La_Dolce_Vita Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-...us-1773480.html Why the efforts to have him pardoned seventy years on? He's dead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluemonday Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 Homosexuality and the law: Why Alan Turing was considered a criminal *The 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act made any homosexual act illegal, even in private. Among the most famous prosecutions was that of Oscar Wilde in 1895. *Section 11 stated that "any male person who, in public or private, commits ... any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and being convicted thereof shall be liable at the discretion of the court to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour." *This part of the Act was inserted at the last minute after being drafted by the MP Henry Labouchere. It did not fit in with the rest of the Act, which dealt with sex crimes relating to young women, but was still passed by the House of Commons. *The amendment was described as a "blackmailer's charter" as it effectively outlawed any and every form of male homosexuality. It prompted a number of prosecutions. *The Act was repealed in England and Wales in 1956, but homosexuality was not fully legalised until 1967. Even later in some countries........ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manshimajin Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 It is important to remember people for what they achieved. Without his genius WW II could have had a very different outcome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
La_Dolce_Vita Posted August 18, 2009 Author Share Posted August 18, 2009 But why a pardon? I can maybe understand if this has something to do with his family, but it seemingly does not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluemonday Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 Perhaps an indication that the rabidly anti gay legislation in force at the time was - with the benfit of hindsight - indefensible. The nazis put them in prison camps as well. Bit of a faux pas there if you think about it. On these lines, who is next? Byron? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Tatlock Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 Pardons and formal apologies are the only way countries can say 'sorry' usually. Back then, as now, the law was the law. There are a lot of laws these days that people will no doubt expect to be pardoned for in 30 years, especially some of the anti-terror/anti-civil-libitarian laws brought in over the last 10 years. Just watch and see. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
La_Dolce_Vita Posted August 18, 2009 Author Share Posted August 18, 2009 It just seems pretty pointless. I can understand if you pardon somebody for something whilst they are alive. But seventy years on and in regard to a dead man. Who is this pardon really for? We all know (or hope we know) that the State's oppressiveness in respect of homophobia was wrong. Why do we need men in the government to offer a pardon now? I wonder whether some gay rights compaigners are a bit lost as to find something useful to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jehovah Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 There are still people killed by the British for cowardice during WW1 who haven't been pardoned yet. Let's get that right first before we worry about this guy. "if it was not for Turing we would most likely be having this conversation in German," Mr Graham-Cumming said. That's obviously why Germans speak English and Japanese have a New York accent then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Declan Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Gordon says sorry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluemonday Posted September 11, 2009 Share Posted September 11, 2009 I look forward to the leader of another country apologising for the anti gay legislation that existed until fairly recently. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Wright Posted September 11, 2009 Share Posted September 11, 2009 Maybe Tutring will be given his proper place and remembered for his acheivemenst What the state coerced him into after a cottaging offence (soliciting for sex in a public loo) was chemical castration which left him so depressed he took his own life. That at least demanded an apology Yes many a place still has to apologise for deaths of many innocent gay and bisexual men at the hands of insensitive policing pretty police and CCTV.... come on Tony Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
La_Dolce_Vita Posted September 11, 2009 Author Share Posted September 11, 2009 Reading both John Wrights and Bluemonday's comments, I have to again ask why we would demand or want apologies. Does it make sense to demand an apology from individuals in the government who were not in government at the time?It all seems...I don't know...maybe just strange to ask for an apology. If feels rather empty of meaning or significance. If I wanted apologies, it would be from the individuals concerned who put those policies into force. Maybe it would make sense if someone could explain it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VinnieK Posted September 11, 2009 Share Posted September 11, 2009 It all seems...I don't know...maybe just strange to ask for an apology. If feels rather empty of meaning or significance. It's a symbolic gesture on behalf of the political establishment as a continuous whole, rather than the apology of an individual politician regardless of their involvement. In a sense you are right, and indeed it's easy to view such gestures as cynical pandering to the popular mood, but I'd argue that such apologies have more significance than just laying old ghosts to rest. Foremost is that they act to recognise that such treatment of people and the attitudes and moral standards that led to them are truly despicable and aren't to be condoned, as well as acknowleging the fact that such acts were carried out in the name of the British public isn't to be buried away or otherwise ignored. I'd also say that such apologies have the benefit of bringing the issues they raise into the public arena where they can and should be discussed, can be held up as an example against which to measure our own societies, and, if nothing else, can act as a warning of just how callous and brutal a supposedly enlightened and modern Government can act, and how the moral attitudes of the day can be complicit in persecution and injustice. Remember, this is little more than 50 years ago that we're talking about; a relatively recent period that some view as a kind of golden age, and yet one in which not only were men like Turing criminalized and victimized for nothing more heinous than having desires that were deemed unsavoury, but an era in which the state had the power and saw fit to intervene medically to 'cure' its own citizens of what it regarded as deviancy. Even if such apologies are cynical ploys, if they only succeed in making a few people stop and realise just what a shower of inhuman bastards even a 'respectable' democratic government can be when they start acting as guardians of the moral fabric of society, then such gestures are worth it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vulgarian Posted September 11, 2009 Share Posted September 11, 2009 These apologies by the government for atrocities of the past are indeed cynical fawnings to popular attitudes. They are apologies made by people who had nothing to do with the thing they're saying sorry for, to people who were not directly affected, defying the idea of what an apology is meant to be. What they're doing is measuring events of the past against modern standards. By removing these events from their historical context we detach them from all the things that we could learn from them about how they were allowed to happen, the contemporary attitudes that made them possible, the government's complicity in them. Inspecting them through the looking glass of modern standards may magnify the ugliness of the events but it really teaches us nothing about them, or how they can be prevented in the future. I don't think it brings to focus ways in which governments can be complicit in injustices, if anything it is the government saying "look how much more civilised we are today than we were back then", and thereby vaunting today's standards and morals. It may make people think about them, but there is also a danger of us becoming complacent through the idea that having apologised we are absolved of the responsibility thinking about them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Tatlock Posted September 12, 2009 Share Posted September 12, 2009 These apologies by the government for atrocities of the past are indeed cynical fawnings to popular attitudes. They are apologies made by people who had nothing to do with the thing they're saying sorry for, to people who were not directly affected, defying the idea of what an apology is meant to be. What they're doing is measuring events of the past against modern standards. By removing these events from their historical context we detach them from all the things that we could learn from them about how they were allowed to happen, the contemporary attitudes that made them possible, the government's complicity in them. Inspecting them through the looking glass of modern standards may magnify the ugliness of the events but it really teaches us nothing about them, or how they can be prevented in the future. I don't think it brings to focus ways in which governments can be complicit in injustices, if anything it is the government saying "look how much more civilised we are today than we were back then", and thereby vaunting today's standards and morals. It may make people think about them, but there is also a danger of us becoming complacent through the idea that having apologised we are absolved of the responsibility thinking about them. Eloquently put...and sums it all up nicely for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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