

Stephen Hawking pushes for posthumous pardon for Alan Turing - robinh
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/14/alan_turing_pardon_hawking/

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mhurron
I believe this issue needs to be dropped. Turing is beginning to be remembered
only as a gay man wrongfully punished. His actual accomplishments are taking a
back seat, what he did is becoming less important than who he did.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _what he did is becoming less important than who he did._ //

No one seems to mention "who he did" either from what I can gather - a
teenager (19) he picked up at the cinema in the incident he was arrested for.
He was 40.

It's kinda weird to me as many in the UK wouldn't be particularly accepting of
that sort of age gap now, particularly not for casual sexual liaisons. The age
of consent for homosexual male sex was lowered to 18 in 1994 - that means that
up until 1994 Turing's actions were illegal in the UK.

If you add in that he was privy to official secrets and would be a potential
target to foreign powers then his apparent promiscuity would also be an issue
of national security - I think a person in his position now would be vilified
by the press and that it would be right for them to be disciplined (at least)
for conduct unbecoming of an intelligence service office holder.

> _remembered only as a gay man_ //

Whilst he's being made a poster boy for casual homosexual sex it seems people
too forget he was engaged to a work colleague. Perhaps he was bisexual, it's
got to be a strong possibility.

Are there any quotations from him about homosexual sex, or his lifestyle
choice? Did he revel in his liaison(s) or regret them? I've not seen anything
from these points apart from material that appears to have a bias towards
promoting him as a model of gay pride.

If he was given a pardon this would set a very difficult precedent. Consider
if cannabis is made legal in a couple of years how many pardons, and
subsequent lawsuits, would that single legal change produce. Then think of all
the other laws - even minor things like regrading of a speed limit on a road,
the law has changed making a former activity that was prosecuted no longer
illegal.

That all said I agree in general this story appears not to really be an
argument about Turing. Or if it is then it's attempting to leverage a strange
moral attitude that those of note should not be subject to the rule of law.

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andrewvc
_If you add in that he was privy to official secrets and would be a potential
target to foreign powers then his apparent promiscuity would also be an issue
of national security - I think a person in his position now would be vilified
by the press and that it would be right for them to be disciplined (at least)
for conduct unbecoming of an intelligence service office holder._

This is puritanical BS. He was a single man dating adults. That's his own
business, the press plays it up because society as a whole loves gawking at
this sort of behavior, but it's no risk to anyone.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
It may well be too puritanical for you but there have been far more recent
cases of sexual impropriety with intelligence personnel (like affairs, or
being married to someone who's promiscuous) that have ended the careers of the
intelligence personnel.

Personally I'd expect a current serving officer with high level security
clearance who is privy to some of our most sensitive national secrets to be
disciplined for seeking sex with random youths (of any persuasion).

If you're in this sort of position you need to get security clearance for
sexual partners surely? Do you really want your "spies" getting intimate with
any random person that flirts with them at the cinema?

The Profumo Affair doesn't seem a million miles away as an analogue. I'm not
cognisant with many such cases however. There was the Max Mosley scandal - an
MI5 agent "resigned" because his wife had sex with someone else.

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charonn0
I'm a homosexual, and Mr. Turing is one of my heroes. The conviction should
stand, not as a shame for Mr. Turing but for those who convicted him.

~~~
avar
I think the conviction should stand because it's pretty ridiculous to go
around pardoning dead people convicted under laws we now view as having been
wrong. Where should it end? Should the UK start hunting down and posthumously
pardoning some of the convicts it shipped off to other continents for petty
crimes during the Victorian era?

Unless you go and systematically posthumously pardon people how are you
serving justice by only pardoning historical persons famous enough to have
enough of a modern following to petition the modern-era government on their
behalf?

~~~
jeltz
I agree, but there has in the UK been at least one posthumous mass pardon.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_Forces_Act_2006#Pardon>

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Whilst these were, by that link, not really "pardons" in the legal sense there
is another important difference. These represent a change in the material
facts considered in the convictions (hence presumably if anything happened the
convictions should really have been overturned; doing it the way they did
probably avoided getting sued though?) - these people were shot for
cowardice/desertion but it is now understood that they were suffering a mental
health condition, ie shell-shock.

So as far as precedent goes this doesn't appear relevant [to me] as in
Turing's case it is a revisionist attitude to the moral underpinning of the
law at the time that has changed things and not the material facts.

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pavel_lishin
After we posthumously pardon Alan Turing, we should posthumously give Ada
Lovelace the right to vote.

~~~
sk5t
Only provided that both are next posthumously converted to Mormonism.

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ziffusion
A pardon implies that there was, in fact, some kind of a crime.

What we should be pushing for is a redaction, and an acknowledgement that the
prosecutors were ignorant morons who harassed and extinguished a great mind
because they didn't know any better.

~~~
rohamg
Actually, no. In the UK pardons are usually given when there is a presumption
of innocence. In Turing's case, he was in fact guilty of a crime according to
the laws at the time.

~~~
teamonkey
In the UK a pardon doesn't _necessarily_ presume innocence. It simply means
that you can't be punished for your crime.

Although rare these days there were times when a pardon could be won or
purchased in exchange for services rendered. It didn't mean that you were
innocent of your crime.

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jeltz
What would a pardon do that the formal apology not already has done?
Posthumous pardons rarely have any point.

~~~
elliott99
Obviously so the ghost of Alan Turning doesn't haunt us eternally...haven't
you watched movies before

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pavel_lishin
> so the ghost of Alan Turning doesn't haunt us eternally...

If giving him the pardon gets rid of software bugs, it's a small price to pay
for a great gain.

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thankfully
Nobody is "gay".

(For the record: "gay" means joyful, basically.)

But nobody _is_ this by Nature. We all are sometimes happy, sometimes tired.
This is the normal way of life.

We all are _persons_ (by definition), and sexual behaviour can change in
someone's life (we have hundreds of thousands of examples of that).

So, what does "gay" even mean? An excuse to allow a lobby to abuse the rest of
us?

~~~
stephengillie
You aren't joyful from time to time? I am, especially when working on my
Arduino robot.

In current usage, "gay" refers to homosexuals, a group of humans which other
groups of humans enjoy hating and fearing. A group which is still fighting for
the basic humans rights the rest of us enjoy, such as the right to marry their
lifetime partners.

~~~
jacquesm
don't feed the trolls.

