Pardon: Meaningless

Thousands of gay and bisexual men found guilty of decades-old sexual offences in England and Wales have been posthumously pardoned.

The enactment by the government of the so-called Alan Turing law means about 49,000 men will be cleared of crimes of which they would be innocent today.

Wartime code-breaker Mr Turing was pardoned in 2013 for gross indecency.

Statutory pardons will also be granted to people still living who apply to have their convictions removed.

The pardons were first announced last year and have now been officially rubber-stamped after the Policing and Crime Bill received Royal Assent.

The men were found guilty of committing now-abolished offences while in consensual relationships...

BBC News.

Hello, I am dead, but thanks.

Yes, yes , yes, it was utterly meaningless.

Alan Turing: Man Machine Music

Researchers in New Zealand say they have restored the first recording of computer-generated music, created in 1951 on a gigantic contraption built by the British computer scientist Alan Turing.

The aural artefact, which paved the way for everything from synthesisers to modern electronica, opens with a staunchly conservative tune – the British national anthem.

Researchers at the University of Canterbury (UC) in Christchurch said it showed Turing – best known as the father of computing who broke the Nazis’ second world war Enigma code [sic] – was also a musical innovator.

Guardian.

Links fucked so erm click on the link above to hear it.

This is wonderfully bonkers, thank you Alan. x

Alan Turing: Homosexual!

Court files recording details of World War Two code-breaker Alan Turing's convictions for homosexual acts have gone on display for the first time.

One of the documents, to be displayed at Chester Town Hall, shows the mathematician admitted "acts of gross indecency" at a trial in 1952.

He then underwent chemical castration.

Helen Pickin-Jones, chair of Chester Pride, said: "Just a few simple lines of text reveal the appalling treatment of one of our national heroes." ...

Guardian online.

Get ready for the 'homosexual' media to make their usual howlers; he cracked the Enigma Code, he deffo committed suicide etc etc.

Click to enlarge.

Alan Turing: Forced

This photo of Alan as a camp young thing appears to be the Independent's go-to photo.

An interesting article none the less.

Theresa May: Committed To Meaningless Gesture Politics

Wooh!

I'm sorry, what good will this do?

Alan Turing: Oh No He Didn't

Alan Turing could not have cracked the Enigma Code without the help of Polish mathematicians and it is time to "right the wrong" and acknowledge their contribution, the Polish government has said.

Deciphering the German system is believed to have shortened World War Two by two years and saved countless lives. 

But few people realise that early Enigma codes had already been broken by the Poles who then passed on the knowledge to Britain shortly before the outbreak of war.

They even taught Turing how to build electro-mechanical devices which simulated the workings of the Enigma machine and enabled operators to cycle through one possible setting after another.
By the time war broke out the Germans had increased the sophistication of the machine and the Poles were struggling to make more headway. But based on the Polish knowledge, Turing managed to build a huge computer that would finally crack the cipher.

However, despite their help, history and Hollywood has largely ignored their role. The most recent film The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, barely mentioned the Poles.

Now the Polish government has launched a touring exhibition entitled "Enigma – Decipher Victory” to remind the world of their crucial contribution. They have already taken the exhibition to Canada and Brussels...

Poland’s main codebreakers were Jerzy Rozycki, Henryk Zygalski and Marian Rejewski who joined the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau in Warsaw... 

Telegraph.

Seems to be the gay media who are keenest on the lie that 'Alan Turing cracked the  Enigma code', partly as so many of them seem to revel in ignorance, and partly to push the myth of Turing as The Great Gay Martyr - even though it's far from certain he committed suicide.

Blood Ban: Donation

Conor Collins has created this portrait of Alan Turing using blood donated by gay men, in support of FreedomTo Donate.

Not quite sure what Alan Turing's got to do with the blood ban - he just seems to have become the go-to guy for a signifier of gay victimhood.

Alan Turing: Battle

No they don't, you thick fuck.

Roger Casement: Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word

A celebrated humanitarian, anti-slavery campaigner, poet and Irish nationalist, Casement had come to Germany when the First World War was at its height, to recruit German support and weapons for an uprising against British rule in Ireland. For this crime he would be hanged, a year later, in Pentonville Prison.

A British citizen and former consular official, Roger Casement was found guilty of treason. But he was executed because he was homosexual, the victim of a conspiracy to prevent his reprieve that involved Scotland Yard, MI5 and the cabinet. Alan Turing, whose prosecution for homosexuality undoubtedly contributed to his death in 1954, has received an apology from the British government and a pardon from the Queen. But the case of Casement is even more egregious, since it involved government officials actively using prejudice against homosexuality to ensure he went to the gallows, discredited and reviled.

With next year’s centenary of the Casement trial, the government has an opportunity to right that wrong: a formal apology would remove a long-running source of friction in Anglo-Irish relations and demonstrate how far we have moved on from the homophobia of a century ago...

Ben Macintyre, The Times.

I'm sure a Royal Pardon would have meant so much to the revolutionary Irish Republican.

Oh, and the heroic Mr Casement's conviction for 'treason' is a bit different from Turing's one for 'gross indecency', the latter's no longer a crime for one.

PS You may enjoy yesterday's Radio 4 documentary on the strange case of Victor Grayson, the gay socialist MP who disappeared in 1920...

Turing's Law: Vote For Nothing

A posthumous pardon given to Enigma codebreaker Alan Turing will be extended to thousands of Britons if the Tories win office.

The national hero who helped Britain win the Second World Ward but committed suicide after being convicted of gross indecency had his sentence scrapped by Royal Pardon in 2013

The Conservatives have now pledged to introduce a new law helping to “lift the blight of outdated convictions” from other people found guilty of similar offences.

“Thousands of British men still suffer from similar historic charges, even though they would be completely innocent of any crime today,” the Tory manifesto read.

“Many others are dead and cannot correct this injustice themselves through the legal process we have introduced while in government. So we will introduce a new law that will pardon those people, and right these wrong.”

It comes a month after Labour announced it would introduce a ‘Turing’s Law’ to allow the family and friends of deceased men punished for consensual relationships to have the convictions disregarded...

Telegraph.

Oh whoopdefuckingdoo!

Thank you for this meaningless gesture, guv.

Labour's manifesto has some more of them.

The Tories have also promised to scrap the Human Rights Act.

PS Hats off to the Telegraph who manage to run this without using their dread word 'gay'.

PPS Alan Turing's notebook sold for £1m.

Historic Gross Indecency: Pardon Me

This article in Guardian Weekend is pretty powerful and moving stuff; five men tell how their lives were ruined after being arrested over old anti-gay laws against sex such as 'gross indecency'.
Over 600,000 people have now signed an online petition; Pardon all of the estimated 49,000 men who, like Alan Turing, were convicted of consenting same-sex relations under the British "gross indecency" law (only repealed in 2003), and also all the other men convicted under other UK anti-gay laws.
But many people sympathetic to Turing - including Andrew Hodges who wrote the biography on which The Imitation Game was based - had misgivings over the call for his royal pardon.
Further, as the author points out in the introduction; 'In 2012, it became possible for those convicted of homosexual “sex offences” to have their criminal records erased under the Protection Of Freedoms Act – though not those deemed to have been committed in a public place such as toilets, where much of the entrapment went on.'
One of the men interviewed who was discharged from the army has successfully applied to have his criminal record erased and army record cleared.
Two were arrested for cottaging, so at present can not even have their criminal records erased.
One was caught at a cruising ground with a 15 year-old - this is still a crime. Ditto.
Fagburn can understand why anyone, and not just past victims of state homophobia like these six men, are angry about what's happened, and want some kind of apology.
But can anyone explain what this call for an official pardon can achieve?

Turing's Law: Tokenism

Few reasons to vote Labour at this election could be more tokenistic than their new pledge to introduce "Turing’s Law". This legislation, named after Bletchley Park codebreaker Alan Turing, would allow families to apply for the government to posthumously pardon gay ancestors convicted of “indecency.” It's a touching idea, and not a bad one. But you don’t have to be a genius codebreaker to see that, coming from Labour, this the worst sort of gimmickry, cynically designed to win votes on the cheap.

Elections should be about solid promises to change society today, not historical tinkering. If Labour wanted to offer current victims of injustice anything substantial, it could pledge to repeal this government's cuts to the legal aid budget. But Sadiq Khan ruled that out just this Monday. Unable to think of anything useful to promise to living members of the LBGT community, and beaten to the legalisation of gay marriage by the coalition government, Ed Miliband is – if anything – damaging an otherwise harmless idea, turning it into a precedent of which we ought to be suspicious...

Rupert Myers, Daily Telegraph.

A rare moment where Fagburn colludes with the Daily Telegraph (and someone called Rupert).*

Hurrah for pointless gestures!

* Apart from my near-namesake Rupert Smith, obvs.

Labour: Are We Family?

Why say 'families' here?

Do lovers count?

You patronising heteronormative twit.

Oh whatever, I'm sure this will make a lot of dead men very happy...

Alan Turing: The Imitation Gay

It was impossible not to be moved by Imitation Game screenwriter Graham Moore's Oscar acceptance speech about his teen suicide attempt. However, The Imitation Game itself is a steaming pile of homophobic and misogynistic crap.

Wait, isn't the movie all "yayz for the gayz?" That's the bandwagon it tries to ride, but it does so by serving up a giant helping of last-century stereotypes that any Republican senator would find comforting. (It's also factually wrong in dozens of ways.) 

Above all, the Imitation Turing, though persecuted for his sexuality, demonstrates no sexuality at all in the movie. He's a celibate queer martyr. The most graphic scene isn't graphic at all. He merely talks about "paying another man to touch my penis." According to the movie, this handsome, athletic and charming man has to pony up cash just to get a hand job.

As Christian Caryl writes in the New York Review of Books, this movie "can't bring itself to show him kissing another man -- something he did frequently, and with gusto. And it most definitely doesn't show him cruising New York's gay bars, or popping off on a saucy vacation to one of the less reputable of the Greek islands" (as he did in 1953 after his hormone punishment ended).

The Hollywood Turing is just a collection of anti-gay clichés rolled into one -- a rich, precious and bitchy snot. He has no personal power, needing a good (straight) woman to take care of him and tattling to Winston Churchill when he doesn't get his way...

Mark Saltveit, Proud Queer Monthly.

Hahaha, I love this man.

Oscars: No Moore

[Graham Moore shared] with the millions of telecast viewers that at the age of 16, he tried to kill himself “because I felt weird, and I felt different, and I felt that I did not belong. And now I’m standing here, and I would like this moment to be for that kid out there who feels she’s weird or she’s different or she doesn’t fit in anywhere. Yes, you do. … Stay different, and then when it’s your turn, and you’re standing on this stage, please pass the message to the next person that comes along.”

I wish that Moore had drawn a clearer line between his comments about Turing—a man who was persecuted and prosecuted for his homosexuality—and his “it gets better” message to teens who are merely weird and different. For one thing, overemphasizing the connection between queer teens and suicide can be dangerous. But it’s also important to note that being gay simply isn’t the same as being a “geek.” Moore may see them as comparable (and, though he has identified himself as straight, his affect may have opened him up to homophobic bullying), but the truth of the matter is that the social force behind anti-gay prejudice is far stronger and more pernicious than the animus against social outcasts. Moore’s heart was surely in the right place, but I wish he hadn't conflated these identities.

June Thomas, Slate.

Well said.

Can't see why some people are gushing over this boo hoo squish squish patronising gay death cult guff.

Update: Though he appears to be absolutely screaming, Graham Moore has reiterated to BuzzFeed News that he is not gay. Deffo.

Update2: Oops! - thanks to Nick. x

Update3: More from Slate's J Bryan Lowder, Is It “Weird” to Be Gay? What Graham Moore’s Speech Really Means.

The Imitation Game: Imitations Of Life

Was there a version of the script where Turing has a male lover?
First of all, the time period we’re all focusing on, he didn’t have one. He described it in his own words as a “sexual desert” in a letter. The whole thing is his relationship with Christopher [Turing’s male crush seen in flashbacks in grade school], about unfulfilled love.

But Turing did have relationships with men.
He had people he had sex with, yes — especially in the time after the war, when he’s living in Manchester. The break-in that happens in the film is a male lover, which is discussed. It was actually someone he paid to have sex with. It was more of a hustler.

But we never see Turing in a relationship with an adult man. Don’t you think that would have enriched the character?
Not really. The whole movie, the way it’s structured, we don’t know anything about this man. The whole investigation starts because he’s hiding something, but he’s not hiding what we think. It can’t start off with him having sex. It was not because we were afraid it would offend anybody. If I did the structure and had this thing about a straight character, I would never have a sex scene to prove that he’s heterosexual. If I have a gay character in a movie, I need to have a sex scene in it — just to prove that he’s gay? I’m not shying away from it. His whole relationship, how he falls in love and the importance of him being a gay man, was all about secrecy.

Some have criticized the movie for not including that.
During his time, the relationship that was important was the relationship with Joan Clarke [played by Keira Knightley]. They were engaged for six months. It’s all about a lost love. He didn’t have a male companion. He had some random people he had sex with. He also had, this was funny, he went to Norway to have sex in a gay sauna, a secret club. He had some sexual partners, but it was few and far between. The only reason to have a sex scene in the film would be to satisfy critics who feels that every gay character needs to have a gay sex scene....

From an Oscars night interview in Variety with The Imitation Game director, Morten Tyldum.

What a funny little man.

No, of course you don't need a gay sex scene just cause a character's gay.

The point is why Turing's homosexuality - something instrumental, not incidental to his story - was so downplayed.

Fagburn's Oscars wishlist - anyone but Cummerbund. 

Alan Turing Pardon: Pointless

'The pardon given to Alan struck me as being something one couldn't in any real sense object to. But it seemed odd that he'd been singled out.

'I don't want people to go away with the impression that the pardon was a bad thing. It's really hard to criticise it, but I'm not sure that it added a great deal.'

Sir Dermot Turing, Alan's nephew, in GT (ie Gay Times).

Stephen Fry and Benedict Cumberbatch - two of Fagburn's most favourite people - are backing a campaign, okay, an online petition, asking the government to; 'Pardon all of the estimated 49,000 men who, like Alan Turing, were convicted of consenting same-sex relations under the British "gross indecency" law (only repealed in 2003), and also all the other men convicted under other UK anti-gay laws.'

Again, what is point?

NB Men who have criminal convictions or cautions for consensual gay sex (or mere encounters) have been able to get them overturned since 2012. 

PS Mind you, anything that winds up Stephen Green of Christian Voice must have something going for it...



I think this is meant to be her showreel to get some TV work.

Stephen, TELEVISION IS NOT IN THE BIBLE!!!

The Independent: Why Indeed?

Warning: This article in The Independent includes the usual victim-loving nonsense about Alan Turing (he didn't crack The Enigma Code, and 'chemical castration' is a meaningless term) and the Nazis (Equating the imprisonment of thousands of gay men with the systematic extermination of millions of Jews is morally obscene).

Fagburn: Film Of The Year

This heart-freezing true story of Lesbians And Gays Support The Right-Wing (LGSR), tells how a group of Tory gaylords infiltrated our movement, and, during capitalism's greatest crisis in almost a century, got people to obsess about gay marriage and Russia instead. A lesson from history.

'A real feel-good movie that's so politically banal we'll have to invent an award for it!' Attitude.

Runner-up: The Disinformation Game - Benedict Cumberbatch plays tortured gay boffin Alan Turing, who, after finding the love of a good woman, invented the computer and single-handedly won the Second World War.

'Hats of too Alan Turink - a gay name that must now go down in histree' QX Magazine

Alan Turing: Was It Murder???

Mirror.

Don't think so, no, but then I'm not convinced it was a suicide, either.

NB 'Mr. Bristow is now attempting to find a publisher for his manuscript 'Boffins, Bombs, Boats and Balloons'.