The UK government, in its wisdom, has decided not to offer a posthumous pardon to the wartime code breaker Alan Turing after he was convicted of something called gross indecency.
There was a petition with some 23,000 signatures, triggering an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons – but to no avail, it seems.
You can read the story here.
3 comments:
A shame really. He was a central figure in cryptography and computer and information science.
Turing was chemically castrated and driven to suicide by the religious bigots of his day http://seanrobsville.blogspot.com/2012/02/alan-turing-gay-buddhist.html
This is a shame, in a way, but I do understand the reasoning behind the decision. If we start applying the standards of today retrospectively, where will it end? And what if fashions change in the future and legal decisions made today get overturned at some future date? Arguably, this is a just a convenient and politically correct gesture, a bit like the awarding of the Victoria Cross to a black squaddie a few years ago. We should be wary of these attempts to socially engineer changes in attitudes, no matter how well intentioned.
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