British PM’s online apology to Alan Turing
p2pnet news view | P2P | Politics:- Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS (right), often called the founder of computer science, was a genius.
His work at Bletchley Park, Britain’s codebreaking centre during World War II, helped the Allies to victory.
Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century.
He was also gay and now, following thousands of signatures posted on the No 10 web site, British prime minister Gordon Brown has officially recognised the “appalling” way Turing was treated for his sexual orientation.
“Alan Turing, a mathematician most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes, was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ in 1952 and sentenced to chemical castration,” says the site.
Two years latere, “living in an era when homosexuality was considered a mental illness,” he was dead from, “self-induced cyanide poisoning, although his mother (and some others) considered the circumstances of his death to be suspicious,” says the Wikipedia.
Says Brown:
“While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can`t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.”
Brown also cynically uses his online apology as an opportunity to deliver a political message, patting his government on the back for doing, “so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT(lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community”.
No 10 web site – Treatment of Alan Turing was appalling – PM, September 10, 2009
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September 11th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Maybe Brown should take a lesson from this:
Nothing good comes from criminalizing your own citizens, no matter what your opinion on there views or lifestyle. Try to remember the freedoms you’ve sworn to uphold in your ‘democratic, free-world society’
September 11th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
“I’ve post my own salute to Turing and to the long struggle to rectify the injustice done to him, rather than clutter things the link to it is here,” said Fausty, adding a link to his post on CultureGhost.
However, no worries about that. So here it is in full …
Cheers! Jon
________________
As someone who has railed at the hideous persecution and double-standard treatment Alan Turing received at the hands of the UK government, I couldn’t agree more with Rupert that this apology is both a long time coming, and something of which we can feel genuinely good. Turing has long been one of my personal heroes, an intellectual giant nearly unparalleled in our species – with contributions in a wide range of fields of serious academic intensity, despite his young age and the abuse he suffered by a society which cavalierly categorized him as “flawed” as a result of his sexuality.
From information theory (which he essentially founded, before Shannon developed it further), to generalized computational frameworks (”Turing equivalence” is a central concept in modern computer science, still), to early and brilliant stabs into the field that would become known as “game theory” when John Nash and the boys got their paws on it – Turing would author a paper of short, concise, precise brilliance in an area, and the rest of the world would take decades to really make sense of the seminal contributions those papers each made. This was, in a sense, in his “spare time” – when he wasn’t acting as a lynchpin of the effort to break the Axis’ “Enigma” cryptographic system. That effort, of course, was a success and many academic historians of World War II credit that single factor with the eventual outcome of the war, as much or more than any other – including the much more famous successes of the Manhattan Project. To get a feel for exactly the level of practical and intellectual challenge that cracking Enigma entailed, take a peek at the relevant sections in Stephenson’s wondrous Cryptonomicon.
Still, I must take exception to the statement that the persecution of Turing – and society’s eventual about-face and apology for it – speaks only to the fact, as Rupert states above, “that homophobia is a terriible force that hurts those who hold it â and destroys those against whom it is aimed.” The tragedy of Turing’s persecution, demonization, criminalization, medically-sanctioned torture, and eventual suicide is about more than mere “homophobia.”
At the time Turing was being persecuted for his sexuality, let’s be clear, it was entirely illegal to have same-sex intimate relations. Turing was far from the only gay man (or lesbian) to be persecuted under these laws – not only in the UK, but around the “civilized” world. Oscar Wilde springs to mind, as one amongst many. Then, through the social transformations of the 1960s and the successes of the civil rights movement in the USA, the gay rights campaigns began to gain traction. Today, as Rupert says, it’s almost “hard to imagine” a world where being gay was criminalized, and attacks against gay citizens were both accepted and encouraged by mainstream society.
Why, then, can we look back and state unequivocally that the abuses Turing – and other gay folks, around the world – suffered are categorically wrong, and were as wrong then as they would be if done today? Why can we say that it’s “about” more than just Turing’s brilliance, his central contributions to the war effort, his unstinting support of his government’s very survival? Because, yes, it’s not just a tragedy that Turing was persecuted like he was – it’s tragedy that all victims of such hateful campaigns against non-straight citizens were targeted in this way.
That’s why it’s not just a “gay issue.” It’s a fundamental issue of the core values of a democratic, representative, open, free, diverse society. Let me repeat: the issue at the heart of Turing’s tragedy is the failure of British society, at the time, to uphold its own values of tolerance, diversity, and respect for minority rights – ALL minority rights, not just gay rights. There was not then – as there is not now – any justification for labeling same-sex orientation as “wrong” and using the apparatus of a putatively “free” government to attack those individuals. That is wrong, period. The fact that an overwhelming majority of British citizens surely supported such anti-gay laws and persecutions makes not one whit of difference in defense of them, not at all. When the tyrannical majority is able to selectively target, marginalize, and attack any peaceful, non-destructive minority then the basic framework of democratic government has broken down.
The persecution of Turing was a such a fundamental breakdown, was emblematic of it. The various excuses put forth for why it was acceptable to take around 10% of the healthy adult population of the country (based on largely culture-invariant rates of significant same-sex attraction in H. sapiens) – God said so, it’s “gross,” conflation with pedophilia, etc. – are just that: excuses. The simple fact is that gay folks were targeted and persecuted because the majority was allowed to do so – the central obligations of the government in ensuring that all citizens receive protection under law was simply abnegated. Of course, it’s doubly poignant given that Turing himself did so much to ensure that the very government which persecuted him – for no legitimate reason whatsoever – but the basic injustice would stand for any gay Brit who was subject to persecution by the majority because of their sexuality.
More than ten years ago, I wrote in a letter to the editor of Scientific American after they published an article on Turing which repeated the cover-up story that Turing died of an “accident,” somehow smearing arsenic on an apple and eating it. I was furious – ignoring his suicide, and the reasons for it, struck me as beyond insulting – and I said so to SciAm in no uncertain terms. To their credit, they published the letter – though also including a rebuttal from the author that claimed it was “in dispute” whether Turing intentionally killed himself or not. At least, nowadays, we don’t have to jump through such pathetic hoops to retroactively insulate ourselves from the harsh facts of what took place.
Still, there’s a bittersweet taste to these newfound admissions that what was done to Turing was utterly, completely, unquestionably unjustifiable. Yes, nowadays, homophobia is no longer “acceptable” in most countries and to imagine someone being imprisoned, subjected to unscientific and brutal “treatments” to “cure” their sexual orientation, and so forth is not easy to do. Good – that’s real progress! Alas, those exact same tools – used to persecute and harass and attack Turing for his sexual orientation – are used today to persecute folks like me, with a different, but no less universally-found and centrally human, sexual orientation. Just as I imagine Turing faced, every day, fears of being arbitrarily arrested, attacked, stripped of his social standing, and separated from his family and loved ones. . . so I live every day of my life. The same dynamic – the majority simply choosing to hate a smaller, minority sexuality based on absolutely no claim of damage or harm done, but rather simple rejection of diversity and difference – is still at work, just as alive and just as ugly today as it was when it was driving Turing to suicide.
I know many folks of my orientation who have committed suicide as a result of the persecution we face. Others have been subjected to electroshock “treatment” to “cure” them of their sexual orientation – this is in the past 5 years. We’ve seen our beloved partners taken from us and murdered by police, we’re targeted for harassment and violent attacks with little or no police protection for us against the frenzied hate mob. Personally, I’ve been denied access to educational programs – admitted with full enthusiasm, and then “de-admitted” by the same school (Washington State University’s PhD program in Neuroscience) specifically because of my sexual orientation. My partner has been kidnapped and is being held for ransom – the police have chosen to allow the crime, and not bring any charges, because of my sexual orientation. The list, sadly, goes on and on and on.
Of course, I’m not Alan Turing. I’m not going to help save the “free world” from Nazi domination – at least, it doesn’t look that way so far. And, no, I’m not gay – those who target me aren’t showing “homophobia.” I’m just another minority sexual orientation – targeted for hate and discrimination by mainstream society just like gay folks were, in the past. Does that mean that it’s ok, in my case – but it wasn’t ok in the case of Turing? No, it doesn’t.
The real lesson at the heart of Turing’s story is that our society cannot allow mob opinion of minority populations to curdle into state-sanctioned persecution. The reason our “free” countries are different from that envisioned by Hitler is that we do NOT see a homogeneous culture as the only “pure” form of human existence – indeed, we choose to celebrate diversity and multiculturalism. Hitler targeted not only the Jewish population with his death campaigns – he also targeted gays, Gypsies, artists. . . anyone in a small, defenseless minority group that could be used as a target and a scapegoat by the Nazis. The “free” world stood against that tyranny – we stood for open society, respect for diversity, pluralism, a principled embrace of many different “ways of being” – even those which a majority of the population might not like. And yet, we failed to uphold those standards in allowing anti-gay hatred to drive Alan Turing to suicide.
Have we really learned the lesson of Turing? From where I’m sitting, it’s not so clear. I’m glad gay folks aren’t targeted like that, any longer – but I can’t say it’s any more pleasant for me to be on the receiving end of such bigotry than it was for gay folks to face it, in their day. Perhaps the real “success” is to be found in really accepting the lesson of Turing. Diversity and pluralism isn’t only “important” when it’s convenient, or easy, or after it’s already been forced to the acceptable level in our culture. It’s just as important for folks like me, who “only” make up a few percent of the global human population, as it is for gay folks who make up their 10% or so.
I still consider Turing a hero, and I still consider what was done to him to be a travesty. However, I’m not as convinced it’s time to pat ourselves on the back in self-satisfied celebration of how we’ve “learned the lesson” from his story – and that similar stories aren’t still going on right now. Perhaps, someday, people will look back and recognize how manifestly unjust it was to persecute my sexual orientation – just as society now sees that to be true for same-sex folks. I’d hope, when that happens – if it happens – the deeper lesson of embracing REAL plurality of human expression isn’t lost in the contratulatory excitement, once again.
Fausty
September 11th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Whats wrong with a text message? lol (Im, cruel Sorry!)
but that is disgusting, People grow up!! I have many gay/Bi-Sexual friends (be boy or girl school or outside) and I Loveeeee them to bits, and we are the best of friends <3 <3
Some people are just immature and sadly, (because I am only 18, thought people got over such idiotic barbaric homophobic laws and false myths sometime during the 60s because of the push for peace and the hippie lifestyle xD) even today.
I actually think its quite cute, Nadal and a very happy fan > http://tinyurl.com/noxl5e Thats adorable, Something like can make someone smile! “He put his arms around me, and told me he love me” Nawwwwww ^___^
September 11th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Thanks Alan R.I.P Mate,
Your probably the reason we live in a (Some-what) Free, and democratic world, God Bless indeed (-: <3