Pardon? MPs Take Another Shot At Clearing Turing’s Name

“A Great science fiction detective story” – Ian Watson, author of The Universal Machine

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Days since the Centenary: 32
Days to the Bicentennial: 36,492

It’s déjà vu all over again.

We’ve previously covered the question of whether or not Alan Turing should, or can, receive a pardon for his gross indecency conviction. Several times:

The Debate — Yes, Debate — Over A Pardon for Alan Turing

Grossly Indecent: Blackbeard The Pirate Gets a Pardon, Alan Turing Doesn’t

The Turing Pardon: Why Lord McNally Was Right, But Is Still Entirely Wrong

If you’re not familiar with Turing’s situation, he was convicted of gross indecency simply for having had consensual gay sex with another man. No lack of consent, no one underage, nothing like that. In the 1950s that was the law:

Any male person who, in public or private, commits, or is a party to the commission of, or procures, or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency shall be guilty of a misdemeanour, and being convicted shall be liable at the discretion of the Court to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour

Most people now see the old law as having been the result of an irrational prejudice that we no longer embody in our legislation.

And since 2012 is Turing’s centenary and is the international Alan Turing Year, this seems like an opportune moment to clear his name.

Alan Turing dances in the midst of a ticker tape parade, with fireworks, marking the Alan Turing Year.

After all, Turing is now scheduled to get the star treatment in a Hollywood biopic, possibly starring Leonardo DiCaprio, so why not a pardon?

Alan Turing adjusts to life in Hollywood after learning of a biopic to be based on his life.

The hurdle to getting Turing a pardon is a policy in the UK that requires pardons to be used exclusively in cases where there was a wrongful conviction. In Turing’s case this doesn’t apply.

The consensus now is that the law at the time was wrong and immoral, but it was the law and Turing did break it. There is case law that pretty conclusively rules out a pardon in a case such as Turing’s.

Lord Mcnally, Minister of Justice, from his Parliamentary web page

I previously took the position that none of this this should be a bar to a pardon. The entire hurdle is based on a policy — even the case law is an interpretation and application of the policy — and policies can be changed, usually more easily than laws can.

Getting rid of the policy wouldn’t create havoc — pardons are regularly granted in other common law jurisdictions in a variety of circumstances, including but certainly not limited to wrongful convictions, including my native Canada.

The absence of a similar policy in these places doesn’t suddenly open the floodgates to chaos as pardons are granted willy nilly without principle. Quite the opposite — pardons in these place proceed in an orderly, principled fashion.

I stand by that position, but there’s another debate .

Behind the whole issue of whether or not a pardon is available is the question of whether Turing should get one when other gay men don’t. Some people believe that Turing’s contributions to science and to the Allied victory in World War II justify his receiving an exceptional pardon.

Others — me included — believe that any pardon for Turing should come as part of a package that provides a similar pardon for everyone who was convicted of nothing more than having gay sex. It’s worth noting that there are men still alive today who have to live with a criminal record for no reason other than that they had sex with another man, something that today wouldn’t merit passing mention much less all the trouble that comes with a conviction.

Now there’s a new private members bill that might allow us to circumvent the policy and get Turing a pardon after all, but it wouldn’t actually get rid of the policy, it would just create an exception to it for one man.

Here’s the text of the bill in its entirety.

A Bill to give a statutory pardon to Alan Mathison Turing for offences under section 11 of the Criminal Amendment Act 1885 of which he was convicted on 31 March 1952.
BE IT ENACTED by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—
1 Statutory Pardon of Alan Mathison Turing
(1) Alan Mathison Turing, who was born on 23 June 1912 and died on 8 June 1954, and who was convicted of offences under section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 (gross indecency between men) at the Quarter Sessions at Knutsford in Cheshire on 31 March 1952, is to be taken to be pardoned for those offences.
(2) This Act does not affect any conviction or sentence or give rise to any right, entitlement or liability, and does not affect the prerogative of mercy.
2 Short title
(1) This Act may be cited as the Alan Turing (Statutory Pardon) Act 2012.
(2) This Act extends to England and Wales.

John Leech, a Liberal Democrat MP says:

This man was hero. It’s a simple as that. And no one should treat heroes like this.

That’s true, but it’s not enough. I believe John Leech’s heart is in the right place, but the fact is that no one should be treated like this – no one, not the lowliest of us, not the most obscure, not ever.

I’ve been willing to see Turing get an exceptional pardon if it might help apply pressure to the government for the granting of a blanket pardon to everyone in his position. The question now is: will this bill — which clearly creates an exception for Turing alone — contribute to that kind of pressure?

That’s a judgment call and frankly I’m not sure of the answer. My guess is that it won’t. On the other hand, if it doesn’t then the men who have so far shared Turing’s fate aren’t any worse off, whereas if the law is never passed it will never have a chance to create any pressure and then it’s definite that nothing will change.

I’ve concluded, reluctantly, that I support the bill, but I’d love to hear from others out there. What do you think? Post a comment on this page or write me at nas@nassauhedron.com.

An Alan Turing Year That is for Everyone

“A Great science fiction detective story”
- Ian Watson, author of The Universal Machine 

Days to Centenary:  170

Believe it or not there are still places on the Earth where there are no internet connections — such places certainly exist in the southern hemisphere, where I live — and over the holidays I was in just such a place, whichI hope explains the absence of new posts on any of my blogs for a little while.

Now that I’m back: Happy Alan Turing Year!

As I counted down to midnight on December 31,  2011 surrounded by family and friends, my thoughts were mostly with the people around me (and others who couldn’t be there), which is as it should be.  But I was certainly aware, as well, that the Turing year was about to begin… was about to begin… and then suddenly had begun.

Happy Alan Turing Year!

For many people this will be a culminating moment.  I imagine it must be such a moment for Andrew Hodges, who many years ago painstakingly pieced together  a myriad of fragments from the life of a man who was too much forgotten and pieced them together into a biography that helped revive him in our collective memory.

It was Hodges’ book that first exposed me to Turing in the 1980s.  I recently bought my fourth — or is it fifth? — copy of Alan Turing: The Enigma, because I can’t resist giving the book away when I meet someone whom I think might enjoy it or benefit from it.  Then, after a time of not having it on my shelf, I’m suddenly afflicted with the need to read it again and have to go out and buy another copy and each time I return to it I learn something new.  For that iterative, cumulative experience, thank you Dr. Hodges, and Happy Alan Turing Year.

And along with him, a very big thank you and Happy Alan Turing Year to the many good people (in part represented here) — most of whom will never have the profile that Dr. Hodges does — who have worked so hard to ensure that the Alan Turing Year happened at all, and who continue to work to ensure that the myriad of events that make up the celebration all over the world actually take place.  You guys are awesome.

And on the topic of people who make the Alan Turing Year happen, having acknowledged all the official folks, let’s not forget the Turing Elves, those unofficial individuals who — through works of art and DIY technical projects and a myriad of other endeavors that are as disparate and entertaining as the Elves themselves — help make every year Alan Turing Year.

And just as it’s a culminating moment for Dr. Hodges, for the official ATY folks, and for the Elves, I can only imagine that it must also be such a moment for Turing’s surviving family members, who only learned many years after the event of Turing’s important role in the war, who finally saw him receive the apology he deserved from the government that persecuted him, and who may now at long last see him pardoned (see this post), which is the most complete vindication that the law can extend to him at this late date.  This is the year the family Turing (whether they bear the name or not) get to finally enjoy the honour that should have been his and theirs a long, long time ago.

It will also be a culminating moment for the members of an LGBT community that is by now so multi-generational, international, and diverse that it can hardly be called one community at all.  It is a constellation of communities that has,  since the beginning of the gay liberation movement in the late 1960s, evolved  to have a strength and a public profile that once would have been unthinkable.

Even now it remains a reality for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, the transgendered, and the queer, that each person’s personhood — their character, their intrinsic nature, their contribution to the world, their strengths and flaws, their very self — is too often overshadowed by the simple fact of their sexual orientation.  It’s maddening to be reduced in that way and this recognition of Turing helps to minimize that kind of reduction.  We’re not where we need to be yet, but when a man of Turing’s stature has gone as long as he has with as little recognition as he’s had almost exclusively because of his sexual orientation, international recognition of the kind that the Alan Turing Year provides is certainly a move in the right direction.

And this should also be a culminating  moment for any number of others who are ignored or dehumanized or belittled on account of factors that ought to have no bearing on one’s view of them or on their ability to participate fully in social and professional life, whether that factor is their race, their gender, their religion, a physical or psychological idiosyncrasy or affliction, or anything else which might impair us in our ability to see them as whole and invididual people while it does nothing at all to diminish them.  The diminishment of any one of us diminishes us all and the long overdue recognition of Turing enriches us all.

Which means that — while we must never allow ourselves to be distracted from Turing himself, his work, and the honours that he’s earned — this is nonetheless an Alan Turing Year for everyone.

So, Happy Alan Turing Year to you.

[Note:  The image in this post was borrowed from here.]

Turing As A Gay Icon

Days to Centenary: 204

In the runup to the centenary of Alan Turing’s birth on June 23, 2012 and the Alan Turing Year events throughout 2012, the world is being exposed to the facts of Alan Turing’s life on a scale that is unmatched in the past.  One of the facts that newcomers to the story are confronted with — alongside Turing’s status as one of the founding fathers of computer science and artificial intelligence and his unparalleled contribution to the Allied victory in World War II — is Turing’s sexuality.

Turing was a gay man living in an era when the word still meant “happy” or “lighthearted” and anyone who acted on a homosexual impulse was subject to criminal prosecution, not only in England where Turing lived but in many other countries as well.

It’s easy to feel smug about such a benighted time, but even now, in a time when condemnation of his persecution is a matter of government policy, it remains a fact that many people react with a small flinch when Turing’s gayness is mentioned, and especially if it is taken out of the realm of dry biographical fact and given vivid life.

Many people have a visceral negative reaction to homosexuality, however much their intellect might tell them that their response is irrational and inappropriate.  No one should be condemned on that basis alone — it’s a reaction that happens at a psychological level that is not easily subject to intervention and in the end one’s conduct is what matters most.  After all, we all have impulses that we recognize as undesirable, and while we work to educate ourselves and mitigate those impulses, we certainly hope to be judged on the decisions we make about which impulses we act on and which ones we don’t rather than being held accountable for every dark thought that arises out of our unconscious.

That said, this kind of lingering discomfort with gay sexuality shouldn’t be allowed to subtly affect our perceptions of Turing, pushing this aspect of his personality into the background where it’s easier for people who have that flinching reaction to ignore it.  One needn’t be confrontational about it, but one must never soft pedal it either.  Being gay isn’t merely a plot point in a life story that may soon grace our movie screens, its an integral fact of a real person’s real life.

So for my part, I want to focus in this post on Alan Turing as a gay man who has rightly taken on an iconic status for LGBT communities and who will increasingly do so as he comes to the attention of more and more people.

(A quick aside on terminology: LGBT stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered, and I use the term “communities” because there is no single, monolithic LGBT community, just as there is no single straight community, or Scottish community, or Buddhist community).

Turing’s achievments as a scientist, including his role in Word War II, are relatively well recognized by now, if not yet on the scale they deserve.   But as a gay man who was hounded into suicide because of his sexuality, Turing is increasingly relevant in the battle for LGBT rights as well — his legacy is one of technological change, but also of social change.

For instance, the It Gets Better campaign features various people — celebrities and non-celebrities, gay and straight — in home-made videos that are intended to help LGBT youth understand that there is a happy life to be had once they get past the bullying of their teen years.  Among other things this is intended to help reduce the horrific rates of suicide amongst LGBT youth.  It Gets Better could just about name Turing, who was himself bullied into suicide by the state, as its patron saint.

President Obama’s “It Gets Better” video:

As Turing gains more and more prominence in the course of the Alan Turing Year, he will no doubt come to the attention of more and more members of the LGBT communities, many of whom will find him in him both a kindred spirit and a source of inspiration.

To some extent this process has been in motion for some time.  Andrew Hodges, author of Turing’s definitive biography and himself a gay rights activist of long standing, has written on him for The Gay and Lesbian Humanist.

The LGBT History Month web site has profiled Turing and So So Gay, which bills itself as the most popular and fastest-growing online LGBT lifestyle magazine in the UK, includes Turing in its list of LGBT heroes.

AMERICAblog Gay, a journal of news and opinion about LGBT politics, named him “hero of the month” in October 2010 and explicitly drew the parallel between Turing’s suicide and the suicides of bullied LGBT youth.

Back in the Gays, a web site that allows users to post stories recounting various aspects of LGBT history, has a page commemorating him, and he has a page in the “icons gallery” of the Circa Club, an online social and  business club for gay men.

Even groups that are not explicitly LGBT-oriented have come to identify Turing with the cause of LGBT equality.  The Online Policy Group, for instance, is not an LGBT group, but a nonprofit organization dedicated to internet policy research, outreach, and action on a variety of issues including access to the internet, privacy, digital defamation, and the digital divide. As its web site proclaims it also

…focuses on Internet participants’ civil liberties and human rights, like access, privacy, safety, and serving schools, libraries, disabled, elderly, youth, women, and sexual, gender, and ethnic minorities.

The OPG’s program for dealing with LGBT issues is named in part after Turing (The QueerNet/Turing Program).

In commerce we can see the same phenomenon.  Amazon.com, the giant online bookseller, includes books about Turing in its LGBT book section.

In terms of public attention, Turing’s star has never shone brighter than it does right now, and it’s likely that his notoriety will grow substantially before the Turing Year is over.  As it does, he will increasingly be claimed by LGBT groups wanting to explicitly include him in the pantheon of heroes whose achievements simultaneously:

• help break down stereotypes about who and what LGBT people are, and
• inspire pride in LGBT youth and give them a sense of a belonging to a long-standing, richly varied, and valuable set of communities.

This is both natural and inevitable.  Have those who share his nationality been any less anxious to claim him than those who share his sexuality? It is also, I would argue, desirable.    Nevertheless, it is bound to make some people uncomfortable.

It is truly incredible how much social attitudes about homosexuality have changed since Turing’s time (despite continued prejudice), and they are bound to continue to evolve.  By being careful to preserve the gayness in Turing’s legacy we can help that evolution along.  It’s true that it’s difficult to argue with ingrained prejudice, but it’s also difficult to argue with Turing’s record of contribution or the fact that his contributions could have continued for many years but for the senseless criminalization of his sex life.