On a recent apology by the British Government for Alan Turing's treatment (and other homosexual men of the time) who were either imprisoned or given oestrogen injections because of their sexual oreintation:
"1. Turing knowingly engages in criminal behavior.
2. He's caught.
3. He's punished.
4. He doesn't like being punished so he kills himself.
5. The British government owes him an apology.
It's the jump to (5) that I don't follow"
71 comments
This isn't fundie at all, as technically he's right, homosexuality being a crime was pretty horrible, but Alan Turing knew that it was a crime, so he chose to take the risk.
@Anon :
I guess Rosa Parks deserved to be imprisoned and driven to suicide. After all, she knew sitting there was a crime and she chose to take that risk.
I mean you can't impose the moral values of today upon years past.
1. Christians knowingly engage in criminal behavior.
2. They're caught.
3. They're thrown to the lions.
4. Later Christians don't like the fact that earlier Christians were punished so they call them martyrs.
5. The Roman government owes them an apology.
It's the jump to (5) that I don't follow
Alan Turing was one of the greatest minds of his time. He also helped to win WWII. He was chemically castrated, humiliated, and lost his security clearance (and therefore his work) because he disobeyed an unreasonable and unjust law.
Actually I would say they owe a lot more to Alan Turing, and also to the world. Their actions led to his suicide, and we really cannot imagine what else he would have developed in the computer science field if he had lived past the age of 41.
So on behalf of computer geeks and codermonkeys everywhere on earth, Fuck off
@Anon
This is not a statement from the past, this a statement being made now and as such it is definitly fundie.
Damn, I'm getting quite irate with the 'this not fundy' crowd, no matter how stupid or ignorant the original quote, there seems to be always one person who can't supress the urge to chime in with a 'not fundy'.
Quite right, the law shouldn't have existed in the first place, but then it's easy to say that now!
@Anon
I agree, at least they have made sure it will not happen again. But that doesn't mean we should just forget that that kind of law ever existed. By examining the mistakes of our past we help prevent the same type of thing happening again.
No.
1) Turing knowingly engages in behavior that is bizarrely regarded as criminal.
2) He is arrested for this.
3) He is subjected to a humiliating punishment he doesn't deserve.
4) He kills himself due to psychological trauma.
5) The British government damn right owes him an apology.
"...either imprisoned or given oestrogen injections because of their sexual oreintation... "
Maybe I'm just reading this wrong, but... they wanted to make the gay men more gay ?
Hm,
@anon
ok, I'll clarify again why the quote is fundie.
Yes, we all agree that being gay shouldn't be illegal, and it isn't, where is the fucking problem?
well, the fucking problem is that the whole quote from Tim implies that he thinks those laws were just and fair, so we do not all agree that being gay should be illegal.
1. Tim of Angle knowingly engages in Christianity, which is illegal for the sake of this argument.
2. He's caught.
3. He's punished.
4. He doesn't like being punished so he kills himself.
5. Our hypothetical government owes him an apology.
Does the "jump to (5)" make any more sense to you now, Timmy?
I Nazi-controlled Europe, it was illegal to hide Jews. Some people did so anyway, risking execution to protect others. Should we condemn them, too?
you owe your freedom to this particular gay.
Fuck off you ungrateful cunt.
Edit: I've started to use "gay" as a noun after a joke with a gay friend, in a sort of tongue in cheek parody of how people say "teh gays", and how gay people with a sense of humour laugh about the way homophobes speak.
Incidentally (and I'm British), the apology should be extended to every homosexual, including Turing's partner. Turing is special. He should be nominated for a posthumous nobel prize for his contribution to science, even if he doesn't win one.
Edit 2: Wait.. this was on new scientist?! this is the British equivalent of national geographic. I'm still trying to solve the maths puzzle at the back -written by a reader- from 2 months ago. I once bought an imported copy of NG, and although an interesting read, it was nowhere near as difficult (and ultimately enlightening) read as NS. Jesus. you don't need me to comment on this one.. New Scientist readers are going to destroy this guy. Nothing against americans - I think NG is for a broader market. NS talks about everything it publishes like a specialist subject. Bits about my own field of science challenge me. Stuff about biology, I have to read every paragraph about 8 times.
@Anon : So Martin Luther King, Jr. had it coming? Because we can't superimpose the moral values of today upon years past, right? So I guess he was an uppity n***** who deserved what he got for knowingly violating the law and the status quo and encouraging others to do likewise, according to your perverse logic.
6. He was integral in the code breaking efforts of WW2
7. His machines and ideas are still used and you would not be enjoying your lifestyle without them
8. He was persecuted by idealists who 'knew' that they were correct and everyone who did not conform to their beliefs was incorrect/sick/evil.
9. The British have actually grown a pair and realised that they made a mistake and were responsible at least in part for his suicide.
10. Fundies can never accept they made a mistake, even during the crusades or witchhunts so why would they care about the death of one man.
@Anon :
Are you suggesting that the law is always right? Because your attitude of not imposing our values on past societies does seem to suggest that. As does your statement that Turing engaged in what he knew was illegal activity.
If that is your suggestion, then if the law tells me to kill my neighbour if I suspect him of being a communist, I should do it?
"This isn't fundie at all, as technically he's right, free speech being a crime was pretty horrible, but people who practiced free speech during the Inquisition knew that it was a crime, so they chose to take the risk.
Fixed.
Although what happened to Turing was very, very wrong, I think it's inconsistent of the British government to apologise for this when it refuses to apologise for other past injustices. For example, the government won't apologise for the shell-shocked soldiers who were summarily executed in 1914-1918, because 'those were the rules at the time'. Turing was hardly the first or last person to be treated like shit by our glorious leaders.
@Drax.
TBF to the British Government, (never thought I'd ever use those words).
@rubber chicken
Thanks for the info. I was just using that as one particular example, though. The point I'm trying to make, I suppose, is that Turing was just one among many thousands of people treated badly by the authorities over our history. And to be honest, I don't think an apology to a dead man so long after the event really makes much difference anyway. The important thing is that (hopefully) our society has progressed quite a lot since then. In some ways anyway.
@Anon and Drax: What you seem to be forgetting is that maybe the Government was not in any way compelled to apologise for anything, but rather they merely chose to apologise out of the goodness of their hearts.
Doesn't matter what the morality was then or now all that matters was that a man who contributed much to humanity had his life unjustly cut short.
@Orion
Goodness of their hearts....don't make me laugh! The sleazy bastards we call our government wouldn't know what goodness was if it dropped on them. This apology is nothing more than a good soundbite to them. They don't really care.
I agree with you about Turing, all I'm saying is, he was hardly the first, or the last, to be treated in such a shabby way, and a late 'apology' isn't going to undo the injustice.
So if you were punished for being fat by serving jailtime, whether you died or not, you don't think an apology is in order for a WRONGFUL and BIGOTED act against you?
Oh right, I forgot, it only counts if it is you, not anyone else
@ Orion.
Of course the law isn't always right, but the only way to address a law that is immoral is to seek a public consensus and petition the Government to change it, if they won't then vote them out at the next election in favour of a Government that will.
I think the most relevant point is that if Alan Turing's "crime" had been one that we still agree to be wrong today, then this whole issue would not exist, and (although wrongly) homosexuality was considered to be wrong at the time and therefore illegal, how can you (with the comfort of hindsight) blame the Government of the time for applying that law when the values of the time were in agreement with it?
As for the comparison with slavery, I also find the various hand-wringing apologies for slavery somewhat pathetic, slavery was apologised for when it was abolished, why the fuck should we be apologising for it now, when nobody alive today had anything to do with it?
The British Government definitely had to apologize for their actions. None of the men who went through that for being homosexual deserved that kind of treatment. It was cruel, reprehensible, and a disgusting violation.
Okay Tim, fine. In that case, switch off that computer, which Alan Turing contributed greatly to it's development (and thus the Information Age we enjoy today). And after that, kill yourself. Because of Turing's vital work at Bletchley Park ('Station X') in deciphering the Nazis' Enigma-encoded transmissions (via his invention, 'Bombes') during WWII, the wealth of intelligence available to Churchill, the War Office, SIS, MI5 and what was shared with Gen. Eisenhower, ensured the success of D-Day, and the ultimate defeat of Hitler. Indeed, it's said that not only did Station X shorten the war by at least three years, it ensured 600,000 Allied troops came back home or didn't see battle. Thus the world we have today, and the freedom we enjoy as a result. One of said Allied troops who came home was probably your grandfather. Imagine if he hadn't come home, or if he did, too disabled/mutilated to conceive. Yes, that's right. Your being born was ultimately down to the work of Alan Turing. A homosexual . Ah, irony. 'Tis a cruel bitch, is she not?
You and every other homophobic fundie/neocon take note: you probably wouldn't exist today, were it not for Alan Turing. You should be worshipping him - he is your true God.
In order to "follow" why the government apologised for the barbaric treatment of Alan Turing and how many other gays, you need two things:
- A brain
My guess is that you have neither.
@ Dr. Novokaine:
None of this addresses the fact that if you'd asked people what they thought about it a year or so after Alan Turing's death they would respond very differently to the way we do today, as the moral values were different.
100 years in the future society will have a different view again, there are probably going to be things that we consider wrong now that are crimes, but will be accepted by that time, will you be expecting the govt to apologise for that too? Are we really supposed to judge our conduct and views by an imagined future standard? Because essentially that's what most of you are saying the British Government should have done, despite it being completely impossible! With hindsight the law was wrong about homosexuals, but how could the law-makers of the time be expected to know that?
It's a shame that eccentric geniuses are treated this way. It just tells me that we, as a species, should probably listen more to the crazy people, they just might be oh so gravely right.
Homosexuality may have been considered "wrong", but I highly doubt that every person in the world agreed that the best way to deal with it was through chemical torture and abject humiliation. This goes beyond "values of the time". It was never a value of any time in any decent civilization that a brilliant scientist should be humiliated and driven to suicide for his lifestyle choices.
Him being a brilliant scientist was irrelevant, the law always applies to anyone, regardless of their status in any given field.
Wait, African Americans are given referations by the descendants of their ancestor's slave masters and that's okay and even expected in some cases, but the British government apologises for the inhumane treatment of homosexuals, specifically a man that helped to bring WWII to an end, and people think it's stupid and uncalled for?
Seriously people, you go on about how the arguments against same-sex marriage are analogous to arguments against non-white marriages yet you can't take your own advice?
Hmmm... I wonder why we should appologise to Alan Turing? Maybe it's because he helped win the motherf*cking 2nd world war, and we still treated him like dicks after the war because of his sexual orientation, and drove him to the point of suicide
Um...did you wake up this morning speaking German?
No?
Then fucking THANK Alan Turing, you douchebag!
Also, he didn't kill himself because they spanked him and sent him to bed without any dinner. They incarcerated him in an asylum, subjected him to electroconvulsive shocks, as was the custom at the time, and basically destroyed his life. He was blacklisted from government work, he lost his friends and family, he had nothing left. THAT is why he killed himself.
Fucking moron.
No, he engaged in behavior that shouldn't have been criminal in the first place, got cruel and unusual punishment, and killed himself. One would think you should be thankful to him, seeing how he helped win WWII and develop computers, like the one you're using to spew this bullshit.
@whatever
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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