Alan Turing Likely To Be Given Posthumous Pardon 210
pegdhcp writes with news that the UK government has signaled its intent to support a bill that would issue a posthumous pardon to Alan Turing, who is known for his work in defeating the German Enigma code machines in World War II and widely considered the father of computer science. Turing was charged with and convicted of "gross indecency" in 1952 for being gay. He was sentenced to chemical castration, and he committed suicide two years later.
"The announcement marks a change of heart by the government, which declined last year to grant pardons to the 49,000 gay men, now dead, who were convicted under the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act. They include Oscar Wilde. ... [Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon] told peers: "Alan Turing himself believed that homosexual activity would be made legal by a royal commission. In fact, appropriately, it was parliament which decriminalized the activity for which he was convicted. The government are very aware of the calls to pardon Turing, given his outstanding achievements, and have great sympathy with this objective That is why the government believe it is right that parliament should be free to respond to this bill in whatever way its conscience dictates and in whatever way it so wills."
Screw them (Score:5, Insightful)
He gets pardoned for his "outstanding achievements". Yet again, it isn't the Rule of Law or ethics that rules Britain, but fame. If you are famous, you get off. And if you are not famous and the law is horribly immoral, then you are fucked.
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Re:Screw them (Score:4, Insightful)
No it doesn't.
There WAS a bill last year to pardon 49,000 people, including Turing. It failed.
There is nothing in the summary or TFA that indicates whether the new bill is for that same group of 49,000, or for Turning alone. You MAY be right, but neither the summary or TFA supports that conclusion.
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According to Justice Minister Lord McNally, “It is tragic that Alan Turing was convicted of an offence which now seems both cruel and absurd, particularly given his outstanding contribution to the war effort,” he said. “However, the law at the time required a prosecution and, as such, long-standing policy has been to accept that such convictions took place and, rather than trying to alter the historical context and to put right what cannot be put right, ensure instead that we never again return to those times.”
Source [forbes.com]. I guess it makes sense when you put it like that. Pardoning at best does nothing to change the people whose lives were ruined, justice is not done, it never can be. An acknowledgement that the country is capable of doing very bad things is probably better than patting ourselves on the back for fixing our grandparent's mistakes.
Re:Screw them (Score:5, Informative)
No, the pardon is specifically for Alan Turing. That's why it's called the "Alan Turing (Statutory Pardon) Bill [HL] 2012-13"
http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2012-13/alanturingstatutorypardon.html [parliament.uk]
Re:Screw them (Score:5, Insightful)
That's shameful. His name and reputation deserve a pardon, but so do all the others.
In a sense, since the person is not alive anymore, a post-humous pardon is mostly about showing contrition - the state's for its actions toward others - and moving forward in a better manner. By not pardoning everyone else, and singling out Turing, the state - and the society as a whole to some extent - engages in a a grubby, partisan deed and shows no contrition for the victimising activities.
I'd expect nothing less from the bunch of self-interested, unprincipled politicians who we have in parliament these days, though.
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I know it's an accident of terminology, but in cases like this, they should issue a "We beg your pardon" since in retrospect we see that it is not the convicted who acted criminally.
Re:Screw them (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, the entire concept of being Pardoned in this case would be yet another insult.
What they should issue is an Apology.
Re:Screw them (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, the entire concept of being Pardoned in this case would be yet another insult.
What they should issue is an Apology.
Mod parent up. Pardon implies that the action was wrong, but excusable. An apology would imply that Turing (+others) did nothing wrong and that it was in fact the law that was wrong.
This isn't about Turing (Score:3, Interesting)
Geeks are the ones explaining in detail what GCHQ has been recording on Brits. Geeks are the ones who thought Turing was given a bad deal. So this is a fob to pretend that Cameron is somehow the friend of geeks, even as he's destroying the privacy right and making 'democracy' a joke word.
Seriously, fuck off Cameron, you were elected to fix the surveillance state, no token honor to Turing will fix what you've done Cameron, *no*, what you're *doing* Cameron. It's on-going. We get it, we voted for your to end
Re:Screw them (Score:5, Informative)
Chill out, they already issued an apology [bbc.co.uk] a few years ago.
Re:Screw them (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Pardon implies the action was illegal, but excusable. And the action was illegal. Whether you like the law or not, he was actually "guilty" of it, even if the law was poorly and unevenly applied.
What really needs to be understood is that being convicted doesn't make you evil. The law exists to preserve the existing order. And many times, the existing order is deficient, but must serve to maintain society until it can be changed.
Re:Screw them (Score:4, Interesting)
The term "pardon" should stick in everyone's craw. The term belongs to another age, when royalty dare not admit that wrongs were committed. Did Alan Turing ever commit any act for which he should have said "I beg your pardon" to society? I think not. I know that pardons are granted for wrongful convictions as well as when the recipient is considered to have fulfilled their debt to society. I also know that in the UK a pardon implies moral innocence. Maybe it's silly of me to be hung up on the word itself, but I am. There ought to be a better term for nullification of convictions arising from laws which have been found to be unjust, immoral and evil, and the title of the nullification ought to make it clear that it isn't forgiveness, because the victim in these cases has done nothing which needs to be forgiven.
Think about it. Escaped slaves who were caught in the past: do we now really want to retrospectively say in magnanimity that we forgive them for escaping? If I were so descended, I would symbolically spit in the face of one so declaring in those terms.
Re: Screw them (Score:2)
Well, just my thoughts, so netiqette be damned, I'll add a big "me too" here.
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I agree. Besides, what is the point of pardoning someone who's already dead? To be frank, even an apology is short of the mark. There is nothing they can do at this time apart from what has already been done, making this a rather futile exercise.
Re: Screw them (Score:5, Insightful)
They might want to pardon those still living with criminal records for this.
There are rather a few.
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Well, dang, if you weren't already at 5, I'd mod you up. That's exactly what they should do.
Re:Screw them (Score:5, Informative)
Before you carry on with this tirade: a former prime minister already did this.
Google "Gordon Brown Alan Turing Apology"
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Bravo, sir. I was about to post the same thing. Never mod points when you need them.
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Honestly, the entire concept of being Pardoned in this case would be yet another insult.
Agreed. In this situation, Turing doesn't need the pardon, the UK Government needs it for their crimes against humanity.
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Agreed. In this situation, Turing doesn't need the pardon, the UK Government needs it for their crimes against humanity.
There isn't a country on the planet who hasn't, at some point in the past, committed acts that are now considered human rights violations and/or crimes against humanity. Not a one. Some of the so-called "western ideal" liberal/democracies were still committing these crimes against humanity while, at the same time, their heads of state were receiving Nobel prizes for forwarding human rights. (Yes, I'm looking at you, Canada, and more recently, the USA)
Absolving the past isn't what's important, nor is it a go
Re: Screw them (Score:2)
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[citation needed]
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And that is WHY governments should issue apologies and hope to be pardoned.
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they did.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/11/pm-apology-to-alan-turing [guardian.co.uk]
Gordon Brown issued an unequivocal apology last night on behalf of the government to Alan Turing, the second world war codebreaker who took his own life 55 years ago after being sentenced to chemical castration for being gay.
Describing Turing's treatment as "horrifying" and "utterly unfair", Brown said the country owed the brilliant mathematician a huge debt. He was proud, he said, to offer an official apology. "We're sorry, you d
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Shouldn't they give him a knighthood?
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There was a petition [direct.gov.uk] to HM Government for that very thing. It was rejected on absurd grounds.
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turin was convicted of commiting an act of gross indecency in a public place
Wrong, the last part anyway.
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turin was convicted of commiting an act of gross indecency in a public place, not for being gay
Perhaps there was some person named "Turin" who was convicted of committing an act of gross indecency in a public place. Alan Turing, however, was, as I understand it, convicted of committing homosexual acts in private [polarimagazine.com].
Re:Screw them (Score:5, Interesting)
In the UK, it's all about "who you know". Anthony Blunt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Blunt) was openly gay around the same time as Alan Turing. And he spied for Russia.
But because he was the " Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures", nothing ever happened to him.
One rule of law for the elite, another for the commoners.
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But The fact that Anthony Blunt had friends in high places was not a military secret. To reprieve Turing would be to acknowledge the fact that Turing's work was instrumental during the war, and the Sovets should really change those locks...
floodgates? (Score:4, Insightful)
The government argues that they can't pardon everyone because it would open the floodgates for anyone convicted of any crime subsequently legalized to ask for the same. To my mind that's a lame excuse for not pardoning every gay man convicted of this one specific crime.
Re:floodgates? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no reason to pardon him. Apologize for making a bad law sure, but pardon no. It was illegal at the time, and there were no exigent circumstances requiring him to break the law for the public good. There is really no reason to offer a pardon.
The pardon is necessary (Score:2)
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Some people wear their criminal records with pride. If I was Nelson Mandela and someone wanted to take my imprisonment off my record, I'd tell them to bug off because I spent decades earning that record.
Some people are dead and their criminal records don't matter to them any more. Turing probably would have cared at the time it happened because it would have meant something for someone to stand up for him. Now?
I guess if they needed a pardon so he could have a statue or something put up, it would necessa
Re:floodgates? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why permit such revisionist history at all? If you're going to pretend he was not a criminal, then you must also pretend the government didn't convict him. Are we going to pretend the US never had slavery if Congress passes a law to posthumously free all slaves back to 1776? It's absurd. That Alan Turing was convicted of the crime of homosexuality is a historic fact and his "crimes" only reflect badly on the UK government, not on the man himself.
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Revisionism is about placing political correctness above reality. A pardon would be a political statement, not a legal opinion, and would merely add insult to injury.
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This. But I really can't see any argument for making an apology either. Nobody currently occupying office is responsible for the law or Turing's prosecution, and thus has nothing to apologize for.
Dig up some old fossil who actually bears responsibility for either, or give it a rest.
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He broke the law because it was his biological nature. Normal human beings can't help being somewhat sexual and everyone has the right to pursue happiness and intimate relations.
He broke the law but modern science and psychology says he had a legitimate excuse.
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You are a fool. There is a VAST difference between consensual homosexual sex between two adults and a 15 year old succumbing to his hormones.
...and, furthermore, said 15-year-old forcing somebody else to commit non-consensual sexual acts, that being what "rape" involves, so the difference is even more vast.
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Really? "The public good" is your (only) measure of whether exercising one's rights to live one's own private life should be free from evil and infamous societal intervention and sanction? I object in the strongest possible terms.
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And the problem with pardoning anyone convicted of a crime that was later legalized is...?
"Our shameful forebears, through a combination of ignorance and memetic control mechanisms, had wrongly made this illegal."
Didja ever wonder what people 100 years from now will look back on our "modern, self-satisfied" worldview and laugh or shake their heads with embarrassment?
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There are other things that need our attention right now. Though having politicians spend their time on meaningless fluff rather than passing more shitty laws is probably a good thing, in general this kind of thing is just used to run interference for meaningful stuff that is going on that they don't want you to pay attention to.
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The government is quite large, it can multitask.
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As long as it's okay if someday there's a law that says there's a new time limit on issuing pardons, say, ten years, and all those convictions are then summarily reinstated. The alternative is that justice could never be final.
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??? no excuse, open those floodgates, if something was legalised then the govt f**ked up in the first place by making said thing illegal.
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THAT is the reason?
Like hell I'd expect everyone to be pardoned if they are in jail for something that is later legalized!
It just boggles the mind! They argue with a reason that is at best yet ANOTHER reason to be angry with them.
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Well, for argument's sake, what are the negatives of retroactively pardoning people for crimes that are subsequently legalized?
Becoming self-satisfied about your moral superiority.
They already issued an official apology (Score:2)
These post humorous pardons, and official decision changes, are stupid.
Last year The government officially voted to not send Japanese citizens to the internment camps during WWII.
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... are un four givable.
Just wait... (Score:2)
Next year the US can retroactively free all the slaves and claim that therefore there was never a slavery problem.
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Doesn't have to, but in our PC world it usually does.
Several enigma machines (Score:5, Insightful)
Many people think Turing cracked Enigma, but this is only partially true.
The Poles were the first to crack Enigma. Turing's lot later cracked naval Enigma. It took the capture of a downed U-boat to crack an updated naval Enigma.
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Other ww2 fun was the German side: Mustard via German OKK-5 efforts from a Soviet codebook captured in Finland.
http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/the-finnish-cryptologic-service-in-wwii.html [blogspot.com.au]
Re:Several enigma machines (Score:5, Insightful)
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Even before cracking the naval Enigma, Turing et al devised a way to break Enigma should the Germans realise they had a vulnerability by using a known plaintext attack.
Was that the trick where the opening sentence of u-boat communiques was always a weather report? Too lazy to dig out my copy of The Code Book :)
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Exactly. Well, actually the Poles did a bit more than just what you give them credit for. They created their own reverse-engineered enigma machines (or "doubles", or "bombes"; it is not entirely clear to me which term is the most accurate) and eventually furnished them to the British.
Also, I have a reservation about the usage "cracked" or "broke" such-and-such cipher. Terms like these imply that you do the work once, and then the ciphertext is effortlessly deciphered from then on. In actuality, it is not ne
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Before WWII started, Enigma was used with the same settings for a month. After gathering about 80 encrypted messages, with only the knowledge that each message started with the letters XYZXYZ for three unknown letters X, Y, and Z, and with a bit of espionage to discover the plug connections (something that a cleaner might have written down if the machine wasn't carefully hidden away), it was possible
That's Nice (Score:3)
Why bother? (Score:2)
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I think it's meaningless and a waste of time. The people in charge today didn't commit the offense, and if you want to address past offenses in UK history, a more important place to start would be at Smithfield [wikipedia.org] anyway. I am more in favor of finding people whose rights are being violated today and doing something about that.
It is not meaningless. There are people in Britain and worldwide who still want to roll back the clock on gay rights. This move would signal that there is no going back by appropriately acknowledging the collective shame that Britain bears for treating their hero so poorly. It is 2013. Gay oppression is, or ought to be, a thing of the past.
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You are right, but every time I see the term "gay rights", I roll my eyes. There are no "gay rights". At least those involved in integration (who mattered) didn't call it "black rights" or even "racial rights", but "civil rights". I'm pretty sure civil rights, properly interpreted, covers everything.
Everyone is due the right to conduct their personal affairs, which are absolutely no business of society, free from authorities spying, interfering, and punishing, whether those authorities are the government, t
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It's too easy to end up with laws just as stupid and evil as those against "impaired driving". The wrongdoing isn't impaired driving, it's incompetent driving, incompetent for WHATEVER REASON, but even then only as a condition in an event which involves injury to other people and destruction of their property. Otherwise no wrong has been done to anyone.
I see your point, however, you should consider that this is the sort of law that by its very nature must not be written exactly at the "fence line" where impairment actually kills people. In other words, the line has to be drawn some distance over on the safe side of things. This is an inconvenience to people who can hold their liquor and drive safely, but raising the legal BAC limit would open the floodgates of homicidal drunk driving. If a mental/physical coordination test were exclusively administered
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"Preventive" laws are immoral, evil, presumptive and do not work. Ever see Minority Report?
Maybe if the war of escalation in which cars are made more and more like fortresses and the occupants elaborately cushioned had never been begun, more drunk and incompetent drivers would have killed themselves, reducing the danger to others. But this is pretty far afield from the topic.
So he gets to return to life I guess? (Score:2)
... because his suicide was a direct result of his prosecution and punishment. So unless they can return Alan Turing to life this pardon doesn't mean shit.
Just pandering (Score:2)
So unless they can return Alan Turing to life this pardon doesn't mean shit.
What is means is that the people in power are pandering to those currently living in the hopes of getting future votes.
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The suicide verdict at the inquest was an awful decision. It is just as likely that his death was an accident. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18561092 [bbc.co.uk]
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No, despite the mental masturbation exhibited at the link, it was not an "awful decision". It was an absurdly incompetent investigation, and doesn't result in any certitude, but it found the most likely cause. Yeah, it could have been an accident; it could have been murder; but more likely it was suicide. You take away from somebody who they ARE and you have taken away everything.
Why change history (Score:2)
This might be an unpopular sentiment, but why.
Don't get me wrong, I am all for sexual equality, and have nothing against gay people. But why go through and change history. At the time, it was considered illegal, and the world was a much more conservative place. Pardoning him posthumously does nothing for him, and only makes the current generation of politicians and people feel good and they did something, which in reality has no real meaning.
It is like South Africa, where I grew up. Today, they are chan
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Don't get me wrong; I understand where you're coming from. This clearly does Turing no good at this point. But at the same time, if I lived on Adolph Hitlerstrasse, I might be very happy to have the government change the name. There's a thin line between trying to hide the past, and not wanting to celebrate past misdeeds that were once considered good.
Look at it this way: if they don't pardon Turing, then people might object to erecting a statue or naming a street after him, on the basis that he was a convi
Okay... (Score:2)
support a bill that would issue a posthumous pardon to Alan Turing ... was charged with and convicted of "gross indecency" in 1952 for being gay.
The announcement marks a change of heart by the government, which declined last year to grant pardons to the 49,000 gay men, now dead, who were convicted under the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act.
One down, 48,999 pardons to go.
It was about (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Similar Gay Boy Scout Ban (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to similar. The Boy Scouts are not sentencing people "to chemical castration."
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Turing was sentenced to 1 year in prison. He was give the option to avoid prison by undergoing hormone therapy.
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Stilboestrol has all sorts of nasty side effects. Would you like breasts to go with your formerly masculine physique?
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He was give the option to avoid prison by undergoing hormone therapy...
... hormone therapy which left him impotent and with breasts.
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This is somehow okay with you?
It takes all types to make the world go around so I guess you're welcome to think that but... Wow. I'm a straight up asshole and I don't even think that. Hell, I thought they'd already done this and he was pardoned and all that jazz. This is as bad as the Japanese still worshiping their WWII war criminals.
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The reason given why he wasn't pardoned was so that we can accept our shameful history. Retroactively pardoning someone doesn't actually do anything... no one thinks just being gay should be illegal now in the UK (well, as close as possible to no one).
The pardon doesn't actually do anything about current issues with homosexuality, transgender issues, etc. It's just a self-congratulatory pat on the back, "weren't we awful back then", pointless exercise.
We'll be going around pardoning all the Catholics nex
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Not to similar. The Boy Scouts are not sentencing people "to chemical castration."
You mean you can't work for a "Chemical castration" award?
Turin test (Score:2)
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1. The BSA is a private organization, not the government.
A 'private' organization that nevertheless enjoys an extremely close relationship with said government, starting with the congressional charter and extending throughout all the special treatment given to them and their members by local schools, fire and police departments, and particularly the military. People defending them are always quick to claim the BSA receives 'no federal funds' but that's not really accurate since the taxpayer pays for the schools and the schools in turn financially sponsor the loca
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Why is it so important for men to get out into the woods with little boys?
Re:Similar Gay Boy Scout Ban (Score:4, Insightful)
2. Why is it so important for gay men to get out into the woods with little boys?>
Why is it so important for men to get out into the woods with little boys?
Ah; it's the old "All gays are child molesters" trope yet again.
Actually, you should ask "Why is it so important for self-described "straight" men to get out into the woods with little boys." ;-)
After all, the Boy Scouts haven't banned all gay men, only the ones who are open and honest ("out of the closet") about their predilections. They accept closeted gays as Scout leaders.
(We might also repeat the oft-noted observation that "homosexual" and "child molester" aren't synonyms. They probably aren't even correlated. There are child-molesting straight people, and gays who don't find pre-puberty children sexually attractive. If your motive is to protect the children from molestation, excluding gays has little if anything to do with such goals.)
But the main point here is that the Boy Scouts have in fact only excluded people who admit to being gay, while not paying nearly as much attention to people who claim to be straight.
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It's nothing like that.
1. The BSA is a private organization, not the government. 1A. The BSA can't incarcerate anyone for violating the ban. 1B. The BSA ban isn't a law, it's a rule.
2. Why is it so important for gay men to get out into the woods with little boys?
LK
My Scoutmaster was gay - this was back in the late 60's. Never caused any harm or touched any of us, Of course even though we had a pretty good idea, it wasn't until later years he confirmed.
Horrors! If he was only like the other troop in our town, with a God fearing Righteous American who disciplined his Scouts with a Bullwhip (this is real, we'd seen the lash marks.
As to why it's so important? Ist shouldn't be. I might ask you the question of why you assume that a gay man is going to have sex with a c
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Society was better when "The state is mother, the state is father" were just words on a page.
Re:Sexual liberation is a dead-end (Score:5, Insightful)
Society was happier when people were focused on family and behaved in a (relatively) chaste manner.
Part of maintaining that structure requires a clear sexual values system, including a sense of what is normal.
When we go pluralistic, or make "anything goes" the new normal, this traditional order is threatened.
While I will never support the persecution of someone for being quietly gay, I think a lot of the excesses of that time were designed to counter-act the rising sexual liberation movement.
You suffer from the terrible misapprehension that there is such thing as "normal" when it comes to human sexuality, and that people have ever done anything more than pretend to conform to your mythical "chaste" behaviors. All of recorded history shows us that A) human sexuality is a spectrum that has always included things like homosexuality and B) humans are really not very good at being "chaste".
Also, last time I checked there were an awful lot of people inhabiting those "happier" time periods you refer to who were not happy at all. Quite the opposite in fact, since they were busy being persecuted for what they felt was perfectly normal.
It certainly sounds very much like you do support the persecution of anyone who doesn't fit your personal definition of "normal" or threatens your idea of harmonious social order.
More on topic: This whole thing with pardoning just Alan Turing because he happened to be a genius and helped to win a war makes me want to puke. If the law and the resulting persecution was wrong they should be apologizing and pardoning every single person who was ever prosecuted under that law. Not just Turing. What, those 49,000 others aren't good enough for a pardon? They weren't genius enough to earn an apology for being persecuted? Give me a break. If it was wrong, it was wrong. Otherwise it's just favoritism.
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Part of maintaining that structure requires a clear sexual values system, including a sense of what is normal.
OK, if we need a sense of what's normal, I propose that sex that starts when the hour of the day is an even number is normal and sex that starts when the hour of the day is an odd number is not normal.
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Society was not happier.
Just quieter. People were afraid to say they're unhappy.
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I then spend time with open mined smart people when I get sick and tired of the ignorant, bigots, and Bible thumpers.
I am horrified at your embrace of environmentally unsound mineral extraction practices.
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how can you tell if a 6 year old is gay?
Ask his mother...?
Moms know.
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Duh, it's because they like Barbie dolls and dressing sharply.
Because males who like other males want to spend all their time looking at naked plastic women.
Re:BSA Lifting Ban on Gay Scouts, but not Leaders (Score:5, Interesting)
Moms know.
Sometimes they do, sometimes they blissfully put up blinders and pretend that nothing's happening. When I told my mom I was a lesbian, her first words were "no you aren't", and it was 5 years and many girlfriends later that she finally acknowledged that I might be queer. To this day, she still hopes I'm going to find some guy and start popping out grandkids.
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hopes I'm going to find some guy and start popping out grandkids
And why not? It's not like you have to marry him. Or even have sex with him. Two words: Turkey baster.*
* Note that the child will technically be a baster'd
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Indeed, in a lot of respects, it's better for the conviction to stand as a bloody reminder of how intolerant we are.
FTFY
Don't think that because some gay people get to have the joy of marriage and subsequent divorce that we are now post-intolerance.
Pardoning a dead person of a no longer illegal act when everyone is in favor of it is more like moral masturbation. I guess it has to be done or someone might blow their top, but you didn't actually get anywhere with anyone else.