Sunday, 16 December 2012

Alan Turing: Pardon?

It was not simply the fact that homosexuality was illegal that made Turing’s life apparently unbearable, but that the overwhelming majority of the rest of society, back then, believed it to be a disgusting practice, as bad in its way as being a foreigner. We were, of course, a more conservative country in the 1950s; a smoky land of antimacassars, church attendance and almost no blacks.
Now some of our most eminent scientists, including Stephen Hawking, want Turing’s conviction overturned, erased from the record.
Does this do any good? Doesn’t it devalue the battle that has been fought for 40 years by gay rights campaigners, for legality and, later, equality under the law, to suggest that Turing’s case was a grotesque anomaly, an isolated instance of prejudice by a reactionary state, which can be suddenly put right by an emollient statement from the prime minister?
If we pardon Turing retrospectively, shouldn’t we also pardon convicted homosexuals who were not possessed of genius — who were, to put it bluntly, a bit thick, or completely useless? The boring, workaday clerks and the bus drivers and the plumbers and the greengrocers, who were subjected to treatment no less horrible. Should brilliance — and Turing certainly possessed that — make someone a special case under the law, deserving of different treatment?
I fear that this replaces one prejudice with another; I suspect that the scientists who are demanding this pardon think of themselves as exceptions, distinct from the masses, caviar to the general. They believe that, as a consequence of their learning, they stride above the morass and should be dealt with differently...

Rod Liddle, The Sunday Times.
It's rare that I agree with Rod Liddle, but he's quite right in the above.
I can see no good that an official posthumous pardon would do.
Will Turing rise from his grave and say "thank you"?
What happened to Alan was a great crime, but it happened to thousands of other men, their names not known.
You could even argue Turing got special treatment, by not being sent to prison.
It is also unclear if he commited suicide, or if so for what reason.
Here's a link to the Telegraph on the letter that Hawking co-signed - proof that genius can still be vacuous.
I bet Alan Turing would think this was all a bunch of stuff and nonsense that boils no cabbages, and then went back to work.

4 comments:

  1. I can see no good that an official posthumous pardon would do.

    Not even it's symbolic value?
    Why do we talk about Oscar Wilde's imprisonment and "fall from grace", when - again - so many probably suffered the same fate, then and in the intervening century?
    It's a bias, yes - not a prejudice, as Liddle claims; but that's just the way it is and has been for a very long time.
    The argument that if we aren't pardoning everyone, then we shouldn't pardon Turing is a straw man, surely?
    You can want to pardon Turing and still argue for the pardoning of everyone who went through similar treatment. And you could argue that the pardoning of Turing would set a precedent that in the future might make the pardoning of all those other people a lot easier to argue for.

    What good does it do to any of them, as they're already dead or if not, the damage has been done? But it is a symbolic gesture, surely?
    The "good" can come from it is that any social/governmental/legal recognition or admittance that what they did was wrong, obscene and immoral and that they bare huge responsibility for the decimation of hundreds/thousands of gay men's lives and their deaths will be another important line crossed, as is every official recognition of what was done to gay men in the past and just how unacceptable we (hopefully) realise such treatment was/is.

    My question in response to Liddle's piece is that when he asks what good would it do, would be to repeat my points above and then to ask him what bad would it do?

    The reason I think Turing is a good start is that he is a famous and highly respected figure - he has a prominence and a reputation.
    If he was pardoned and that was the end of it, then I'd be angry too.
    I hope he is pardoned and it sets in motion movements to address all the other less famous, less accomplished and just "ordinary" people who also suffered similar fates (and much worse).

    I don't understand the objection to this.
    And I don;t see any convincing explanations for such a view in Liddle's piece.

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  2. "IT IS ALSO UNCLEAR IF HE COMMITTED SUICIDE, OR IF SO FOR WHAT REASON. "

    as much as i love you, richard, it's cheap-ass tactics like this that makes me go agghhhhh…

    questioning received wisdom is a good thing …when justified; but sometimes your m.o. comes dangerously close to the brand of cynical contrarianism employed by those spiked/living marxism shower of cunts.

    still, i love you.

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