http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/10536246/Alan-Turing-granted-Royal-pardon-by-the-Queen.html

Not a great fan here of apologising today for things done generations ago, but this is recent enough and relevant enough not to quite fall into that category. Thumbs up from me.

Very nice for him, but what about all the other criminal gays that didn’t win the war.

Very nice for him, but what about all the other criminal gays that didn’t win the war.

I don’t think many other convicted gays killed themselves with a cyanide laced apple.

I don’t come on this very often these days but I will definitley up up up Mr. Turing. good man Rad skills Massive balls..I love the fact that despite popular culture, even now, gayers were doing good shit for humanity, back then! 😀

A great man; I’ve just finished writing a paper on his influences on modern computing.

About bloody time. He was treated abhorrently.

I knew he got done for being gay but I never knew he was chemically castrated as well!

That’s well bad.

A pardon implies he did something that needs pardoning. So no, I think the UK failed the Turing test.

At the time though, it was illegal and he was convicted of it. The pardon is for the conviction really, not the ‘crime’ (as it was).

Experimental chemical castration sounds like something the Nazis would have been doing in concentration camps. Appalling that people could be treated in that way in a country which was supposed to stand for freedom.

“You did a bad thing, but we’ll let you off because you fought the Nazis.”

You either say that it was in the past, it was wrong, but we’ve moved on – or you quash the convictions of everyone convicted by laws we no longer agree with.

I don’t think many other convicted gays killed themselves with a cyanide laced apple

They pardoned him, not brought him back from the dead.

So how about all the others prosecuted under the same laws ?

While I agree that Turing was a brilliant mathematician and a founder of computer science, I disagree with the pardon. At the time he committed a crime – and was persecuted for it. The fact that now we disagree with the flawed logic of the time, is because we have the luxury of time and a different viewpoint.

Are we going to go back through the old laws and work out who was persecuted by them and issue pardons to all of them? Or do we have to accept that previous generations may have done something we don’t like?

Is there not a bigger picture here? A pardon for a high profile case could be considered an acknowledgement that all such convictions were wrong and should be quashed.

I suspect the logistics of finding all the convictions and pardoning them would make it impossible, time consuming and expensive to pardon every individual.

So is having sex in a public lavatory legal now?

It might be worth reading David Allen Green’s article here for some background.

A “pardon” does not remove the conviction, it simply reduces the sentence that is in force. Alan Turing is still convicted of the offence he committed and I very much doubt he is benefitting from a shortening of a sentence (which, in any case, was of his choosing as the article details).

Overall, it’s just a “jesture”. :-/

Rachel (feeling very glad she’s in the 21st Century, not the mid 20th…)

ninfan – Member
So is having sex in a public lavatory legal now?

No idea. Not sure what the relevance is to this though as I don’t think that’s what he was convicted of.

+1 on morecashthandash.

“You either say that it was in the past, it was wrong, but we’ve moved on – or you quash the convictions of everyone convicted by laws we no longer agree with.“

This.

It’s a PR stunt. It makes no coherent sense in any wider context. It’s saying sorry for his punishment ut doesn’t absolve him of his crime, such as it was. It provides no pragmatic benefit, since Turing is dead; and it provides no symbolic benefit, since it doesn’t retrospectively dismantle the crime of homosexuality. It’s a pointless gesture at best. At worst it’s just sweeping issues under the carpet.

This is a great example of why those sanctimonious people who always shout “You can’t pick and choose yours laws, THE LAW IS THE LAW” when discussing daft/wrong laws, are always wrong.

So is having sex in a public lavatory legal now?

What’s that got to do with being gay?

You don’t need to track down every person convicted under these laws, you just need to state that all convictions under these laws have been quashed.

Peter Tatchell (yes, I know) was on Radio 4 this am: There’s still 25-30,000 people alive today prosecuted under the same laws. 2000 were prosecuted in 1989 and the actual law wasn;t repealed until 2003.

I wonder how many of the 50,000+ who were prosecuted under this law did end up committing suicide.

Why his war record makes him more worthy of the states forgiveness is beyond me, really. “Look you did some other good stuff in your life so we’ll overlook this. The rest of you? Oiks who deserved what you got.

It was either wrong to use this law against anyone regardless of their personal situation or it wasn’t. To single him out is an insult to the rest,

While I agree that Turing was a brilliant mathematician and a founder of computer science, I disagree with the pardon. At the time he committed a crime – and was persecuted for it. The fact that now we disagree with the flawed logic of the time, is because we have the luxury of time and a different viewpoint.

Are we going to go back through the old laws and work out who was persecuted by them and issue pardons to all of them? Or do we have to accept that previous generations may have done something we don’t like?

I think that is a fair resume of the situation. The laws in the 50s were the laws in the 50s. Pardoning him isn’t going to stop him /the secret service poisoning him.

In fact it should even be automatic. Old laws are removed from the statute books all the time – it should be automatic that when a law is removed, the convictions of those prosecuted under that law are quashed.

ninfan – Member
So is having sex in a public lavatory legal now?

I hope so

Except his conviction hasn’t been quashed, has it??

Except his conviction hasn’t been quashed, has it??

Keep up – I said that earlier 😀

People above still seem to not realise that, though, eh?? 😉

Good on three counts:

* Recognition that the prosecution was a misjudgement and unjustly blighted the life of a man who should have been(and should be) recognised as a mathematical genius and a hero of science (and also a wartime national hero). Let’s see Alan on a Bank of England note.

* Recognition that as a society we’ve moved on from sexual prejudices. I hope more pardons are issued.

* Acknowledgement that rigid adherence to legal process can be unjust and that our society has the wisdom and humanity to look past it.

Well done Her Maj

Rachel (feeling very glad she’s in the 21st Century, not the mid 20th…)

Can’t believe how shit it must have been for someone who is the same age as my granddad.

Well done Her Maj

Nowt to do with her, she just signed the bit of paper they put in front of her.

emsz, have you read the bit about why the legislation was specific to men, reckon you might find it interesting/funny/enlightening…

What’s that got to do with being gay?

That was one of the IIRC eight charges of gross indecency that he was prosecuted for, and pled guilty to, having given a full account to police about how he met Murray, and their subsequent relationship

The sentence that was imposed on him was clearly and manifestly horrific and wrong – but he still broke the law of the day, and arguably could still be prosecuted now

Gay men have always had a hard time of things till recently, illegal to have sex with each other till 1968, illegal to have sex with a man under 21 then 18 now 16, the fear of blackmail if you had a good job or where relatively wealthy, then there was the ban on gay people being in the armed forces,and probabaly quite a few more other things that afected their career, now we have gay districts of major towns, brighton,liverpool ,manchester, which have rejuvianated run down areas, and made them must go areas for some.

Perhaps instead of Alan Turing being pardoned it should be those ignorant biggoted law makers who made the purile and petty laws that kept gay people in the closet for so long,they seriously have a lot to answer.

REST IN PEACE Alan Turing, youre now a free man.

Clubber always thought that it was because it was women, they didn’t really care much

Nah, they were worried that the poor dears might get ideas if they found out that it was illegal since they’d never have even considered it otherwise 😉

This quote made me smile

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1921/aug/15/commons-amendment-2

I will tell you why. It is very disagreeable talking of these things, but we all know of the sort of romantic, almost hysterical, friendships that are made between young women at certain periods of their lives and of its occasional manifestations. Suppose that some circumstance gave to some person who knew of it the idea:”How easy it now is for me to make a charge. Perhaps they do not know what the law is.” Do you suppose any woman with anything in the world to lose would ever face such a charge as that? It would not be a question of defending themselves against it; it would be a question of facing it, of being brought into a public Court to meet a charge of that kind. They would pay anything sooner than that. I believe that blackmail would not only be certain, but that it would inevitably be successful.

It’s ‘cos women were always known to be a bit feeble minded so that type of thing was bound to happen. Men, on the other hand, should know better…

Or something like that.

Rachel

wwaswas – Member
Peter Tatchell (yes, I know)

What do you know?

I’d like it to be a bit more than an occasional manifestation

*grumpy single sulk*

It’s ‘cos women were always known to be a bit feeble minded so that type of thing was bound to happen. Men, on the other hand, should know better…

On the contrary, it was because Queen Vic simply didn’t believe ladies would to ‘that’, therefore it didn’t happen and there was no need for a law to prevent it.

Zokes that’s a bit of an urban myth I think my love

His breaking of the enigma code enabled the defeat of the U-Boats packs that were sinking food convoys from America, without which the nation would have starved.

You could say he was responsible for enabling the winning of the war.

Good job the bar stewards didn’t get hold of him earlier, eh?