The Pardoning of Alan Turing

[sparkindarkness]

 Alan Turing has been posthumously pardoned for being convicted of being gay, the barbaric and vicious persecution for which eventually drove him to take his own life.

I have a lot of conflicting feelings about this one.

Firstly, for anyone asking “why Turing?” I have to say you don’t understand the iconic nature of Turing to British GBLT

Comments

[theweaselking]

My only minor quibble: "These are the people you condemn with your homophobic."

That appears to be a typo, for "homophobia".

In the mean time: Too little too late, and for the wrong reasons - but while at Christmas dinner with my parents they had the news on[1] and it mentioned the pardon in general terms ("a british war hero pardoned") and my reaction was, literally, "Holy fuck they pardoned ALAN TURING?".

And after apologising for the swearing in front of THE CHILLDRUNNN, I confirmed details (from twitter) and was left explaining to my geriatric parents who Turing was, what he'd done, and why he'd been erased from the history books. And they got it.

So, even though it's way too little, way too late, and only because he was a war hero? It's a bare minimum start in a good direction. And at least a few narrow-minded bigots had their perspective expanded, slightly, by it.

Pardoning Turing is a good thing, regardless of why they did it. And even though they're doing it for the wrong reasons and in an obscenely stupid way, it's worse than NOT doing it.

[1]: My WW2-era father cannot cope with the TV not being on. It's FANTASTICALLY weird to someone who is used to "any news that matters pings my phone".