My husband and I bought a new couch. To celebrate our new bright red leather couch, we rented a movie. I, for once, got up from my office chair and unplugged myself from Facebook, Liberal America, and the digital world. We rented?The Imitation Game – a movie about the father of modern computer science and artificial intelligence, Alan Turing.
To give you a little brief background, Turing’s contributions?during World War II led to the eventual breaking of Enigma – the machine Germany used to encrypt their correspondence.?He’s the guy who designed the machine that helped?do this. It gets fairly technical, but let’s just say this. It is widely agreed that because of Turing’s role in WWII the war in Europe was shortened by two to four years.?Though?some say the Soviet Union would have crushed Germany eventually and Germany never had a chance, I want to think without Turing’s contributions, we might would be speaking German with portraits of Hitler on our walls or some of us wouldn’t exist as our grandparents would be dead.
“It is always difficult to say that anyone is absolutely indispensable but if anyone was indispensable to Hut 8 it was Turing.”
My half-baked history lesson is almost over. Bear with me. Turing made many more contributions. One last fact, however.
He was gay.
In 1952, he was?charged with “gross indecency” after a burglary in his home led to the discovery of his sexual relationship with a young man named Arnold Murray. He eventually pleaded guilty and was given the option of either prison or chemical castration. He chose chemical castration.
He was rendered impotent by stilboestrol for a period of one year. He was not allowed to work for the government anymore. He was prohibited from visiting the United States. Two years later? He committed suicide although?others believe he accidentally ingested the cyanide that killed him.
A homosexual man helped turn a war?that killed about 450,900 British individuals and 420,000 US individuals (that includes civilians and soldiers). Altogether, over 60 million people were killed.
So, tell me why?gay men and women are bad again? Oh, because the Bible told you so? Let’s use some logic here. Why would a Christian God as defined by fundamentalists and hateful bigots give a homosexual man the intelligence to save our unappreciative asses but then condemn him to the bowels of Hell because he can’t fall in love with a woman? Tell me what about any of that makes any sense at all. Ancient Alien theories make more sense than that.
The fact remains?we?completely screwed that one up, and many of?us have recognized that. Below a statue honoring Turing, it reads:
“Father of computer science, mathematician, logician, wartime codebreaker, victim of prejudice.”
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown did issue an apology too many years too late.
“Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him?… So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better”
Queen Elizabeth II granted him a pardon in 2014.
And states like Indiana, pizza restaurant owners, mechanics, congressmen and women, senators, and so many more all fight tooth and nail to take away and treat those of the LGBTQ community as a lesser – to not allow them equal protection under the law or the right to pledge their love?to the person they want to spend their life with.
Yet, one gay?man saved all their asses and honestly had a major hand in saving what we call the “free world” and a major hand in developing the digital age we live in now.
The most appropriate thing to do to honor Turing’s memory and as a big “Oops, sorry, we screwed up,” would be to stop the bigotry and prejudice and allow gay men and women the right to marry nationwide. This will fall on deaf ears and someone will find fault with my information (I’m no history buff), however.
But I’m saying it anyways. We?would not be here if it were not for the LGBTQ men and women in history and their accomplishments. We owe the community recognition and equal treatment for this.
