Atheist war hero Turing is finally to be pardoned for a gay ‘offence’

http://freethinker.co.uk/2013/07/23...ned-for-a-gay-offence-committed-in-the-1950s/

Atheist war hero Turing is finally to be pardoned for a gay ‘offence’ committed in the 1950s

By
Barry Duke
– July 23, 2013Posted in: atheism, gay, Humanism, Religion and sex

THE news that the UK Government is prepared to support a backbench bill that would pardon Alan Turing, who died from cyanide poisoning at the age of 41 in 1954 after he was subjected to chemical castration for a gay offence, has been welcomed by the LGBT humanist charity the Pink Triangle Trust.

Turing, known as the father of computer science, was the code breaker who helped win World War 2.

The pardon follows a campaign launched in 2009 with a petition calling on the Government to recognise the “consequences of prejudice” that ended the life of the scientist.

Notable among the campaign’s supporters was the well-known atheist and humanist Professor Richard Dawkins who said that an apology would “send a signal to the world which needs to be sent”, and that Turing might still be alive today if it were not for the repressive, religion-influenced laws which drove him to despair.

The author of The God Delusion, who presented a television programme for Channel 4 on Turing, said the impact of the mathematician’s war work could not be overstated.

Turing arguably made a greater contribution to defeating the Nazis than Eisenhower or Churchill. Thanks to Turing and his colleagues at Bletchley Park, allied generals in the field were consistently, over long periods of the war, privy to detailed German plans before the German generals had time to implement them.

After the war, when Turing’s role was no longer top-secret, he should have been knighted and fêted as a saviour of his nation. Instead, this gentle, stammering, eccentric genius was destroyed, for a ‘crime’, committed in private, which harmed nobody.

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PTT Secretary George Broadhead commented:

It was great to have such a prominent atheist and humanist as Richard Dawkins adding his weight to the campaign and it is highly significant that he identified religious-influenced laws as being to blame for Turing’s suicide.

As a gay atheist himself, Alan Turing is a humanist hero and a pardon after the appalling way he was treated for being gay is long overdue.

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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, a government whip, told peers that the government would table the third reading of the Alan Turing (statutory pardon) bill at the end of October if no amendments are made.

If nobody tables an amendment to this bill, its supporters can be assured that it will have speedy passage to the House of Commons.

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The announcement marks a change of heart by the government, which declined last year to grant pardons to the 49,000 gay men, now dead, who were convicted under the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act. They include Oscar Wilde.

Ahmad told peers:

Alan Turing himself believed that homosexual activity would be made legal by a royal commission. In fact, appropriately, it was parliament which decriminalised the activity for which he was convicted. The government are very aware of the calls to pardon Turing, given his outstanding achievements, and have great sympathy with this objective … That is why the government believe it is right that parliament should be free to respond to this bill in whatever way its conscience dictates and in whatever way it so wills.

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The government threw its weight behind the private member’s bill, promoted by the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Sharkey, who said:

As I think everybody knows, he was convicted in 1952 of gross indecency and sentenced to chemical castration. He committed suicide two years later. The government know that Turing was a hero and a very great man. They acknowledge that he was cruelly treated. They must have seen the esteem in which he is held here and around the world.

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However, Ben Summerskill, Chief Executive of Stonewall, described the pardon as “pointless”, saying:

A more proper apologia might be to ensure that Turing’s achievements, and his treatment by the nation that benefited, are included in every pupil’s school curriculum. The 55% of gay pupils in our secondary schools who were homophobically bullied in the last 12 months might derive lasting reassurance from that .

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About bloody time. He was an amazing man and hounded to death by the establishment he helped to save.

Wolfman1982 said:

The announcement marks a change of heart by the government, which declined last year to grant pardons to the 49,000 gay men, now dead, who were convicted under the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act.

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I admire Turing and respect his memory. A few years back I was lucky enough to attend a lecture by one of his colleagues from Bletchley, who was still angry at the injustice done to Turing. But I've got mixed feelings about the pardon.

Are we pardoning him because he was a celebrity who did the world a lot of good? That's a very dangerous road to go down. (See: Jimmy Savile, who got away with 40+ years of sexual predation because of his charitable works.)

Or are we pardoning him because the law was unjust? In that case, those other 49,000 men are just as deserving of a pardon... and is it true that they're all dead? That law wasn't repealed until 1967 in England/Wales and 1980 in Scotland.

Bramblethorn said:

I admire Turing and respect his memory. A few years back I was lucky enough to attend a lecture by one of his colleagues from Bletchley, who was still angry at the injustice done to Turing. But I've got mixed feelings about the pardon.

Are we pardoning him because he was a celebrity who did the world a lot of good? That's a very dangerous road to go down. (See: Jimmy Savile, who got away with 40+ years of sexual predation because of his charitable works.)

Or are we pardoning him because the law was unjust? In that case, those other 49,000 men are just as deserving of a pardon... and is it true that they're all dead? That law wasn't repealed until 1967 in England/Wales and 1980 in Scotland.

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Yeah, and now UK is having a lockdown when it comes to internet porn. I can only say this to the people in the UK. And anywhere else(in the "civilised" hemisphere), who thinks it is a great idea. Welcome to the Victorian Era 2.0. And well that sentence I have said before.

Meah... it's actually trying to tackle child porn, which I'm sure you would support as well. The Victorian era was full of BDSM btw :caning:
Tumblr ( Yahoo ) tried to stop 'lesbian' 'gay' 'LGBT' and various other tags last week but got a massive backlash, so have retracted that because, whilst their NSFW thing is voluntary, they were throwing out the baby and bath water with their homey good intentions. The only reason I'm on Tumblr is because of it's LGBTQ freedoms. The last thing I want to do is look at is shemale porn but it's easy to avoid...

As for Turing being singled out: at least it's a start. I think successive govts have wanted to do this before, but there's a constitutional problem in the UK since judiciary and executive are necessarily separate powers that are not allowed to intefer with each other. That's why the Turing thing had to go through as a specific action. I'm no expert and others may wish to clarify that - all I've got to go by is some lessons at school

There is so much in history one would wish to undo but for me the important thing is the future. Yes, Turing was a figure head, but his pardon is symbolic and having seen an extensive exhibition of his life at the Science Museum last year, I think the message is loud and clear: time to move forward. Perhaps the govts attempts to tackle child abuse and child pornography might be seen as ham-fisted but their intentions are not misplaced. It is an unspeakably abhorrent crime but I don't believe the UK govt is about to cut me off from having adult discussion on Lit
Hello? Hello?

Wolfman1982 said:

Yeah, and now UK is having a lockdown when it comes to internet porn. I can only say this to the people in the UK. And anywhere else(in the "civilised" hemisphere), who thinks it is a great idea. Welcome to the Victorian Era 2.0. And well that sentence I have said before.

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What is proposed is not a 'lockdown'.

There are two proposals:

1. To make it more difficult to access child pornography. That isn't 'teens behaving badly' but the really obxious images and movies of serious abuse of pre-pubescent children.

2. To make the default position on legal pornography an Opt-In rather than Opt-Out. So if UK citizens want adult images and sites like Literotica they would have to specifically allow it. Most of us already do that, by stating we are over 18 years of age to access certain sites e.g. Yahoo Adult Groups.

Neither proposal is likely to be wholly effective and the UK government knows that. They just want to make it more difficult to access the really offensive and sickening child pornography, and less likely that people will find adult pornography by mistake. For example, if you search for 'Breast Cancer' a significant number of the results will be pornography.

If a child is doing internet research for a school project they often get links to pornography as well as the information they are actually searching for.

If however a teenager really wants to find sexual images, the UK Government's proposals are unlikely to stop that teenager finding them. Their aim is not to make pornography difficult, just less 'in your face'.

Yeah child abuse is BAD, but seriously. There are some funky laws, that are just plain crazy in other areas. Cause an Opt-In is still censorship.

oggbashan said:

1. To make it more difficult to access child pornography. That isn't 'teens behaving badly' but the really obxious images and movies of serious abuse of pre-pubescent children.

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There are two different varieties of "more difficult to access". There's "stop people from stumbling across accidentally" and "stop people from seeking out". Filters can be moderately effective for the former (though not without collateral damage, more on that below) but they're almost completely ineffective for the latter.

Political censorship discussions tend to conflate the two, either through ignorance (Cameron's advisor on this matter is apparently too inept to understand the difference between a link and a screenshot) or because clarity is not a desired outcome. So let's separate them.

I've been on the net since before the Web existed. I've seen a fair bit of porn in my time, not all of it intentional. But I'm pretty sure I've never accidentally stumbled across the sort of child porn that you describe; AFAIK you have to seek it out, because it's not in people's interests to attract public attention to that stuff. So it's the "seeking out" kind of censorship we're looking at there.

Three ways that can be implemented:

- Blacklisting websites: compiling a Naughty List and requiring national ISPs to forbid access. It's ineffective against anybody who's net-savvy, which pedophiles tend to be. The same tools I use to view US/UK video content and protect my security when accessing the web via net cafes will go straight through this, plus, porn hosts can change URLs faster than the list can be updated.

It also poses a dilemma: do you publish the blacklist? If yes, you've just made it EASIER for pedophiles to find child porn. If no, then there is no accountabiity and no redress for people who are blacklisted by mistake (or, not until the list gets leaked, which it inevitably will). When Australia tried this a few years back and the list got leaked, it turned out to include websites for a Queensland dentist and an artist whose photos of children had already been rated PG (not bannable) by the very same authority compiling the list.

- Whitelisting websites: only sites on the Nice List can be accessed. If the list is restrictive enough this actually can block people from viewing porn... along with most other web content.

- Content sniffing: as data comes through, scan it to see whether it looks like porn. Easily bypassed via encryption, and even without encryption, computers aren't very good at gauging what counts as porn.

For that matter, humans have a lot of difficulty with it. Subjective assessments tend to be based on majority preferences... which are often unfriendly to GLBT folk and other minorities. Expect to see a lot of accidental blocks of support/sex-ed services for GLBT teens and the like.

From where I stand this isn't about protecting the kiddies; it's about winning votes by pandering to the mob's prurient outrage. That's very dangerous territory for GLBT folk because that same outrage very easily turns in other directions - see e.g. Lucy Meadows.

Neither proposal is likely to be wholly effective and the UK government knows that. They just want to make it more difficult to access the really offensive and sickening child pornography, and less likely that people will find adult pornography by mistake. For example, if you search for 'Breast Cancer' a significant number of the results will be pornography.

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To me this still seems like a better outcome than searching for 'Breast Cancer' and having legitimate health info sites blocked as porn, which has happened many a time.

(Meanwhile, Cameron has assured us that access to the Sun's Page 3 tits will not be obstructed.)

And if people really want to be protected against finding adult porn by mistake... Google already HAS a SafeSearch filter. It's not perfect, but are we really expecting the UK Government's efforts to produce something better?

If however a teenager really wants to find sexual images, the UK Government's proposals are unlikely to stop that teenager finding them. Their aim is not to make pornography difficult, just less 'in your face'.

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Except that by my understanding they're also talking about banning "rape porn" - which almost inevitably translates to "ban consensual BDSM content" - without even an opt-in.

Sadly, I think you have a point Brambles. As soon as something is banned then criminals find a more sophisticated method and that article acknowledges trying to stop peer-to-peer sharing is impossible. It's cheaper to ban everything than actually pursue the criminals... and it makes better PR for the govt.

I wouldn't know where to look for child porn but here's the point - why would I want to? Only a tiny minority are responsible for the crimes

While we are at certain laws in the UK. I heard from a guy today, that if you get caught with a joint/spliff then you get 8 months in jail.. Seriously that is completely bonkers. Here you get a ticket (first time) of 2000 kroner up til almost 100 grams. So priorities ... but sadly you also get a notation on your criminal record.. Certain things and laws are seriously fucked up.

I know I am totally off topic with this edit, and the other stuff in this post. But seriously something is rotten, and it is not just in the state of Denmark.

http://www.ministryoftruth.me.uk/20...isors-website-hacked-threatenslibels-blogger/

Perhaps this guy meant if you had previous convictions or kicked the policeman in the balls when he asked. Seriously, no.

stickygirl said:

Perhaps this guy meant if you had previous convictions or kicked the policeman in the balls when he asked. Seriously, no.

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Actually, he meant what he said. But thank you for correcting me.

Wolfman1982 said:

While we are at certain laws in the UK. I heard from a guy today, that if you get caught with a joint/spliff then you get 8 months in jail.. Seriously that is completely bonkers.

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It would be if it were true.

In the UK, if you are caught with a small amount of cannabis, or smoking a spliff, and it is your first offence for that, it will be confiscated and you will be given a caution.

A second offence? Probably a small fine.

A large quantity of cannabis? You would be treated as a dealer and the penalties can be harsher.

I agree with Bramblethorn's thoughtful post above about on-line pornography.

The UK government's announcements have been confused, and even more confused by the media's misleading reports of those announcements.

How much is political grandstanding? Certainly some of it is. But by making announcements about two different issues the Government has muddied the water.

Child Abuse porn of the severe and disturbing variety is already confined to the obscurer parts of the internet. If you want to find it - but please don't look! - you will, but you could trigger an alert to the authorities. Most UK paedophiles know where to look and how to conceal themselves, but more are being successfully prosecuted in the UK.

Inadvertent access to pornography is a more difficult problem to solve and Opt-In might not help. I have several email accounts. My main personal one is flooded with spam adverts for fake Viagra and penis enhancement with attachments of porn. My oggbashan one? That gets spam about problems with the bank accounts oggbashan doesn't have. I would have expected the spam to be the other way round.

My other email accounts, less used, get less spam but some of it is pornographic.

How would the UK government stop that pornographic spam? When I bother to trace it, the origins are in SE Asia or former parts of the USSR. What control can a UK government have on them?

We should continue watching what the UK government propose, and if they get to specifics, challenge them on every line to ensure that the proposed legislation does what it is supposed to do and NOTHING else.

Also, I am personally not aware of the truth when it comes to the almost 100 grams in Denmark. Cause in my ears personally it sounds reasonable crazy. But I have personally heard that comment.

Back to the OP.

I can't see the point of pardoning Alan Turing. He has finally got recognition for what he achieved during WW2, but nothing can change what he suffered after the war.

I could understand the campaign for pardons for those executed for 'cowardice' during the First World War when they were actually suffering shell-shock. Those executed had no intention of being cowards. They were injured like those who received physical wounds but the evidence wasn't obvious.

But those persecuted and prosecuted for being Gay at the wrong time? We can regret what happened to them. We can't change what happened but attitudes and laws have changed since then.

Do we issue pardons for everyone who was convicted under laws that we now consider unjust? If so, when do we stop? With the Suffragettes pre-WW1? With witches executed in the 17th century? With Catholics in Queen Elizabeth I's reign, or Protestants in Queen Mary's reign? Or even further back?

We now acknowledge that some of our laws, some of the actions of the UK's government, courts and other institutions were wrong, and for some of them the UK government has apologised.

But pardons? For what, when and how many? The wrongs have been acknowledged and history revised. Surely that is enough.

Alan Turing may well have been alive today - that's the difference

stickygirl said:

Alan Turing may well have been alive today - that's the difference

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But a pardon won't change that, nor alter the way he was treated.

oggbashan said:

But a pardon won't change that, nor alter the way he was treated.

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Then why pardon anyone?! I'm not sure how a pardon works constitutionally because I'm not studying law, but UK law is based on ... what's the term... examples? no... previous enactments of law? Doesn't a pardon set a legal precedent so that government is giving direct instructions to the law courts, which isn't normally permitted? Sure, it is a symbolic gesture but, at a time when sexual equality and gay rights are still being fought for, then it is a very clear message of intent as well.

There are few people in the UK who are as open minded as the many posters on Lit. Gay-bashing is alive and well in the UK. Rulings like this make it clear that bigoted behaviour is no longer acceptable

stickygirl said:

Then why pardon anyone?! I'm not sure how a pardon works constitutionally because I'm not studying law, but UK law is based on ... what's the term... examples? no... previous enactments of law? Doesn't a pardon set a legal precedent so that government is giving direct instructions to the law courts, which isn't normally permitted? Sure, it is a symbolic gesture but, at a time when sexual equality and gay rights are still being fought for, then it is a very clear message of intent as well.

There are few people in the UK who are as open minded as the many posters on Lit. Gay-bashing is alive and well in the UK. Rulings like this make it clear that bigoted behaviour is no longer acceptable

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Why pardon anyone?

That is the real question.

A pardon admits that the person was fairly convicted of the offence by due legal process but the Executive has decided that the penalty is inappropriate for various reasons. It does not set a precedent because pardons are so exceptional. A pardon admits that the legal process AT THE TIME was correct. That is why I think a pardon is inappropriate. Alan Turing's reputation has already been restored.

The message now is that being gay is not a crime. Victimising someone because they are gay IS NOW a crime in the UK and people are being prosecuted and convicted for that.

A pardon for Alan Turing wouldn't change the law as it was, nor the law as it is now.

Bramblethorn said:

There are two different varieties of "more difficult to access". There's "stop people from stumbling across accidentally" and "stop people from seeking out". Filters can be moderately effective for the former (though not without collateral damage, more on that below) but they're almost completely ineffective for the latter.

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Thank you luv, I was going to post something similar but you did so much more elaborately and informatively than I could have.

oggbashan said:

Why pardon anyone?

That is the real question.

A pardon admits that the person was fairly convicted of the offence by due legal process but the Executive has decided that the penalty is inappropriate for various reasons. It does not set a precedent because pardons are so exceptional. A pardon admits that the legal process AT THE TIME was correct. That is why I think a pardon is inappropriate. Alan Turing's reputation has already been restored.

The message now is that being gay is not a crime. Victimising someone because they are gay IS NOW a crime in the UK and people are being prosecuted and convicted for that.

A pardon for Alan Turing wouldn't change the law as it was, nor the law as it is now.

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I don't see anything wrong with granting a pardon. Why is it controversial? Symbolic, perhaps but I do want to say pardoning anyone still alive for a crime that was never really criminal would have more than a symbolic meaning. Maybe instead of arguing, those of you who live in the United Kingdom should be pressuring your political class to do something about it.

oggbashan said:

Why pardon anyone?

That is the real question.

A pardon admits that the person was fairly convicted of the offence by due legal process but the Executive has decided that the penalty is inappropriate for various reasons. It does not set a precedent because pardons are so exceptional. A pardon admits that the legal process AT THE TIME was correct. That is why I think a pardon is inappropriate. Alan Turing's reputation has already been restored.
So a pardon accepts that the legal decision at the time was appropriate but the sentence was not and no precedent is set.... hmmm. The way I see it, is that the war-time UK govt was quite happy to ignore his homosexuality because he was helping defeat the enemy. Once the war was over his reputation was trashed and his sexual preferences drawn to the attention of the police by the very mischief makers who were too ready to slap him on the back during the war. Seems to me the only people that need pardoned are the hypocrites who persecuted him and I for one am not about to turn the other cheek to that kind of evil. A good number of the govt past and present have been closet gay but still feel they have to resign from office when some scumbag newspaper publishes salacious stories, law or no law. There was a crime but the wrong person was convicted. It is a shameful slur on the reputation of the UK and a pardon, wholly appropriate.

The message now is that being gay is not a crime. Victimising someone because they are gay IS NOW a crime in the UK and people are being prosecuted and convicted for that. Yea? Tell that to the average policeman who'll still call you a faggot and queer after some creep beats you up. The law, as ever is for those who can afford the right legal team. I'm sure things are better now than they were 20 years ago but they still have a long way to go. The law makers set the standard to which we are supposed to aspire. Gestures, such as pardons, are important, whether they have true legal worth or not.

A pardon for Alan Turing wouldn't change the law as it was, nor the law as it is now.

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I'd like to think you are a decent man Oggi but why am I hearing "Well we've given them the law, isn't that enough for God's sake?" Look, don't get me wrong - I'm not attacking you but you just pressed all the wrong buttons with me: science, gay rights, LGBT.... Actually I'm grateful to you for giving me a chance to soapbox, for all the good it does.

stickygirl said:

I'd like to think you are a decent man Oggi but why am I hearing "Well we've given them the law, isn't that enough for God's sake?" Look, don't get me wrong - I'm not attacking you but you just pressed all the wrong buttons with me: science, gay rights, LGBT.... Actually I'm grateful to you for giving me a chance to soapbox, for all the good it does.

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My difficulty is that a pardon for Alan Turing ignores the many other people who weren't war heroes yet were crucified for being gay. And a 'pardon' re-emphasises the conviction. My objections to a 'pardon' mirror those expressed by much more eminent people than me in letters to today's The Times. A pardon solves nothing, forgives nothing and in some senses sullies Turing's name once more by reminding us that he was justly convicted - by the law as it then stood.

I know that changing the law isn't enough. People's attitudes have to change too.

Next weekend is Brighton's Gay Parade - the largest such event in the UK, and part of a week long festival. That is far more positive than the argument about the validity of a pardon for one man who is now honoured for his contribution to the war effort and computing.

So a pardon accepts that the legal decision at the time was appropriate but the sentence was not and no precedent is set.... hmmm. The way I see it, is that the war-time UK govt was quite happy to ignore his homosexuality because he was helping defeat the enemy.

Not quite right. A pardon accepts that the legal decision AND the sentence was right. What would be better is a legal decision on appeal that overturns the guilty verdict and declares the convicted person innocent. That is only possible during the person's lifetime.

A pardon does not say that the pardoned person was innocent, nor that they were wrongly convicted, nor that they were unjustly sentenced.

But you are right that the war-time UK government was happy to ignore Turing's homosexuality - and that of others who were working for the war effort. The code breakers of Bletchley Park were a very unusual collection of people. But for the war and the different mindset required for code breaking, many would have been regarded as very unreliable or impossible employees, and a very unlikely team to be managed by the military.

What is amazing about the team of people there is that they were able to work together at all, that their brilliance was recognised, and their eccentricity was not just managed but channelled into producing fantastic results.

Many aspects of the secret war effort during WW2 in the UK brought out the best in many people. It enabled unusual cooperations between people who might have been ostracised but for the war. It is appalling that so many people who deserved well because of their service for their country and democratic freedoms should have been cast aside, neglected, forgotten and like Alan Turing - persecuted - because their efforts were still "Top Secret" and not known to a judge or jury.