Alan Turing Receives Royal Pardon For Homosexuality Conviction

[Ticklefist]

God, if you're feeling too upbeat, just read the coments on a genuinely great thing on Christmas eve and you'll get down to earth. Seriously, this is great and important.

Precisely. Hopefully the rest of the world understands the gesture and moves forward.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

Wow, so it took like 60-some years for the Queen to pardon him?

GG government, also hiding it behind flimsy excuses such as "it was illegal at the time" is bollocks, as at those times, on the other side of the world, it was also acceptable to institutionalize witch hunts under the veil of patriotism and "doing right by your countreh".

Fuck, the amount of stuff that Turing had done for England and the World deserved a pardon in the late 80's at the latest.

 

[Zacharious-khan]

Please explain why there was no action for a decede until shortly after the naming of the discovering of the Cambridge ring. He wasn't a member of the ring but many gay men that had sensitive security positions were caught up in security clampdown. It had previously been thought that gay men were less of risk because they would be immune to female honey traps. However in the light of the Cambridge ring and the American anger that followed, policy changed and things that were overlooked before were acted upon. Turning had been in the habit of visiting Finland and Sweden because homosexuallity was legeal there but those locations were also full of NKVD/KGB agents. There has been no suggestion that Turing was a spy but he went from a low risk category to high risk one because of the Cambridge ring.

That logic is cum hoc ergo propter hoc and therefore fallacious without less speculative evidence

 

[Objectable]

This shouldn't have happened, plain and simple.
I find it insulting, just because Turing was a large help in the war he alone gets a pardon? It's like saying "It's a good thing you were so smart, because if you weren't prosecuting you for being homosexual is still ok" I find this detestable.

Turing was special but not in this way, he was just one of the thousands who were given the choice of chemical castration or jail and not a one of them was guilty.

...I think it has to do more that he was arrested for a really, really stupid and horrible law.

 

[MysticSlayer]

Well, I'm glad he's around to appreciate...oh wait.

Yeah, this doesn't seem like much of anything. It's a nice gesture, sure, but Turing doesn't benefit from this, and I seriously doubt this will change the public's perception of him.

 

[Zacharious-khan]

It was but i feel like this singles him out and makes an exception when really it was wrong in every case

 

[Bujiraso]

I retweeted this on twitter, I will say it here

It's not ok to be gay because someone's a genius.
It's just ok to be gay.
They should pardon EVERYONE or no one. And it should be obvious which is the right thing to do.

 

[Tradjus]

About &$*&ing time.
Hopefully the politically repressed of today won't have to wait until fourty years after their deaths to gain the same sorts of reprieves.

 

[teamcharlie]

Okay. Chill. This is a good thing. It's not the best possible response to the situation, but it's certainly not a bad thing either. Alan Turing deserved to be pardoned on the spot, and he finally has been. It's too late to save his life but a public admission that he was both awesome and treated unjustly by his government is still worthwhile.

 

[Arakasi]

This may set an interesting legal president. I wonder how they will handle future requests from people's families of less-well known figures?

 

[Zipa]

It is about time, the British government should be fucking ashamed of how shitty they treated one of the greatest minds of the age, a man that helped to shorten WWII and saving lives by doing so. That and Colossus becoming the daddy of computers.

That said he shouldn't be the lone person who was chemically castrated or jailed in such a manner just because of his fame it should be done to all such victims because the British government actually believes a injustice was done to these people.

 

[The Material Sheep]

Good to hear this happened. Lets just hope it wasn't just because of his fame.

 

[Boris Goodenough]

Also for historical accuracy, it wasn't prison it was house arrest.

Edits: the house arrest was for 1 year, the same as the chemical castration and it was only meant to reduce his sex drive not castrate him permanently.
But thankfully these laws have been done away with in the civilised world.

 

[Lunar Templar]

wow ... that was a crime? really? I have no words for how utterly detestable that is.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

Yeah, it's a nice gesture, but it's a little late for that. And seriously, homosexuality was a crime back then? That's just wrong...

 

[Caiphus]

Yeah, it's a nice gesture, but it's a little late for that. And seriously, homosexuality was a crime back then? That's just wrong...

Yes, most English ex-colonies only really decriminalised homosexuality in the last 40 years. I think it was decriminalised in my country, New Zealand, in 1986. With no small amount of opposition as well, of course.

In fact, here, for your perusal at your convenience

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_law

 

[Zombie_Fish]

This shouldn't have happened, plain and simple.
I find it insulting, just because Turing was a large help in the war he alone gets a pardon? It's like saying "It's a good thing you were so smart, because if you weren't prosecuting you for being homosexual is still ok" I find this detestable.

Turing was special but not in this way, he was just one of the thousands who were given the choice of chemical castration or jail and not a one of them was guilty.

...I think it has to do more that he was arrested for a really, really stupid and horrible law.

And it wasn't stupid and horrible for the thousands of others found guilty and punished for gross indecency?

 

[hazydawn]

I retweeted this on twitter, I will say it here

It's not ok to be gay because someone's a genius.
It's just ok to be gay.
They should pardon EVERYONE or no one. And it should be obvious which is the right thing to do.

Thanks, that's what I thought...
Additionally, this sends the message that the life of exceptional people is worth more than those of others.

"saying that it would be inappropriate to pardon someone who was 'properly convicted of what at the time was a criminal offense.'"
Yeah, with that line of argumentation we can excuse anything that happened according to unjust, human rights defying laws. For instance the Nuremberg Laws

 

[rcs619]

Huh, that's only 61 years late.

Hey, to be fair, in the category of "Modern people apologizing for terrible moral crimes in the past" this case is actually pretty speedy. I mean, the Catholic Church convicted Galileo of heresy in 1633, and it took them until 1992 to finally pardon him on those charges and basically do the religious equivalent of "My bad, dawg."

And, look at the Tuskegee Experiment (where the United States government intentionally infected about 600, exclusively black, men between 1932 and 1972 with syphilis without telling them. The point of the experiment, to find out the long-term effects of being infected with syphilis and not receiving any treatment for it). There wasn't an official presidential apology for that until 1997 when Bill Clinton finally did it.

 

[MorganL4]

Yeah, at this point I think it must have been a slow news day for this to make news. I mean it's been over 40 years since homosexuality was a crime in britain. I think this is less a sincere amends and more just someone trying to get their name in a news article by mentioning someone famous.

Absolutely wrong. He was one of the primary unsung heroes of World War II, and a major reason why the field of computer science is the way it is today. Without him, we might be decades behind where we are. Given the work he did for his country, his conviction was a travesty, and I'm glad to see him pardoned, even if the many others convicted under the statute likely won't get the same.

Also, the Queen is just trying to get her name in the news? Really?

Well, yeah...... Of course the queen is trying to get her name in the news, I mean it has been and ENTIRE 4 hours since a news story was done on the royal family... That is UNACCEPTABLE.

http://hollywoodlife.com/2013/12/24/kate-middleton-pregnant-baby-hoping-for-girl/