On Tue, 24 Dec 2013 14:03:14 -0500, John Gilmore wrote: >From today's New York Times: > >"Alan Turing, the British mathematician regarded as one of the central >figures in the development of the computer, received a formal pardon >from Queen Elizabeth II on Monday for his conviction in 1952 on >charges of homosexuality, at the time a criminal offense in Britain". > >Turing (1912-1954), was in fact convicted of 'gross indecency', >whatever that may be; and it is appropriate to have that conviction, >which "dishonoured British Justice", expunged. His suicide at 42 >nevertheless deprived computing of one of its seminal figures, and >there is no making that loss good. > But:
http://boingboing.net/2013/12/24/queen-elizabeth-pardons-turing.html Queen Elizabeth pardons Turing (but not the 50,000 other gay men the law unjustly criminalised) ... But I agree with Turing's biographer Dr Andrew Hodges, who says that the idea of a pardon for Turing establishes the principal that "a sufficiently valuable individual should be above the law which applies to everyone else." In my view, the Queen should have pardoned every man and woman persecuted under the cruel and unjust law that ruined so many lives. Likewise, some gay rights advocates have complained that the British government might better have expended its resources not in such a symbolic gesture but in the more fitting memorial of broadening legal protection for living gays. (Not too political, I hope; advocacy thread *not* invited.) -- gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
