THE TOO-LITTLE-TOO-LATE AWARD of the CENTURY
Alan Turing, Code-Breaker Castrated for Homosexuality, Receives Royal Pardon
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| Alan Turing, instrumental in breaking Germany's Enigma Code |
By Jethro Mullen, CNN
December 24, 2013
Source: ITN
STORY HIGHLIGHTS:
Alan Turing's code-breaking is credited
with helping to end World War II.
He killed himself in 1954 after being
chemically castrated for homosexual activity.
Nearly 60 years later, he receives
a posthumous royal pardon.
Britain says the pardon is
"a fitting tribute to an exceptional man."
(CNN) –– Alan Turing, a British code-breaker during World War II who was later subjected to chemical castration for homosexual activity, has received a royal pardon nearly 60 years after he committed suicide.
Turing was best known for developing the Bombe, a code-breaking machine that deciphered messages encoded by German machines. His work is considered by many to have saved thousands of lives and helped change the course of the war.
"Dr. Turing deserves to be remembered and recognized for his fantastic contribution to the war effort and his legacy to science," British Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said in a statement Tuesday. "A pardon from the Queen is a fitting tribute to an exceptional man."
Turing's castration in 1952 -- after he was convicted of homosexual activity, which was illegal at the time -- is "a sentence we would now consider unjust and discriminatory and which has now been repealed,"
Grayling said.
Two years after the castration, which Turing chose to avoid a custodial sentence, he ended his life at the age of 41 by eating an apple laced with cyanide.
Supporters have long campaigned for Turing to receive greater recognition for his work and official acknowledgment that his punishment was wrong.
An online petition in 2009 that drew tens of thousands of signatures succeeded in getting an apology from then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown for Turing's treatment by the justice system in the 1950s. Brown described the Turing sentence as "appalling."
The German messages that Turing cracked at the British government's code-breaking headquarters in Bletchley Park provided the Allies with crucial information. The German messages were encoded by Enigma machines, which Adolf Hitler's military believed made its communications impenetrable.
Turing was considered a mathematical genius.
In 1937 he published a paper introducing an idea that came to be known as the Turing machine, which is considered to have formed the basis of modern computing. This was a hypothetical device that could come up with a solution to any problem that is computable.
"Alan Turing was a remarkable man who played a key role in saving this country in World War II by cracking the German enigma code," British Prime Minister David Cameron said. "His action saved countless lives. He also left a remarkable national legacy through his substantial scientific achievements, often being referred to as the 'father of modern computing.'"
The prestigious A.M. Turing Award –– sometimes called the "Nobel Prize" of Computing ––- was named after Turing.
The pardon, under the Royal Prerogative of Mercy, comes into effect Tuesday, the British Ministry of Justice said.
Just to clarify the record...
ReplyDeletefrom Wikipedia: Turing entered a plea of "guilty", in spite of the fact that he felt no remorse or guilt for having committed acts of homosexuality. The case, Regina v. Turing and Murray, was brought to trial on 31 March 1952, when Turing was convicted and given a choice between imprisonment and probation, which would be conditional on his agreement to undergo hormonal treatment designed to reduce libido. He accepted the option of treatment via injections of stilboestrol, a synthetic oestrogen; this treatment was continued for the course of one year. The treatment rendered Turing impotent and caused gynaecomastia, fulfilling in the literal sense, Turing's prediction that "no doubt I shall emerge from it all a different man, but quite who I've not found out". Murray was given a conditional discharge.
He was not "chemically castrated" for homosexual activity. He became what he always wanted to be... a "woman".
In other words, he was granted his quest for sex selection and became a transexual.
ReplyDeleteLOTS of transexuals commit suicide.
The wanting, is evidently more satisfying than the "getting" of what you think you want. ;)
Thersites, you and I are friends, and always will be as far as I'm cncerned, but your persistent inability to perceive the horrifying injustice in this particular case or, apparently, any others like it, and your misrepresentation of Turing's condition as one of "transexuality," when he was in fact plainly and simply a homosexual man -- a natural-if-sadly-inconvenient phenomenon -- troubles me.
ReplyDeleteHowever, please let us agree to disagree on this, and not let it come between us. We agree on most of the others issues we both consider important.
I did not want the focus here to be on the pros and cons of homosexuality -- a tedious topic, but rather about the nature of entrenched, institutionalized injustice, and the human tragedy it invariably fosters in the lives of its victims.
I shall always be troubled by injustice and the persecution of those society in general finds distasteful, even though I may not advocate or espouse whatever it is most don't like -- or have any desire to try to understand.
Tomorrow I've posted "BREAKING the CODE" -- Derek Jacobi's marvelous portrayal of Alan Turing in a compelling drama shown on PBS back in the late 1990's.
Please, FT, all I'm saying is that there is "another" narrative... and not one suited to the homosexual agenda.
ReplyDeleteThis one is... that man transexuals VOLUNTARILY take the Turing Cure... and end up killing themselves when they discover joining the "opposite sex" isn't "all that."
So don't encourage them.
PS: Pleading "guilty" when the act committed should never have been regarded as a crime in the first place does not constitute "guilt; " it is merely acquiescence to the inherently vicious dictates of an unenlightened society determined until recently to remain Mediaeval -- even primitive -- on this particular issues.
ReplyDeleteIn this regard Britain -- at that time -- closely resembled the Mohammedan societies we righty decry and deplore today.
I see it as the height of irony, however, that Britain in its recently discovered advocacy of the virtue of tolerance has gone so far in the opposite direction as to embrace, applaud and vigorously protect the innate VICIOUSNESS, CRUELTY and grotesque INTOLERANCE of the large, ever-expanding colony of Muslims now planted in Britain's midst.
I feel the same way about OUR inappropriate, self-injurious tolerance of the existence of COMMUNISM and MOHAMMEDANISM in our midst.
The threat those two unworthy factions represent is far greater than homosexual activity could ever be.
Apples and oranges, and all that.
So YES! In my view there MUST be a limit to what we will and will not tolerate.
At the same time I heartily object to laws against co-called HATE CRIMES, because those strictures are inherently political, and designed to enable certain elements to grab control of the levers of power in ways detrimental to society.
It should not be "illegal" to be Xenophobic, Racially Biased in Favor of Ones' Own Kind, or suspicious, distrustful and antipathetic to those whose overt characteristics irritate and disturb us. It's NATURAL to be that way. EVERYBODY is to one degree or another, and if they deny it, they are LYING.
What MUST be illegal -- and HAS been illegal for many many years -- is ACTING on those feelings of distrust and hostility to the point where we impair another person's right to Live, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness.
That's LIFE!
YUP! "Gray Areas" all around!
HATE CRIME laws are REDUNDANT. Totally UNNECESSARY.
ReplyDeleteThis regrettable phenomenon is just one baby step removed from the creation of THOUGHT CRIMES and Orwellian attempts at MIND CONTROL by the DICTATES of CENTRAL GOVERNMENT.
England's intention was NEVER to castrate Turing for homosexuality. THAT is pure homosexual propaganda.
ReplyDeleteNot every "tragedy" deserves a villain.
Organo-therapy was a condition of his probation; what was the purpose of such a condition?
ReplyDeleteRead the link above. It was thought at the time to be a humane, AND "temporary" treatment.
ReplyDeletefrom the link:
ReplyDelete"In a 1949 paper, F.L. Golla and his colleagues presented the results obtained from a sample of thirteen convicted homosexuals and concluded that “libido could be abolished within a month” with sufficiently high dosages of female sex hormones. The authors concluded that “in view of the non-mutilating nature of this treatment and the ease with which it can be administered to a consenting patient we believe that it should be adopted whenever possible in male cases of abnormal and uncontrollable sexual urge”. Politicians and newspaper editorials alike praised the potential value of hormonal therapy. While critics warned that there was still too many unknowns involving the treatment, the potential gain was felt to be worth the risks involved. Controlling “unnatural” sexual urges with hormone treatments fit in well with the radical advances being made in other areas of psychiatry. Considering other types of experimental treatment being tried (including aversive conditioning, lobotomies, and electroconvulsive therapy), such treatment seemed relatively benign."
Many transexuals today take female sex hormones.
ReplyDeleteAre they "castrating" themselves or are they "treating" themselves?
Place your own "emphasis" to suit your own agenda...
I share the emphasis you applied above with all-caps on "VOLUNTARILY." What agenda are we serving when we observe that Turing did not volunteer for this treatment?
ReplyDeleteQuite an intellectually stimulating debate.
ReplyDeleteI share Freethinke's disgust for a state that would criminalize someone's private life to this grotesque extent.
I also agree with Theresites that the word choice is important. As Orwell told us, whoever controls the language controls the debate, and ultimately our thinking, forming an insidious feedback loop that ends up snuffing freethinking and all unorthodox thought.
Today's 'progressives' and 'liberals' have become their enemy.
As for Merry Olde England, the Muzzies will have theme enjoying a new age of pre-sixties enforced-morality in another generation or so.
Olaned Haras said:
ReplyDelete"I see it as the height of irony, however, that Britain in its recently discovered advocacy of the virtue of tolerance has gone so far in the opposite direction as to embrace, applaud and vigorously protect the innate VICIOUSNESS, CRUELTY and grotesque INTOLERANCE of the large, ever-expanding colony of Muslims now planted in Britain's midst."
"I feel the same way about OUR inappropriate, self-injurious tolerance of the existence of COMMUNISM and MOHAMMEDANISM in our midst."
Excellent points. This issue involves a much broader spectrum of considerations besides society's attitudes towards homosexuality.
This to me seems like another media driven agenda to enshrine homosexuality while denigrating heterosexuality. Just tin the few comments here it's apparent there are just two sides to the issue, and everyone is expected to be like Pavlov's dog and respond in one predetermined way—for or against the progressiveness homo-eroticism versus the regressive thinking of the past.
ReplyDeleteThere's obviously more to the story than the superficial reactions that are the intent of this media campaign.
I checked out "organo-therapy" which was the "prescription for curing Alan Turing, a man of 40 some years at the time. Supposedly according to the theory of the day, Turing had excess testosterone running through his body. According to today's advanced medical thought, as men age their testosterone levels drop while estrogen levels rise. About the age of 40 this begins the onset of serious "man" problems in that the drop causes a phenomenon in men identified by Arnold Schwartzenegger:"girly men".
According to the story of Turing the prescribed therapy caused him to develop female breasts and other female traits. So chemically castrating Turing back in 1952 created something that then was unique in Turing. But today is a commonly recurring "male problem" specifically in the Prostate of males.
What about this theory: Turing served as a test case to inflict upon the male population a nefarious plague of testosterone deprived men and create a greater supply of panty-waist "girly men"?
I suggest taking the time to view "Breaking the Code" which I've posted in its entirety today.
ReplyDeleteThe "mechanics" of this story are insignificant compared to the moral outrage it represents.
I am totally unsympathetic to any rationale for, or sympathetic view of the way Alan Turing was treated. It was nothing less than an outrage.
It's beyond tragic that everything has become so hopelessly politicized we can't seem to think in any terms other than "This must be Agenda-driven propaganda."
This does not mean I take a favorable view of the highly-charged, often inflammatory language indulged in by news sources. The ENEMEDIA is a primary cause of the divisiveness and tragic polarization we suffer with today.
I don't agree that legitimizing homosexuality is a major issue of our age, especially in the context of the steady and creaking daily advancement of global state tyranny. That's why I say this topic is more a distracting tactic and that it's agenda driven through the media today.
ReplyDeleteLet's project this idea into the future when the day comes that permission for almost any act would require permission from an administrative bureaucracy—picture the complete ascendancy of the homosexual agenda and ultimately the marginalizing of heterosexuality and its criminalization. That's how this stuff works, as far as I can tell.
Paranoia. Heterosexuality will never be unfashionable.
ReplyDelete