Pardon ? For what? Thanks but no thanks.
I wondered. The only way I read this "pardon" is:
"We pardon you of having forced us to persecute you."
Royal pardon for codebreaker Alan Turing
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Re: Royal pardon for codebreaker Alan Turing
#62Lots of complaining on here, but I was glad to see it. The government certainly didn't have to. It doesn't have to pardon everyone convicted of a crime that is no longer a crime. It was a good thing to do for a good man, and I commend them.
There have been countless people prosecuted due to unjust laws; society changes, and as that happens laws change.
Every single one of those people should be given a pardon, or none of them should.
Re: Royal pardon for codebreaker Alan Turing
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't be too concerned by the "Royal" nature of the pardon. In the UK the legislative system is in theory dependent on the Royal prerogative (i.e all laws derive from the will of the head of state, currently Queen Elizabeth II). In practice that is not so, as Her Majesty does not personally deliberate on legislative matters. However, as a journalistic device, describing the decision as "Royal" conveys the journalists…
wreegab was not objecting to the "royal", but to it being a pardon instead of an apology.
The British government has already issued an apology.
Re: Royal pardon for codebreaker Alan Turing
#64It seems to me that the fitting thing to be issued here is an apology, not a pardon.
Re: Royal pardon for codebreaker Alan Turing
#65Re: Royal pardon for codebreaker Alan Turing
#6675,000 men were convicted under the same law, of whom 26,000 are still alive. [1] Only Turing has been "pardoned". My understanding [2] is that the "pardon" implies there was nothing wrong with the law as such, just that Turing is forgiven for having broken it. So while I guess this is better than nothing, I don't know if it's really the way to go about it. [1] http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201314/ldhans…
> My understanding is that the "pardon" implies there was nothing wrong with the law as such, just that Turing is forgiven for having broken it.
The fact of a pardon neither implies that the law was wrong nor that it was correct.
A posthumous pardon is naturally of largely symbolic import, in this particular case, the Royal Pardon is a kind of symbolic capstone to the earlier apology by the previous government in which -- while it was directed to Turing -- condemned the execution of the law more generally (the Prime Minister, when issuing the apology, stated "Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly."
Re: Royal pardon for codebreaker Alan Turing
#6775,000 men were convicted under the same law, of whom 26,000 are still alive. [1] Only Turing has been "pardoned". My understanding [2] is that the "pardon" implies there was nothing wrong with the law as such, just that Turing is forgiven for having broken it. So while I guess this is better than nothing, I don't know if it's really the way to go about it. [1] http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201314/ldhans…
So much this. It drives me nuts that the narrative on this issue always seems to boil down to the idea that Turing somehow earned not being persecuted for being gay through his efforts in the war and the injustice was that the government didn't live up to its end of the bargain, not the fact that he and many others were driven to suicide or horrible lives by this terrible law.
It's symbolic. The pardon does absolutely zero for Turing himself - he's long gone. It's symbolic that society is progressing and saying "we don't agree with this thing we used to do".
Re: Royal pardon for codebreaker Alan Turing
#68The British state already formally apologized five years ago, under Gordon Brown, for Alan Turing's barbaric treatment. I can't see how a pardon adds anything to that. The best response is just to treat people humanely in the present.
The apology was "We're sorry. The conviction still stands, however". The pardon takes care of the latter.
Re: Royal pardon for codebreaker Alan Turing
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sexual intercourse of any kind spreads disease. AIDS didn't become an epidemic because of anal intercourse. It's pretty clear that AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases spread just as well from almost any kind sexual activity, and many of them -- including AIDS -- spread from any transfer of bodily fluids at all. Going further, I'd wager that any form of interpersonal contact, even non-sexual, is as likely to…
It's pretty clear that AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases spread just as well from almost any kind sexual activity, and many of them -- including AIDS -- spread from any transfer of bodily fluids at all. It's clear that HIV can spread via a wide range of sexual activities, but some are much higher risk than others. At the extremes, receptive anal intercourse has a transmission risk roughly 50 times higher t…
Wikipedia gives estimates on differences between anal and vaginal transmission are about 8-1 but also admits the numbers could be off by a factor of 10.
What we know is that the AIDS epidemic was at it's worst in Africa where it was largely spread through heterosexual transmission.
Re: Royal pardon for codebreaker Alan Turing
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's pretty clear that AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases spread just as well from almost any kind sexual activity, and many of them -- including AIDS -- spread from any transfer of bodily fluids at all. It's clear that HIV can spread via a wide range of sexual activities, but some are much higher risk than others. At the extremes, receptive anal intercourse has a transmission risk roughly 50 times higher t…
Wikipedia gives estimates on differences between anal and vaginal transmission are about 8-1 but also admits the numbers could be off by a factor of 10. What we know is that the AIDS epidemic was at it's worst in Africa where it was largely spread through heterosexual transmission.
I was going by Health Canada numbers -- either way, there's a difference.
What we know is that the AIDS epidemic was at it's worst in Africa where it was largely spread through heterosexual transmission.
Agreed.