"I'm sorry for what we did to Turing". On the other hand, if you don't happen to be a genius, tough! The countless, ordinary blokes in the street who happened to be homosexuals and were prosecuted in the 1950s and earlier can go hang as with the millions of others who with hindsight suffered unfairly at the hands of various laws of the land in past centuries.
However it seems to me that for people alive today to apologize for laws made by people now dead is a cheap, meaningless (reform laws on gay sex were passed long ago - that's an 'apology' that means something) gesture. I'm all for memorials and public honourings of people like Turing (I read the Hodges biography a long time ago and was greatly moved) but I wish people would stop cheapening the word 'apology'.
I always liked the speculation that the original Apple logo (the rainbow one) was a reference to Turing. He (allegedly) killed himself by taking a single bite out of a cyanide-laced apple, and the rainbow stripes are a reference to his homosexuality.
As far as I can tell, the idea is almost entirely without merit - but it's a nice idea.
I knew virtually nothing about Turing until reading Neal Stephenson's 'Cryptonomicon' around 15 years ago. I wonder how many people actually learned about him (and some aspects of his life, despite the novel being alternate/historical fiction) for the first time in this way.
I'm sure may of you are aware of Alan Turing and Oscar Wilde's prosecution for gross indecency (and if you're not you most definitely should!), but you should all also learn about the similar prosecution against Roger Casement. He was the father of human-rights investigations and made a huge impact with his investigations of human-rights abuses in Peru and the Congo. Mario Vargas Llosa (Nobel prize-winner for Literature) wrote a book detailing his life called The Dream of the Celts. Highly recommended.
Casement was tried and convicted of treason for trying, during World War I, to get Germany to support an uprising in Ireland against Great Britain. It's true that his alleged homosexuality didn't help his case.
Oh of course, there's little doubt he committed treason, but the fact that his homosexuality was used to ensure that a fair trial was impossible is what I was trying to get at.
Are there any other similar cases to Turing/Wilde/Casement that I don't know about?
Considering Ireland (except Northern Ireland) is now widely accepted to be independent of Britain, doesn't that mean any "treason" supporting that should also seen as acceptable, and Casement should be pardoned from his treason conviction? To maintain it, implies that Ireland really shouldn't be independent, and that anyone still supporting it is also guilty.
It sounds silly, but that's how it really is. Treason is often a crime with the harshest punishments, yet also one that's most unclear if it's very bad or very good. Somehow it doesn't seem to get the attention it deserves as immoral law.
I'm not sure that a government can meaningfully apologize for anything when all the actual participants are dead, including (but especially) the victim.
It's the half-assed, social justice warrior version of a government agreeing that things done in the past are awful. Why stop with Turing? 30,000 years ago one of your ancestors murdered a woman's children, held her captive, and raped her repeatedly. Why not apologize for that? Or for some Babylonian genocide that's 5000 years old?
(Disclaimer: I'm an openly gay man working in technology).
A part of me dislikes how Alan Turing was given a pardon and apology. It's like they said it was wrong to persecute a gay man for being gay, but only if you help invent the computer and help defeat the Nazis.
What about all the other gay men persecuted under the same law? Why do they not get a pardon/apology? Do we have to help stop evil genocidal dictators before we get the same respect?
As a Scot born in the late 70s (I mention my vintage as the early 80s probably seems ridiculously long ago to younger people here), I was somewhat shocked to discover that whilst male homosexual acts were decriminalised (to an extent) in 1967 in England and Wales, this did not occur in Scotland until 1980 or in Northern Ireland until 1982.
This is the reason JGC doesn't support the idea of a pardon for just Turing. If a pardon is to happen, it has to be applied to all gays persecuted during that time period.
I think it's worth looking at the other way; obviously this kind of treatment is wrong when you apply it to anyone, but it is even worse when you apply it to one of the 5-10 most important and accomplished people your nation ever has and probably ever will produce.
After some thought, one aspect came up that I'd be interested in your views about:
It's like they said it was wrong to persecute a gay man for being gay, but only if you help invent the computer and help defeat the Nazis.
What about all the other gay men persecuted under the same law?
What you say here is so obviously right that is is difficult to argue with. Maybe pardoning Turing is a necessary first step to see that everyone deserves similar treatment?
(Non-gay, white male. Not sure it matters in this response.)
My suspicion is that pardons don't miraculously happen. I suspect it happens because of the hard work and passion of people who want to make a difference.
The group of people who would campaign for pardons largely overlaps with the group of people campaigning for equal treatment under today's laws. (Same age of consent was law in England & Wales in 2001; 2009! for Northern Ireland; protections for discrimination - partial since 2003, full since 2010; gay marriage since 2014, civil partnership since 2005).
One of the reasons the apology and pardon were delayed for so long is because some of those very many gay men are still alive and the government didn't want to open themselves to compensation claims.
As time goes by, and those men die, the pressure for an apology drops but the possibility increases. I hope campaigners do keep the pressure on.
It's a reasonable question to ask about the other gay men who were imprisoned or chemically castrated or otherwise persecuted but who are ignored by the various apologies and pardons.
We can tailor the point being made to your nit-picking: for starters, how about men who were persecuted for having sex in the privacy of their own house, excluding those who were convicted for deeds that are still considered immoral?
Have one who was prosecuted simply for gay sex. According to the organisation Stonewall, there's thousands more - although obviously, there's not going to be a pre-made list somewhere, you'd have to go over court records.
"In the early 1950s, the police actively enforced laws prohibiting sexual behaviour between men. By the end of 1954, there were 1,069 gay men in prison in England and Wales, with an average age of 37."
"1952 - Sir John Nott-Bower, commissioner of Scotland Yard began to weed out homosexuals from the British Government at the same time as McCarthy was conducting a federal homosexual witch hunt in the US. During the early 50's as many as 1,000 men were locked up in Britain's prisons every year amid a widespread police clampdown on homosexual offences. Undercover officers acting as 'agents provocateurs' would pose as gay men soliciting in public places. The prevailing mood was one of barely concealed paranoia."
It's a well-documented thing. Claiming that the targeted harassment and prosecution of the LGBT community never happened is a very dangerous form of denial. You can find anecdotal stories all over the Internet, and in modern media including mass market films. This is the entire reason we have gay pride. I'll see if I can find a book on the subject.
You seem to be saying that men were not prosecuted merely for being gay men or just for having consensual sex with other adult men in private, and that the men must have been having sex with children[1] or in public.
Thousands of men each year were arrested and locked up. Police were acting as agent provocateurs (thus entrapping these men) so obviously many of those prosecutions involve sexual activity in public -- where that's defined as "being approached by a police officer acting as a gay man and having a conversation with that officer".
You appear to be applying stricter standards of conduct to gay men than to heterosexual people. We can see very many convictions of gay men for gross indecency in public. But this definition of "public" included (until the year 2000) anywhere where a third person may be present - two adult men in one of their homes would have been having sex in public if one of those homes was rented lodgings; this was an additional restriction on gay sex that heterosexual couples didn't face. This extra restriction was included in law in 1968, and overturned in 2000.
Finally, around younger people: laws for heterosexuals had the age of female consent at 16 for heterosexual sex. But for gay men the age of consent was 21. Thus a 25 year old man having sex with a 16 year old woman was fine, but a 25 year old man having sex with a 20 year old man would be arrested and imprisoned.
[1] children need to be protected from sexual predators. Suggesting that gay men are more likely to be sexual predators is not supported by any evidence and is a homophobic slur that needs to end.
I don't know how you can say from anything I wrote that I am applying a stricter standard of conduct to gay men rather than heterosexual couples.
I don't understand how the downvoting/banning system works but I think it might be best if I shut up now.
This is a great post putting some human interest onto a story about how slowly Britain is coming to terms with it's place in the world. I am glad jgrahmnc put his effort into this and that so many supported him.
But really the responses here are appalling - this was a small victory in a war for a better world - and unless we take our victories and celebrate them the defeats will cripple us.
Well done jgrahmnc, well done even Gordon Brown (this being I think the only thing he did right as premier) - now we have all got work to do to make a better world. And we can't afford to keep killing off the geniuses.
This is absolutely not an apology. Anyone can apologize when their culture tells them some action was wrong. Whether it's persecuting homosexuals, jews, blacks, or whatever. But the fact is British law still persecutes minorities, for example incest is still illegal and people are in prison today for committing that offense. Of course most people agree that it's "wrong" or "immoral" or "sick" - just like they did with homosexuality 50 years ago. So until those other similar persecutions are stopped, this isn't an apology.
I assume we're talking about incest between consenting adults here. I still think it's pretty fucked up, generally speaking (I really don't think you can have an equal power relationship between a parent and a child, even if the child is an adult), but I have to grudgingly admit that it probably shouldn't be criminal.
(I'm going to regret saying anything here, aren't I?)
Congratulations jgrahamc ! Thank you for your persistence! Truly horrible what happened to somebody who did a lot for Britain, computer science and the world.
A job well done. Thank you jgrahamc for your hard work on this issue. I know it's not a general apology to everybody who suffered under such a world, but it's a big step towards everybody learning how to treat each other decently.
What's really nice to consider is the fact that Graham-Cumming is an avid Hacker News user. :P [0] Can't even imagine how awesome it would have been if Turing was able to be so as well(although he would have died long before Hacker News ever existed).
I am sure you meant well but it is totally off topic and adds nothing to this discussion. It sounds like a terrible thing to happen but this is not the place to discuss it.
> Gay activists are starting to sound like blacks in America. Always taking the victim role...
As a gay, nonwhite man, I can't write any more in response to your statement in a rational and unemotional way befitting of Hacker News, aside from the following two points.
> So when marijuana becomes legal somewhere, the government has to pardon and apologies to all those who were arrested previously?
Not that I'm holding my breath, but if that happened, yes, I would be thrilled. Marijuana prohibition is unjust and its racially-biased enforcement is morally reprehensible.
> Those laws that prosecuted Turing were maintained by an elected leadership. The people spoke with their votes and chose those laws. If Turing wanted to live in a society where the people didn't want him, how is that the fault of the existing Government?
Support for interracial marriage did not hold majority support in the US until about three decades after it was made legal. This is known as the tyranny of the majority - majority rule can very easily oppress minority groups. And no, the fact that the majority are comfortable with this oppression does not make it right.
Not agreeing with anything in your post, but the hypothesis that he didn't kill himself...is quite interesting. I would say that it's definitely not conclusively suicide.
On another note, I see no problem with publicly apologizing to people - all people - who were mistreated under morally unjustifiable laws. If the govt finally realizes that it's morally absurd to put people in prison for more than a decade for having some marijuana, then yes, those people do deserve a pardon and apology. What's so outlandish about that?
However it seems to me that for people alive today to apologize for laws made by people now dead is a cheap, meaningless (reform laws on gay sex were passed long ago - that's an 'apology' that means something) gesture. I'm all for memorials and public honourings of people like Turing (I read the Hodges biography a long time ago and was greatly moved) but I wish people would stop cheapening the word 'apology'.