The occasion of Turing's pardon was certain to be used by people on every side of the issues raised by his prosecution to ride their own horses into the fray, arguing that something else or something more should have been done.
That said, the view attributed to Andrew Hodges, that the Turing pardon establishes that a sufficiently valuable individual should be above the law which applies to everyone else, is a silly one. What it establishes, if anything, is that the law in q On 12/24/13, Paul Gilmartin <paulgboul...@aim.com> wrote: > 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 lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > -- John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
