Alan Turing: So Sorry, I Said

THE [sic] Pet Shop Boys are to use a new orchestral work about the computer pioneer Alan Turing to call for the “tens of thousands of men” imprisoned or fined for committing homosexual acts to be pardoned.

A Man From the Future, created by Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, will premiere at the Proms on July 23 . The Pardon, the last song, references the posthumous pardon granted to Turing, who was prosecuted for gross indecency in 1952.

Tennant and Lowe will urge the government to pardon others convicted before homosexuality was decriminalised in 1967 [sic 'Gross indecency' was still a crime until 2004].

“So very many lives were ruined over such a long period,” said Tennant. “Frankly it rather disappoints me that Stonewall [the gay rights group] has not done more. So we’re making the statement ourselves.”

The Pardon will include references to Gordon Brown, who as prime minister in 2009 apologised for the “appalling treatment” of Turing after he innocently told police he had been in a sexual relationship with a man.

Despite his codebreaking work at Bletchley Park during the Second World War and his groundbreaking research in computer science, Turing was ordered to undergo hormone treatment to reduce his libido. He committed suicide [sic] two years later, aged 41.

Tennant and Lowe were inspired to write about Turing by a 2011 TV documentary on his life.* “It’s a memorial to Turing, invoking the spirit of the man and his work,” said Tennant. “He was a man from the future in that his scientific achievments [sic]were in the vanguard and that, for us, his pioneering work on computers led to our electronic music.

“Then he was ahead of his time in being openly gay, though perhaps a bit too honest when he told the policeman, when he need not have done, about his sexuality.”

The Sunday Times.

During the campaign to grant Turing a royal pardon, many asked why he should be singled out, when an estimated 16,000 men were prosecuted for 'offences' which are now legal.

Some pointed out that a pardon for anyone was a silly piece of gesture politics anyway - particularly after such convictions could be overturned from 2012. 

Stonewall campaigned for neither pardon. 

Their then Big Chief Hiawatha, Ben Summerskill, explained why in an article for The Observer, Pardoning Alan Turing is a pointless exercise.

It's quite proper we've started writing off convictions for people who are still alive for trivial matters that would no longer be criminal offences... However, it's already too late for the countless thousands of innocents, not as eminent as Turing, who had their lives ruined as well. And perhaps rather pointless.

A more proper apologia [sic] might be to ensure that Turing's achievements, and his treatment by the nation that benefited, are included in every pupil's school curriculum. The 55% of gay pupils in our secondary schools who were homophobically bullied in the last 12 months might derive lasting reassurance from that .

No one doubts the good faith of peers from all parties and none who have now discovered the importance of equal treatment for Britain's 3.7 million [sic] gay people. But it may be more therapeutic for them, rather than helpful to Alan Turing, to be offering good wishes at this stage.

Please note how Pink News framed this story...

Why a gal might think there's some kind of queeny feud going on here.

Drop us a line if you can see where Pink News called for a pardon for all the other gay men prosecuted in any of their 40 something stories about Alan's. 

• A Man From The Future is sold out - but some tickets will be available on the night.

* I think they mean this 1992 BBC Horizon documentary, The Strange Life And Death Of Dr Turing.

PS Story regurgitated by The Independent on Tuesday.