While we're at it, if we're cleaning up historical inequalities, why stop there? What of those convicted under or controlled by other laws we now regard as inhumane - women burned for witchcraft, for example, or the 18th century designation of black slaves as commodities under the Trade and Navigation Act? What's more, if as an act of contrition we are to overturn past criminal convictions, it would surely only be just to issue posthumous prosecutions for those who committed what we now consider to be crimes. If we pardon Turing, there are thousands more due the same - every lesbian, bisexual, gay, intersex and trans man and woman persecuted or harassed throughout the nation's history, from Oscar Wilde to Radclyffe Hall, to the everyday citizens whose secret lives were made the stuff of public shame and state prosecution. But the implication of pardoning Turing now would be that he is worthy of his pardon only because he was a national hero a some gays are more equal than others kind of approach. John Graham-Cummingham, the computer scientist who created the first petition said: "You don't have to be gay to think that prosecuting a man for a private consensual sex act who just seven years before had been hailed as a hero of the Second World War was simply wrong." Fair enough. Instead, pardoning Turing would actually create a problem - it would establish a precedent for the "deserving" homosexual. But the pardon itself would achieve what, exactly? Help construct the acceptable face of establishment homosexuality in a patriotic form? Assure the LGBTQI community that the government's commitment to equal rights really does have nothing to do with vote-swinging? Make us feel better about a law that we cannot - and must not - forget existed in the first place? The motivation for pardoning Turing comes with the best of intentions. Meanwhile, the current e-petition, started by William Jones and carried forward by Lib Dem MP John Leech - who tabled an early day motion to secure Turing's pardon - is backed by the Guardian and has been so far signed by more than 28,000 people. Gordon Brown made a national apology for Turing's treatment but no pardon was granted.
In 2009, a petition demanding that Turing be apologised to in light of his contribution to national life, ratcheted up 30,000 signatures on the No 10 website.
He opted for the second, but was so distressed by the treatment that he committed suicide two years later. But in the case of Alan Turing, the so-called Father of Computing and Bletchley Park code-breaker, and the subject of a campaign to absolve him posthumously of a "gross indecency" conviction, Lord Justice McNally has made the right decision.Ĭharged with the offence in 1952, Turing was offered a choice of sentence - prison or chemical castration. In LGBT History month, denying a persecuted homosexual a pardon seems particularly insensitive.