Royal pardon for codebreaker Alan Turing...
BBC News: Royal pardon for codebreaker Alan Turing
I'm often in two minds about issues like this. You can't whitewash history, you can't go back and fix the things we find unappealing now, the things we'd do differently. You can't judge people of a different time and place by the standards of today. It doesn't work and it doesn't make a difference. What happened, happened. You can't right that wrong.
That said, there are some injustices that I think need acknowledging. We can't fix it, we can't make it better, but we can say we were wrong. That what happened was wrong, that it wouldn't happen now, and an apology, if nothing else, is due. An apology changes nothing, of course, but it hurts no-one, and it acknowledges a wrong.
But again, what about all the other individuals who were prosecuted for homosexuality under the laws of the day? Do they get pardons? Or just because they aren't famous and didn't make such a different to the war effort, do they get swept back under the rug? What about Oscar Wilde? Does he get a pardon now too? If you open the door to posthumously pardoning everyone who has been convicted of a law we no longer agree with....well, the Queen will be busy passing a lot of royal pardons. And Australia will no longer have a convict past!
I'm often in two minds about issues like this. You can't whitewash history, you can't go back and fix the things we find unappealing now, the things we'd do differently. You can't judge people of a different time and place by the standards of today. It doesn't work and it doesn't make a difference. What happened, happened. You can't right that wrong.
That said, there are some injustices that I think need acknowledging. We can't fix it, we can't make it better, but we can say we were wrong. That what happened was wrong, that it wouldn't happen now, and an apology, if nothing else, is due. An apology changes nothing, of course, but it hurts no-one, and it acknowledges a wrong.
But again, what about all the other individuals who were prosecuted for homosexuality under the laws of the day? Do they get pardons? Or just because they aren't famous and didn't make such a different to the war effort, do they get swept back under the rug? What about Oscar Wilde? Does he get a pardon now too? If you open the door to posthumously pardoning everyone who has been convicted of a law we no longer agree with....well, the Queen will be busy passing a lot of royal pardons. And Australia will no longer have a convict past!