Turing Not Pardoned for Being Gay

[Stickfigure]

hmmm this sounds interesting..have I heard of this guy beofre?...want...WHAT?????

they carstrated him??!! did they do that back then? holy shit thats heavy

I...I dont know what to say, Im actually shocked, Ive never heard of this being done, especially around that time

Probably should take the time to note that they chemically castrated him. This is a practice that is still done to a certain extent today. It's not the literal removal of testicles, it's the chemical inducement of impotence(as long as the medication is taken).

 

[ckam]

Well, just wait a thousand years. Then, he'll turn into another Galileo.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

What exactly the point of pardoning someone posthumously? Seriously, what is accomplished?

While I fully understand that for the most part, being sorry about a situation one creates doesn't change anything... A guilty party saying their sorry and admiting their wrong doing is worth something.

In this case, it be this particular court apologizing for the past sins with the idea that it won't make the same mistake in the future.

Yes, yes, it's symbolic and silly and the guy is still dead, but it should be done.

 

[Vault101]

hmmm this sounds interesting..have I heard of this guy beofre?...want...WHAT?????

they carstrated him??!! did they do that back then? holy shit thats heavy

I...I dont know what to say, Im actually shocked, Ive never heard of this being done, especially around that time

Probably should take the time to note that they chemically castrated him. This is a practice that is still done to a certain extent today. It's not the literal removal of testicles, it's the chemical inducement of impotence(as long as the medication is taken).

I know, there wasnt a bunch of surgeons chasing him around with a meat cleaver

but Im still shocked that they actually did this, forcing somone to tkae much mediation, I always figured when it came to homosexualty back then they would rolltheir eyes and have you locked up, destry your reputation mabye but never somthing like this

 

[Jake0fTrades]

Two sides to every story.

 

[Aprilgold]

What he did was illegal at the time. Sure it sucks but if you break the law then you get punished. Just because they later change the law does not mean you were right to break it at the time.

Oh and all these "He did great works so should be forgiven blah blah blah" are the exact same sort of people who argue that Roman Polanski should be forgiven for raping a child just because he makes (apparently) good movies.
So yeah...

Difference between willing raping a child and being a homosexual. One is a willing choice on a persons part and one is a sexuality. Homosexuality, at the time, was a crime, but it shouldn't be compared to a willing choice on someones behalf. I'm not saying that the ruling at the time was incorrect, I'm just pointing it out that your comparing someone who willing took and raped little boys to a homosexual who had no choice in being a homosexual.

Didn't he molest school boys, but was too important for the work he was doing to be punished at that time, so after he finished his work, they charged him?

Could you fetch a link and then edit it into your post on Page 2 which is 31 posts or so down from the first post on Page 2.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

What exactly the point of pardoning someone posthumously? Seriously, what is accomplished?

While I fully understand that for the most part, being sorry about a situation one creates doesn't change anything... A guilty party saying their sorry and admiting their wrong doing is worth something.

In this case, it be this particular court apologizing for the past sins with the idea that it won't make the same mistake in the future.

Yes, yes, it's symbolic and silly and the guy is still dead, but it should be done.

Eh, from the article:

An previous petition, organised by computer security expert and author, John Graham-Cumming in 2009 led to the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown issuing an unequivocal posthumous apology to Mr Turing on behalf of the Government, describing his treatment as "horrifying" and "utterly unfair".

They already apologized and admitted it was wrong. A pardon won't exactly do anything further.

Well it would be making it offical.

To invert your argument, he's already long since dead, why not just pardon him?

 

[MPerce]

What everyone else said. It was a law at that time, so you can't pardon him for it. You can apologize, which is what they did.

 

[ntw3001]

Like everyone else is saying, they're pretty much right. An apology has already been issued, but a pardoning is acknowledging that he wasn't guilty of the crime. They've already acknowledged that homosexuality should not be considered a crime (by making that the case); there's no sense in now retroactively determining that it never was. A pardon would be an acknowledgement that he was actually innocent of the accusations; it's not a value judgement. It would be like saying 'well since Robin Hood (yeah, I know) was otherwise such a pillar of the community, we've decided he actually never robbed anyone'.

 

[OmniscientOstrich]

snip

Uhh, I think we're kinda past that point in the argument, dude. :3 Look at my other posts here, we kind of went on a back and forth on this. Anyway, Daystar and Mortai have kind of made the deciding points.

To invert your argument, he's already long since dead, why not just pardon him?

You could but that's not going to make much of a difference, an apology has already been made and apparently this whole thing has completely eluded the public conscious. At any rate, some hollow 'official' concession from the government really isn't going to hold much sway with the general public. They know it's unjust, they're perfectly capable of seeing the facts for themselves, they don't need to see a posthumous pardon for Oscar Wilde to know that what was done to him was unjust. It doesn't matter what some idiotic antediluvian legal system thought of these men over 60 and 100 years ago respectively, thier accomplishments in their respective fields shall far outlive such trivialities, that's what the people will remember and admire them for. Slapping on a sticker that reads 'not guilty' on his tombstone isn't change the opinion of the general public, more likely then not, they'll glance half-heartedly at the title and smile a little in recognition of something they already know to be true, then they'll get on with their day. I just don't see any reason to believe that posthumous pardoning actually accomplishes anything and especially when an apology has already been offered, I don't see how this would be any more significant.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

What exactly the point of pardoning someone posthumously? Seriously, what is accomplished?

While I fully understand that for the most part, being sorry about a situation one creates doesn't change anything... A guilty party saying their sorry and admiting their wrong doing is worth something.

In this case, it be this particular court apologizing for the past sins with the idea that it won't make the same mistake in the future.

Yes, yes, it's symbolic and silly and the guy is still dead, but it should be done.

Eh, from the article:

An previous petition, organised by computer security expert and author, John Graham-Cumming in 2009 led to the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown issuing an unequivocal posthumous apology to Mr Turing on behalf of the Government, describing his treatment as "horrifying" and "utterly unfair".

They already apologized and admitted it was wrong. A pardon won't exactly do anything further.

Well it would be making it offical.

To invert your argument, he's already long since dead, why not just pardon him?

Why just him and not the millions of people convicted of crimes since the beginning of time that would not be found guilty today?

There is nothing to be gained by doing it, and a can of worms to be had if they do it.

As far as I understand it, and I'm fairly inebriated so I very well could be wrong, his felony was being Gay right?

 

[lacktheknack]

What's done is done. What would having him pardoned accomplish beyond a very, very slight boost of morale to the gay community? We can't go repealing every conviction of archaic offenses for no real reason. It costs money, something the world generally doesn't have right now.

 

[ZeroMachine]

The point of this would be...?

Anyone with half a brain, whether against or for gay marriage, would know that this man was wronged. Digging up the criminal records of an old, dead man to basically either white that out or write "our bad, sorry" would do nothing. Who today would benefit? What would it do for society?

Instead, honor his memory by working to assure that such an atrocity would happen to no one else.

 

[deserteagleeye]

Striking it from the records won't do much really. As long as they acknowledge it as a horrible mistake and learn from it, that'll be enough. So it is good someone brought it up but it's not something that can corrected by changing the ruling.