Alan Turing Apology Campaign Grows 653
chrb writes "Several British news sources have recently reported on the growing campaign that calls for an apology to Alan Turing for his persecution by the British government. The petition to the Prime Minister was started by John Graham-Cumming, who has also written to the Queen requesting a Knighthood for Turing, but admits that a pardon is 'unlikely,' saying, 'The most important thing to me is that people hear about Alan Turing and realize his incredible impact on the modern world, and how terrible the impact of prejudice was on him.'"
Alan Turing Memorial (Score:4, Informative)
If you're visiting Manchester in the north-west of England, don't forget to visit the statue of Alan Turing: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=53.476722,-2.236028&spn=0.01,0.01&t=m&q=53.476722,-2.236028 [google.com].
Re:Chemically castrated?!? (Score:4, Informative)
Unless you were being deliberately ironic, don't be so quick to congratulate Western society for how wise we are "today." After all, Magdalene Asylums [wikipedia.org] were a roughly equivalent "treatment" for a similar "condition," and the last of these, in Ireland, wasn't closed until 1996.
Re:FACT: Homsexuality is WRONG! (Score:4, Informative)
> writings in the Bible show us it is evil and wrong.
Just like weaving two kinds of cloth. You evil blends you!
Re:Oh, Those Evil Conservative Christians!! (Score:3, Informative)
"Fundamentalist Christianity is, however, one of the last and greatest bastions of hatred and bigotry left in the first world."
As a Christian of the non-fundamentalist type, I'm sad to say that I agree with you on this.
Re:just Turing? (Score:4, Informative)
Why is that in poor taste? (Score:4, Informative)
The location of the statue is very close to the gay village in Manchester.
Re:just Turing? (Score:5, Informative)
Or, maybe, we could get over this notion that guilt is hereditary
The Head of State [wikipedia.org] is the same. It makes sense for her to apologize (or not).
As I see it, (Score:4, Informative)
Turing desserves an apology because any security lookup done during wartime certainly had already uncovered this aspect of his personality, but the brits were more than happy to turn a blind eye on it in spite of the already existing laws.
The later prosecution was application of a double standard in this regard.
Re:No thanks (Score:3, Informative)
homosexuality is not a flaw? I mean, if ever I saw a trait that evolution would suppress, this would be it.
And yet, homosexuality exists, and separated twin studies show convincingly that there is a genetic basis for it. So maybe there is a flaw in your reasoning? Various hypotheses have been proposed, that homosexuality may benefit the family group rather than the individual, that it was only recently in history that it became usual for homosexuals to not have a regular partner of the opposite sex, that homosexual men rank higher than straight men on various tests of agreeableness and other positive personality tests, etc. Try Evolution myths: Natural selection cannot explain homosexuality [newscientist.com] and The Economist: The evolution of homosexuality [economist.com].
Re:just Turing? (Score:5, Informative)
It is interesting that you cite Sharia for Muslim law, but do not cite your references for Hindu law. Practices in India today, do not neccessarily have anything to do with Hindu law. By all accounts Hinduism has been generally liberal with sexuality and open and accepting of various different practices including homosexuality.
When Europeans arrived in India, they were shocked by Hinduism, which they termed idolatrous, and by the range of sexual practices, including same-sex relations, which they labeled licentious. British colonial rulers wrote modern homophobia into education, law and politics.
The Wikipedia entry on Homosexuality in India [wikipedia.org] also does not refer to any of the conclusions you have made. Sure, it might sound kind of cool to make up your "facts", but please cite your sources.
The creative reconstruction of history is exactly what is being discussed here and you do make a good case against it.
Re:What the? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oh, Those Evil Conservative Christians!! (Score:3, Informative)
fundamentalist Christians don't believe in translation from Old Testament to common law. They believe the new testament freed them from having to follow the law of the old testament, hence non kosher diets and not stoning your daughter for being raped. Attend a fundamentalist church and ask them what they think.
Now Islam, on the other hand, the old skool laws are still in effect, you can gleefully stone your children for being raped or gay or whatever.
Re:What the? (Score:2, Informative)
That's the name of the battle site. The messenger who brought the victory message and ran the "marathon" distance to deliver it (only to die when he finally arrived) is not known by name afaik.
Re:What the? (Score:3, Informative)
I bet not one person that I work with has even heard of Alan Turing or the ENIGMA machine.
Maybe not, but on the other hand, I thought one of the coolest things ever was when my (completely non-techie) father named his basement band Difference Engine, after the machine built by Charles Babbage.
He may or may not have ever heard of Alan Turing (it's never come up), or know why people might want the British government to apologize to him posthumously, and maybe he's simply never had the opportunity to.
So yeah, you're right, there's a lot of people who don't know a lot of basic history (I'm not afraid to raise my hand for that), but that doesn't mean they aren't interested. There's a stereotype of people who don't know about science not caring about science, but that isn't always true. Which means that a lot of good can come from raising awareness about a historical figure like Alan Turing.
Re:just Turing? (Score:4, Informative)
the punishment for homosexuality in canon law is a mild form of banishment.
The Christian punishment for homosexuality has traditionally been execution. The following extracts are taken from a document on Canon law and homosexuality [williamapercy.com]:
If a man lie with mankind as he lieth with awoman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them." (Leviticus 20: 13, reinforcing the earlier prohibition in 18:22). From this dire injunction, which applies to male homosexuals only, stem all later Western laws prescribing the death penalty for sodomy. ...
After the Roman Empire's recognition of Christianity as effectively the state religion (A.D. 3 13), capital enactments against male homosexuality made their way into the Civil Law. One statute of 342 prescribed death by the sword, another of 390 indicated burning. ... ...
A new wave of hostile legislation emerged in the twelfth century, starting with the Nablus Council of 1120, which specified burning. The prevalence of this penalty is based in part on the Sodom story, but it also reflects the parallel with heretics who were usually burned. A somewhat later French law required execution only on the third offense.
Christian Emperors when they became heads of the church meted out savage penalties for unrepentant sodomites: the sons of Constantine the sword, and Theodosius and Justinian the avenging flames ...
the council of Nablus, preoccupied with sodomy, decreed in 1120 that guilty men should be burnt at the stake ...
at the moment when the Virgin Mary was giving birth to Jesus, all sodomites died a sudden death. From then on, canonists regularly cite Justinian's Novella 77 that disasters such as famine, pestilence, and earthquake, to which many added floods and other natural catastrophes, are divine retribution for 'crimes against nature." ...
Like the Scholastics, canon law treated homosexuality, bestiality, and masturbation as contra naturam, "contrary to nature," because they excluded the possibility of procreation, which thus became the touchstone of sexualmorality. Such crimes on the part of a religious constituted sacrilege, because his or her body was a vessel consecrated to the service of God. ...
the papal Inquisition in due course in certain regions extended its jurisdiction to sodomites as well, now viewed as allied with supernatural powers, demons, devils, and witches. The convicted were handed over to the secular authorities for punishment; in time the secular governments were to act independently of the Church in prescribing and enforcing the death penalty. Before execution, confessions were wrung from victims by torture.
Re:What the? (Score:5, Informative)
Often, GLBT-issues get completely ignored by the history books.
Here's one that has major implications for the Slashdot crowd: One person was responsible for two of the major revolutions in computing in our era: Lynn Conway [wikipedia.org], a transgendered individual. Back in the 1960s, "he" worked at IBM, where "he" invented multiple-issue dynamic instruction scheduling, the way-ahead-of-its-time idea of executing multiple instructions at the same time in a single CPU that was to make the performance boom of the late '90s and the '00s possible. Conway was fired by IBM in 1968 for stating her intent to transition from male to female, and had to rebuild her career up from scratch a second time around with a blank slate (starting out as a contractor and building up to ultimately heading the LSI group at Xerox PARC). And from this work, she and Carver Mead [wikipedia.org] invented VSLI -- the Mead and Conway Revolution [wikipedia.org] that lead to the boom of CPU advancements of the '80s.
Re:just Turing? (Score:5, Informative)
Canada has more than three times the land mass of India [wikipedia.org].
Additionally, the section of Manu Smriti that you cited is this:
That pertains to infidelity, not homosexuality.
Re:What the? (Score:4, Informative)