Gay WWII Code Breaker to Be Face of £50 Note

While the Trump/Pence regime and its Christofascist supporters wage war against LGBT Americans, the United Kingdom plans to honor WWII code breaker Alan Turing - the subject of the movie The Imitation Game - by placing his image on the new £50 Note.  Sadly, Turning was not well treated while he was living and posthumous pardons and honors will never make up for the mistreatment he suffered and which drove him to poison himself after he was criminally convicted for being gay.  That said, at least in the UK the government seems to be trying to be learning from past wrongs.  Meanwhile, on this side of the Atlantic, Trump and today's GOP are striving to bring back the worse elements of the past, including overt racism and government approved homophobia.  The Advocate looks at the belated honor being bestowed n Turning.  Here are excerpts:

The monumental achievements of British computer mastermind Alan Turing continue to be recognized by his nation, with officials announcing today he will be the face of the £50 banknote.

The Bank of England-backed bill will enter circulation by the end of 2021, reports the BBC. The currency is red and features Turing's face on the right, with his calculations to the left.

Turing helped decode the Germans' Enigma communication device and helped turn the tide of World War II against the Nazis. Turing was also instrumental in the early days of computing and he's often referred to as not only the father of computer science, but artificial intelligence; his "Turing Test" helped determine the intelligence of machines.

Turing's achievements during the war were mostly dismissed when officials discovered he was gay and had an affair with a young man. He was convicted of gross indecency in 1952 and subjected to chemical castration. Two years later, Turing was dead at 41 after poisoning himself.

In recent years, there has been an explosion of interest and appreciation in his work. In 2013, the Queen of England posthumously pardoned Turing for his "crime." A year later, the critically-acclaimed film The Imitation Game chronicled the codebreaker's memorable life.

Far too Americans sadly never learn from the past or the actions of other nations.

The Imitation Game - Review and Reflections

The movie, The Imitation Game, is finally showing in Hampton Roads - albeit at a small number of theaters - and the husband and I along with a number of friends saw it at the Naro Theater in Norfolk (It is also playing at the AMC theater in Hampton).  The movie is a must see and I hope that some of the praise the movie is receiving will prompt those who might not otherwise go to a movie involving anything gay to nevertheless see the movie.  Benedict Cumberbatch is amazing as Alan Turing - indeed, the entire cast does a stellar job. I won't go into movie details here - readers need to go and see the movie for themselves and encourage others to do so as well.

Turing, and his team at Bletchley Park for that matter, remains perhaps the most unsung heroes of World War II.   As the movie ends, the fact that their work is estimated to have shortened the war by two years and saved 14 million lives is noted.   Also noted is Turing's possible suicide - there remain questions about the circumstances - after his conviction for "gross indecency" following an encounter with another man. The end notes also make note that the machines that Turing pioneered are what we now know as computers. That's right, the British basically killed the father of computers.

I sincerely hope that people will see this movie.  To me, what was done to Turing after the War - and which the movie sensitively portrays - underscores the evils of ignorance embracing religious belief which seeks to punish those who don't subscribe to the cult's mythology. A mythology not supported by historic fact or objective reality.  Queen Elizabeth II recently pardoned Turing.  While that gesture rehabilitates his image, it doesn't make up for the horror done to him and so many others. Some 49,000 individuals were prosecuted under Britain's anti-gay "indecency" laws. When one multiplies that number worldwide and includes all those killed, all those whose lives were ruined (and continue to be ruined) by "godly Christians" and their opportunist political prostitutes, the toll is horrifying. 

California Governor Signs Bill Requiring Schools to Teach Gay History

"History should be honest," Democratic California Gov. Jerry Brown said about the gay history legislation.

One of the reasons I believe that gays are so easily maligned by the "godly folk" is that so few Americans know about our contributions to society.  And too often the local media and even entertainment outlets censor news and movies that have positive gay themes.  A case in point?  The Imitation Game which looks at the role of Alan Turning in breaking the German enigma code in WWI has hit the theaters.  Is it playing anywhere in Hampton Roads, Virginia, an area with 1.7 million people? Nope, not at a single theater.  In fact there is an online effort to demand that the movie be shown in the region.  California Gov. Jerry Brown seeks to change this problem in his state and has signed a bill that will require public schools in the state to teach students about the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.  One can already hear the spittle flecked rants of the Christofascists over having accurate history of gays portrayed.  A leading mouth piece is the hate group, Traditional Values Coalition ("TVC") which regularly disseminates baldfaced lies about LGBT individuals..   Here are highlights from CNN (which true to form fails to note that TVC is a hate group):

Democratic California Gov. Jerry Brown said Thursday he had signed a bill that will require public schools in the state to teach students about the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.

The bill, believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, will also require teachers to provide instruction on the role of people with disabilities.

"History should be honest," Brown said in a statement.

"This bill revises existing laws that prohibit discrimination in education and ensures that the important contributions of Americans from all backgrounds and walks of life are included in our history books. It represents an important step forward for our state, and I thank Senator Leno for his hard work on this historic legislation."

"Today we are making history in California by ensuring that our textbooks and instructional materials no longer exclude the contributions of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) Americans," Sen. Leno said in a statement.

The bill, which passed the state legislature this month and the senate in April, according to the senator's office, is not without controversy.

It has drawn criticism from some religious and conservative groups, like the Traditional Values Coalition, a lobby organization that says it speaks on behalf of more than 43,000 churches.

"It is an outrage that Governor Jerry Brown has opened the classroom door for homosexual activists to indoctrinate the minds of California's youth, since no factual materials would be allowed to be presented," Rev. Louis Sheldon, chairman and founder of the Traditional Values Coalition, said in a statement.  "If parents don't already have their children out of public schools, this should cause them to remove them," he said.

The true outrage is that hate merchants like Sheldon - who makes a nice living fanning hatred - are afforded any respect or deference whatsoever.   As for honesty, no one lies more than the "godly Christian" crowd.

Homophobia is Still with Us 60 Years After the Death of Alan Turing

British gay rights advocate has a moving piece in The Telegraph that looks at the sad reality that homophobia is alive and well even 60 years after perhaps one of the greatest minds of the 20th century was driven to suicide (some question whether it was really a suicide) under the UK's heinous anti-gay laws of the time.  What keeps such hate and bigotry.  One word sums up the cause: religion.  Religion, one of the most evil influences in the world today as demonstrated by ISIS' claimed beheading of another American.  Of course, the poison of religion is amplified by politicians like Nikki Haley (see the previous post) and other political prostitutes only too happy to pander to those who embrace hate and ignorance.  Here are some column highlights that focus on the ongoing harm:

Movies rarely make me cry, but I cried when I watched The Imitation Game. Released today, it stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightly, telling the heroic and tragic story of the British wartime code breaker, mathematical genius and computer pioneer, Alan Turing.

As well as decrypting Nazi military codes, shortening the war by two years and saving millions of lives, the entire modern digital age of computers, mobile phones, email, internet and space exploration is based on the principles he elaborated. Although Turing arguably possessed one of the greatest minds in history – on a par with Newton and Einstein – he was nevertheless prosecuted and hounded to his death in 1954 for being gay. 

Upon conviction, Turing was given a stark choice: two years' jail, or chemical castration via a hormone therapy that was uncannily similar to the Nazi "cures" for homosexuality that were used on gay men in Buchenwald concentration camp. 

Unable to cope with the ghastly side effects of castration treatment, he committed suicide at the age of 41 – depriving humanity of future knowledge and inventions he might have pioneered had he lived.

I wept not only for Turing’s terrible personal suffering, but also for the estimated 50,000-100,000 other gay and bisexual men who were convicted in Britain under the same or similar anti-gay laws. Unlike Turing, most of them were given no choice. They were jailed and often brutally abused on the inside. 

Turing received a posthumous royal pardon in 2013. Unfairly, no such pardon has been extended to the tens of thousands of other gay victims – not even to other high-profile ones such as Lord Montague and Sir John Gielgud.  Shockingly, the persecution of men for same-sex love continued for nearly half a century after Turing’s suicide.

The "gross indecency" law of 1885 – prohibiting any sexual contact between men – was used against Turing and before him against Oscar Wilde in 1895. It was repealed only in 2003. . . . . Since the Sexual Offences Act 2003, for the first time in over 500 years we have a criminal code that does not discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation.

Progress at last! But homophobia isn’t over yet. Only last year to create a data base of "serious sex offenders", the police turned up unannounced on people’s doorsteps to demand DNA samples from men who, like Turing, were convicted of consenting adult same-sex relationships decades ago. They were lumped together with rapists and paedophiles. 

Some parents still kick their children out of home and onto the streets after discovering that they are gay or lesbian. It is one of the biggest causes of youth homelessness. 

All Britain’s equality laws have exemptions for religious organisations, which permits faith-run service providers, such schools and hospitals, to discriminate in certain circumstances on the grounds of sexual orientation.

To combat anti-gay bullying and hate crimes, education against all prejudice – including racism and sexism, as well as homophobia and transphobia – should be a mandatory subject in every school. It ought to start from primary level onwards and continue throughout a pupil’s secondary years. The aim should be to encourage the understanding and acceptance of difference, which is vital for a happy, harmonious society. Is the Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, listening? 

The Alan Turning Tragedy

I've mentioned Alan Turning before - the breaker of the Nazi enigma code in World War II - and his horrific treatment by the British government and his suspicious death.  Now, in “The Imitation Game,” set to hit theaters later this month, Benedict Cumberbatch plays Turning and the movie will hopefully highlight the evils of homophobia.  No doubt the likes of One Million Bitches Moms, Tony Perkins and Bryan Fischer will condemn the movie because it shows the evil of the poison they peddle.  I cannot help but wonder how many amazingly talented individuals have been lost to society since neurotic - and I would argue mentally ill - Church fathers turned homophobia into a leading cause of the Church which was then exported worldwide. The Washington Blade looks at the movie which I am looking forward to seeing.  Here are highlights:

“The Imitation Game,” which had its area premiere at the Middleburg (Virginia) Film Festival last weekend and opens in Washington on Dec. 12, is about one of the most fascinating figures in 20th century history: Alan Turing, the gay cryptologist who broke the Nazi Enigma Code. Turing was an unsung hero of World War II and a victim of the legal and social turmoil that followed in its wake.

The movie’s director, Morten Tyldum, is fascinated by the man and his story.  “His achievements are so staggering,” Tyldum says. “Alan Turing theorized the computer in 1935 when he was 23 years old. He broke the Nazi Enigma machine which shortened the war by years and saved millions of lives. This man should have been on the front page of my history book when I was in school.”

Instead, Turing’s story was kept hidden for years. After the war, Tyldum explains, the newly formed British intelligence service MI6 hid Turing’s exploits from public view.

“They put the lid on it. Everything was kept secret. All the papers were burned and they threatened everyone to keep quiet about it. And then after the war he was persecuted for being a gay man.”

In 1952, Turing was arrested for acts of “gross indecency” and forced to undergo chemical castration.

[Screenwriter Graham] Moore reveals that “among awkward nerdy teenage computer science dorks, Alan Turing is an object of intense fascination and cult-like devotion. He’s the patron saint of folks like me, the consummate outsider. And because he was an outsider in so many ways to his own society and to his own times, he was able to see the world in a way no one else did, and he was able to accomplish wonders that no one else thought were possible.”

Moore wanted to tell Turing’s story, but he thought the odds were against him.  Luckily, Moore met producers Nora Grossman and Ido Ostrowsky at a Hollywood party and the trio decided to make the movie.

They brought Norwegian director Morten Tyldum on board, and the pair had a period of six months to refine the script. They left Moore’s fascinating overall structure in place. He tells the story from three different vantage points: Turing’s experiences at boarding school where he falls in love with both his friend Christopher and the science of cryptography (the socially awkward Turing discovers he is better at deciphering codes than reading human emotions); Turing and his colleagues working at the top-secret Bletchley Park facility to break the unbreakable code; and, the aftermath of Turing’s arrest for homosexual acts.

According to Tyldum, this elegant structure turns the movie into an investigation.  Many of the scenes were shot on the sites where they really occurred, including the interior scenes at Bletchley Park (which is now a museum). Leech says that was an incredible experience.

“We used the real Enigma machines,” Tyldum says. “There is something about touching those buttons. It’s a reminder that this really happened. It does something for the performers. It’s about the responsibility we have to do justice to the legacy of these people.”

British War Hero Alan Turing Belated Pardoned for Being Gay

I guess it is better late than never, but the fact that Alan Turing, the inventor of the computer and breaker of the Nazi enigma code, was driven to suicide (or murdered as some have speculated)  in 1954 and has only now been pardoned for his criminal conviction for being gay, speaks to the sad status many gays wrongly prosecuted suffered.  Turing's life was but one of many ruined and destroyed by the improper privilege given to hate and fear based forms of Christianity.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Turing's brilliance as well as his far too late posthumous pardon.  Here are story excerpts:

Alan Turing was one of the greatest minds of the 20th century. He laid the theoretical foundations for computer science, and his code-breaking efforts during World War II greatly aided the Allies's effort to defeat Adolf Hitler.

But Turing, a gay man, had the misfortune to live in an intolerant era. In 1952, he was prosecuted for "gross indecency" for having a sexual relationship with another man. He lost his security clearance and was forced to take hormone treatments. Two years later, he was found dead of cyanide poisoning. His death was ruled a suicide.

Now, the BBC reports, the computing pioneer has finally received a pardon from Queen Elizabeth. It only took the British government 61 years to recognize its mistake. Hopefully, it won't take the British government long to acknowledge that other gay men prosecuted under the same law also suffered an injustice.

There was no subject called computer science when Turing began his work in the 1930s, so he set to work laying its foundations. He first described what came to be called the Turing Machine in a famous 1936 paper. The Turing Machine consisted of a paper tape with characters written on it and a "head" that could read and alter the tape, one character at a time.

The Turing Machine was a thought experiment, not a practical computing device. But Turing used it to prove some of the fundamental theorems of computer science. He showed that given enough time and paper tape, the Turing Machine could perform every calculation that can be performed by any other sequential computing device, including those that would be invented far in the future.

Today these fundamental insights about the nature of computation are taught in computer science departments around the world.

When the war came, Turing threw his considerable genius into defeating the Nazis. Turing was a key figure at Bletchley Park, Britain's wartime code-breaking lab. The Nazis used a sophisticated mechanical cipher machine called the Enigma to send coded messages. Turing and his colleagues at Bletchley Park built some of the most sophisticated mechanical computing devices yet seen to help break the Enigma code. And they succeeded, giving the Allies priceless intelligence about Germany's war plans.

Some gay-rights advocates fault the British government for waiting so long to acknowledge the injustice it perpetrated against Turing 61 years ago. More importantly, they say, thousands of other British men were also prosecuted under the "gross indecency" statute, and some are still alive today. They hope that Turing's pardon will be the first step toward a pardon for all gay men who were prosecuted under Britain's homophobic laws.

Hate, bigotry, the rejection of science and knowledge and a trail of ruined lives - these are the main fruits of conservative Christianity.

British Parliament Moving Toward Posthumous Pardon of Alan Turing

Homophobia and religious based anti-gay laws continue to cause untold tragedies for LGBT individuals.  The godly folk continue to leave in their wake a trail of damaged and/or ruined lives.  And because of religious based ignorance hate and bigotry, gays continue to lose their lives around the world.  And for what?  So that the falsely pious and those suffering from forms of psychosis can feel better about themselves or avoid facing the reality that their faith system is a false house of cards.  Among the lives destroyed by the pious and their political hacks is that of Alan Turing, the father of modern computer science and breaker of the Nazi enigma code.  Now, many years after Turing's prosecution for being gay and after his resulting suicide, the British government is considering a pardon for Turing.  Obviously, it's too little too late, but it is at least a recognition of past error.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post:

BLETCHLEY, England — A founding father of the modern computer, Alan Turing devised a machine that unraveled the enigma of Nazi codes and aided the defeat of Adolf Hitler. Convicted of homosexuality after World War II and sentenced to chemical castration, Turing — an avid fan of the film “Snow White” — was found dead in 1954 from cyanide poisoning, a bitten apple by his bedside.

More than half a century after his apparent suicide and following global strides in gay rights, a movement is cresting to reboot the record of the British mathematician’s short but luminous life.

Responding to a campaign by laureates such as Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking, the British Parliament is moving toward granting Turing a posthumous pardon. The act would recognize the humiliation of one of computer science’s leading intellects who, after being sentenced by a British court to forced treatment with female hormones, became impotent and budded breasts before being found dead by his housekeeper in a lonely room near Manchester. Some academics are even calling for a reopening of the inquest that quickly declared his death self-inflicted, despite the lack of a suicide note.

The push comes amid a new swell of international attention for a man who scholars say made conceptual breakthroughs that laid the groundwork for everything from mainframes to ­iPhones.

“Every time you turn on your computer, every time you check your e-mail, every time you share a photo,” it is because of Turing’s concepts, said Teddy Schwarzman, producer of the “Imitation Game,” a multimillion-dollar biopic on Turing due out next year starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley.

Yet the campaign to pardon Turing’s 1952 conviction — which came after he acknowledged having a same-sex relationship and declared he saw nothing wrong with it — is also igniting a debate over the tricky business of rewriting history.

Opponents argue that what’s done is done and that a pardon could spark an avalanche of petitions from families of other deceased convicts whose punishments in their day now seem barbaric. Still others say the parliamentary proposal does not go far enough. If Turing is pardoned, why not the writer Oscar Wilde, the actor John Gielgud and the thousands of other less-notable Britons once punished for the love that dare not speak its name?

Since last year, living Britons convicted under the 1885 law that largely targeted gay men — popular myth says Queen Victoria did not believe lesbians existed — can apply for pardons. But Parliament has yet to extend the same right to families wishing to clear the names of dead relatives who were sentenced under the law — which was overturned in 1967 in England and Wales and 1980 in Scotland.

As Hitler’s blitz began raining fire on British cities a year later, Turing and others worked round the clock to turn the tide of the war by cracking Nazi messages encoded by the infamous Enigma machines. Even among the great minds gathered at Bletchley Park for the war effort, scholars say, Turing stood out.

“As one of his colleagues once said, it was a very good thing that the government didn’t know that Turing was a homosexual during the war, because if they found out, they would have sacked him and we would have lost,” said Lord John Sharkey, sponsor of the Turing pardon in Britain’s upper house.

It was not Turing - or others convicted under anti-gay laws - who committed a crime.  Rather it is the godly churchmen and political prostitutes in Parliament and other legislative bodies who committed crimes by falsely criminalizing others to protect their misplaced belief in myths written by ignorant herders over 2,500 years ago.  That so many suffered for ultimately no reason is a huge, huge crime.

Christianity: An Enemy to Moral Progress

Yesterday was the anniversary of the birth of Bertrand Russell in 1872.   Russell was a great thinker and a champion of logic and reason.  Bob Felton at Civil Commotion has a lengthy piece on Russell and here are a few brief highlights:

[F]ew men did so much as Bertrand Russell to shape the modern world. As a philosopher, his Principia Mathematica re-ordered mathematics as a branch of logic; every math teacher you ever had who said “It’s just logic” is quoting Russell.

It was Russell’s student, Alan Turing, who used Russell’s insights to invent the first modern computer, the one built at Bletchley Park and used to defeat Germany’s Enigma code during the second World War. It was Russell’s student, Ludwig Wittgenstein, who laid the groundwork for Google’s search engine.

His interests eventually turned toward public policy matters, and in his middle and latter years he wrote a steady stream of books, articles, and lectures across a broad range of topics. Most of them remain in print, and his A History of Western Philosophy remains a widely used textbook today, more than 60-years after its initial publication. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1950, and deserved it; he is among the most graceful essayists that ever lived.

Whether his fortunes waxed or waned, Russell never budged from his uncompromising opposition to unreasoning belief. One of his most famous lectures, Why I Am Not A Christian, was delivered in 1927 and has been in print ever since.

Eighty-six years later, Russell's views on Christianity are more pertinent than ever and my own views grow closer and closer to his all the time, especially as scientific knowledge continues to undercut the Christian mythology and when one witnesses the evil done in the name of religion and Christianity in particular.  A few excerpts from Why I Am Not A Christian follow that are apropos given the Virginia GOP's nomination yesterday of avowed Christofascist to head up the party's 2013 ticket:

You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

There are a great many ways in which, at the present moment, the church, by its insistence upon what it chooses to call morality, inflicts upon all sorts of people undeserved and unnecessary suffering. And of course, as we know, it is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. “What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy.”

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing — fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a better place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.

A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.  

Do I still see myself as a Christian?  Perhaps not and the main thing that has driven me away - as it is doing with the under 30 generations - is the "godly Christians" who are best known for their hatred of others, embrace of ignorance and rejection of knowledge, and unlimited hypocrisy.  Why would one want to be a part of such foulness.

British Government Apologizes to and Exonerates Breaker of German Enigma Code

The horrible things done to gays over the years and centuries are beyond numeration, but once in a while an apology occurs, although in this case it comes decades too late for Alan Turing who was chemically castrated for being gay and driven to suicide 55 years ago. The crimes committed in the name of religion and ignorant religious belief are disgusting and what was done to Turing is a case in point. The Guardian has a story that recognizes Turing's genius and Prime Minister Gordon Brown's unequivocal apology for the government's misdeeds. Meanwhile, the religious based hate and discrimination that motivated those responsible for what was done to Turing is still alive and well in many countries, particularly among the "godly Christian" set in America who seem to practice more hatred and intolerance than Christian love. Here are some story highlights:
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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.

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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 deserved so much better," Brown writes in a statement posted on the No 10 website.
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Turing is most famous for his work in helping create the "bombe" that cracked messages enciphered with the German Enigma machines. He was convicted of gross indecency in 1952 after admitting a sexual relationship with a man. He was given experimental chemical castration as a "treatment". His criminal record meant he was unable to continue his work for the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) because his security privileges were withdrawn. Two years later he killed himself, aged 41.
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Paying tribute to Turing's contribution to "Britain's fight against the darkness of dictatorship", Brown described him as "a quite brilliant mathematician". "Without his outstanding contribution, the history of world war two could well have been very different," he writes. "The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of gross indecency – in effect, tried for being gay.

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Brown wrote: "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. "Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction. "This recognition of Alan's status as one of Britain's most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue." "But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind

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Turing also made significant contributions to the emerging field of artificial intelligence and computing, and is often considered to be the father of modern computer science. In 1999 Time Magazine named him as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century.

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The amount of blood on the hands of self-anointed men of God is immense. Yet today people like Pat Robertson, Bob McDonnell, GOP candidate for Virginia governor, James Dobson , and other professional Christians, and Pope Benedict XVI, LGBT individuals are still viewed as less than human and worthy of hate and mistreatment no matter their accomplishments and good deeds. Again, it makes me wonder if the world might not be a better place without religion - or at least the perverted forms that emanate from Christianity, Judaism and Islam.