alluded to with my opening line
As long as "disobeying the law" has absolutely no place in your definition
And in a society governed by the rule of law "a grave offense against morality" is immaterial to criminal culpability, therefore has no place in a discussion of crime within a legal context. If there is no law against it then your pastor, shaman, or divinely animated tuna casserole may have harsh words for you, but it is presumed legally acceptable. Likewise you can be a bastion of morality, but perform an act that is in violation of the law and you become a criminal, despite having the blessing of your religious leaders.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
There has already been a full apology.
Learn to love Alaska
Now some questions: If something becomes illegal after you do it, should you be convicted retroactively?
No, That's bad, and banned by the Constituion
And if something becomes legal after you do it, should you be "unconvicted" retroactively?
That's how all Supreme Court decisions work. If you are arrested for sodomy at the time, and the Supreme Court overturns the law you were convicted under, you are retroactively "unconvicted". It's happened many times in the US. Ex post facto release isn't a bad thing, and there's nothing that requires that if you can unconvict ex post facto, that you must also allow convictions ex post facto.
Learn to love Alaska
Thanks for linking to the Royal Pardon - just the wording of that made my day.
Fuck the British government of Christmas past for what they did to him. Here you have a genius, a war hero, one of the greatest people of the twentieth century, and your fucking idiocy runs him straight into the ground. Fuck you forever.
He isn't the first great person to have fallen, and he won't be the last. One thing to keep in mind is.... not everyone gets the message about such things. He may have been a genius, and a great war hero: but the legislators don't know about it; heros are often modest and unlikely to boast about it, and the courts at the time weren't even allowed to consider it, anyways.... at the end of the day, all the heros are just average people that have to live by the same rules as everyone else, or their future will be wrecked.
Think of the government, and the justice system like a "machine"; the courts operate in a mechanized fashion to implement the law and standards that have been put to them. Only the highly influential and powerful people can bend the machine, adjust the cogs, or cause it to act differently; Usually by AVOIDing the "Input" chute of the criminal justice machine altogether (Alan and partner were arrested after he and his mate were the victims of a robbery, and he reported the robbery - and admitted the relationship) - if the officers recognized him as a hero, and he had a powerful family, he could have probably escaped arrest, or at least gotten charges withdrawn --- Alan was neither well-known nor powerful at the time.
He just had a reward for military service. The criminal conviction also made Alan immediately stripped of his security clearance and ineligible for any further government/ top-secret work --- his consultancy with the GCHQ on signals intelligence and cryptography was terminated (probably to their great detriment); he was also Denied Entry to the United States based on the criminal record --- so you can't fault the UK alone; there, see, you have a conspiracy ----- the US customs will mechanically treat a UK conviction as a fact, and not doubt that justice has been done.
Take Hypatia --- killed by a mob of christians.
Petrus Ramus -- executed in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre Giordano Bruno --- burnt alive due to the roman inquisition for heresy; cosmological theories going beyond the copernican model, the sun as one of many stars, and inhabited alien worlds
Siger of Brabant, Socrates, Anaxarchus, Seneca, Boethius, Judah Halevi, Jan Hus, Thomas More, Galileo,
The pages of history are written in blood ---- people that could have done so many more great things for humanity, but whose work got redirected to the industry of war, or their lives got cut short by violent acts or lawful abuses and miscarriages of justice of the government.
For every time a major new level of enlightenment is reached ---- the pattern seems to be someone has to suffer and die at the hands of unjust suppression or unjust laws deemed just at the time the events transpired
And, I'm sure it means a lot to Turning, as of right now. Oh, wait - he's dead. Like, a fat lot of good it will do him.
This really seams to be more an action to appease the living rather than the dead; by which, I mean it seems rather reactionary, not revolutionary.
No, it's not. But it was back then. Rightly or wrongly, it was a criminal act.
He plead guilty to sodomy, which was not a crime. Indecency is a separate crime which was used to convict homosexuals. He did not plead guilty to the crime, in the sense of the US legal system, but other systems have different nuances.
Learn to love Alaska
For U-571 where the heroic Americans capture the Enigma machine (rather than the British who really did), and Enigma, where the code is cracked by a team of boffins at Bletchley Park where a character called "Tom Jericho" is the genius responsible for decoding the encryption.
A movie called "We're really really sorry for infecting the world with fictitious history that ignored the truth and mislead people for no good fucking reason other than the fact that the executives at the studio said that it wouldn't make as much money and Americans want to see Americans being the heroes and what's that you say, the hero of this story was gay, that's box office poison, change it and his name, or go take a job someplace else smartguy" might just go someway to alleviating the historical injustice done over the Atlantic more recently as well.
Shouldn't the law apply to everyone in an equal manner? Why should he be exempted from the same treatment others got?
Because the war would be lost without the benefit of his work. Britain would be German-occupied, and a great many of innocent people would have died.
Sometimes: applying the law to every person in an equal matter is inherently unfair.
Equal Treatment != Justice
morality is relative
Bullshit. Locking people up for doing something that harms nobody, or even just having DESIRES to do such things without acting on them is objectively wrong because it harms people and serves no purpose.
A pardon looks like Turing is still guilty of something, but well, considering his accomplishment, he deserve pardon.
If you consider he was unfairly convicted using laws that contradict human rights, then what he deserves are royal excuses.
Turing was innocent. The appropriate action would be to exonerate him, not pardon him. The British government should admit that Turning was persecuted unjustly.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Issue more pardons.
How many more?
Well, how about every single soul ever convicted under "Turing's Law"?
Few other acts would express the appropriate level of "fuck you" to the mindset responsible for Turing's persecution, and reserving pardons for only the most notable implies that only the greatest have repaid their supposed "debt to society".
Marriage pretty much implies consummation. Heterosexual consummation, barring 100% effective birth control, with someone that closely related can (very likely will) produce offspring with significant genetic anomalies. Incest laws are really pretty well established as worthy; people with these kinds of genetic anomalies tend to not benefit from the differences. Heterosexual incest (and I'm talking blood relationship here, not step-anything) isn't a good idea and it won't become reasonable until or unless we can develop absolutely certain remediation for the genetic problems it causes.
Almost all the other ideas stigmatizing consenting, informed human relationships that have been codified into legislation -- anti-gay, anti-polygamy, anti-polyandry, anti-flirting, etc. -- are the result of superstitious and/or repressive thinking and should go away ASAP. Further, formal contracts should be enforced by the state, and other than that, the state should entirely butt out of personal relationships.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Hypocrites, they used him for his brains, but couldn't allow him his sexuality. Turing was a true computer scientist :), in all the sense, even when it comes to being used by people in power and then ending up frustrated that no due respect is earned from the work done.
:p) .
Whatever "pardon" or "distinction" one could give him now, is nothing but hypocrisy, the guy is long dead, we do not care about the pardon now, what has been done has been done, and the grudge must always be present against people in power that keep on doing such things over and over.
My opinion is that the government wants the vote of gays and the support of computer scientist (:p No clue why computer scientists
...for not doing this before he was driven to kill himself.
He plead guilty to sodomy, which was not a crime.
He may have confessed to it, but how can he plead guilty to something which isn't a crime?
Besides which, his plea has no bearing on whether or not he committed a crime under the law at that time.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Also Turing was known to frequently conduct experiments involving cyanide, and it is suspected that his death was more an accident than intentional.
see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18561092
Because you inadvertently read the Grauniad instead
Actually it was really all about publicly making fun of his old schoolmate the current Pope for not understanding what Copernicus wrote but I get the analogy. It was most definitely politics and not religion.
It's a very interesting story eclipsed by all the "they tired to stop Galileo from telling the truth just like scientists are trying to stop confidence trickers like me" bullshit. Since most of us have been raised on the distorted version it's a widespread misconception, like the flat earth myth that didn't emerge until just over a century ago to make fun of historical figures.
The Queen didn't have a choice about the law that sent Turing to prison but she did have a choice about Elton John. It's not a Presidential system.
Thank you, Your Majesty.
They made a big deal for being gay, atthat time. Now is almost irrelevant.
This is a
Governments as an organisation should reflect on the decisions made by people sitting in the same seats around the time they were born. The "right thing to do" is often diametrically opposed to the "popular thing to do". An official apology is a good thing, it's much more important to a large proportion of victims than you seem to think. Especially when the "problem" is something innate to the individual such as skin colour, sex or sexual preference. An apology is akin to official acceptance (back) into society. I know for a fact that the nationally broadcast apology to the native population here in Oz meant a lot to my aboriginal friends from the NW, particularly those in my age bracket (50-something).
So here's the thing, Turing's was an extraordinary man and their is no dodging the fact he was betrayed by society and his government. So my question is was the previous (Gordon Brown) apology addressed to Turing or did it include the other 100,000 anonymous victims of that barbaric policy, has anyone said sorry to the survivors? - Yes I've googled it to confirm my recollection, and you should too.
John Graham-Cumming: On behalf of all decent slashdotter's I wish you a very merry xmas.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
There were three women in Pussy Riot and if you listen to Putin the other day when discussing it his reaction was that what they did was "degrading to women." Yekaterina Samutsevich was just released a few hours ago.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Turing committed suicide by a cyanide Apple, rumor has it that is where Apple logo came from...
Morality is relative, but it isn't random. Should our ancestors look on us with disgust due to any differences in our morality, we can show a record of the debate and arguments that led to those changes. They'd need to come up with novel arguments to have any justification for their disgust.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The wording of the pardon makes me want to vomit. Though, it's better than nothing -- it falls short of giving him the respect he's entitled to.
Completely pointless act and a waste of resources. I want the government to focus on real issues which actually affect people alive today not waste my money on "feel good factor" stories.
What you describe is the beginning of tyranny. So who is it who is to decide which persons get better treatment than others? Cameron? The Sun newspaper? Equal treatment under the law is the cornerstone of our "way of life". If they want to pardon Turing for committing the crime of Homosexuality then they have to pardon everybody of the same crime.
So who is it who is to decide which persons get better treatment than others?
Politicians, the courts, or public opinion.
Equal treatment under the law is the cornerstone of our "way of life".
No it's not. Unicorns and fairies are more real than "equal treatment under the law" ever was. There is, has always been, and always will be inequal treatment under the law; the rich and powerful almost always get better treatment (or worse treatment) depending on the circumstances.
The inequality is just more cleverly disguised in some places, than others --- "Equality" is purely illusory, and not required for justice, anyways.
If they want to pardon Turing for committing the crime of Homosexuality then they have to pardon everybody of the same crime.
They are free to pardon Turing for that crime, and they absolutely are not required to pardon everybody.
What a load of rubbish! ""Equality" is purely illusory, and not required for justice, anyways." - No. That is completely untrue. Equality is exactly required for justice. "They are free to pardon Turing for that crime, and they absolutely are not required to pardon everybody." Rubbish. On what do you base this claim? Other than "they can do whatever they please".
It was more a dig at the smug herp-derpers who think all those amendments mean they have more freedom than anyone else, and feel qualified to comment on English legal matters when they don't know shit. But thanks for playing.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."