The Castration of Alan Turing, Britain’s Code-Breaking WWII Hero

I continue to be pissed off that the movie "The imitation Game" about gay WWII Hero Alan Turning still is not playing anywhere in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia.  Virginia truly needs a law like that just enacted in California that mandates the teaching of gay history in public schools.  Of course, enacting such a law in Virginia will remain impossible as long as the Republican Party of Virginia remains a bunch of sniveling whores who willingly prostitute themselves to The Family Foundation and its allied hate groups which seek to turn back the clock to the 1950's both in terms of gay rights and civil rights for minorities.   Two pieces underscore why this movie needs to be shown nationwide in all communities.  The first comes from Queerty and reveals the thoughts of Benedict Cumberbatch who plays Turning in the movie.  Here are excerpts:

The feeling you have for the man after getting to know him through the duration of the film is really exacerbated by the frustration and anger, not just at the injustice served him, but also at the fact that, why don’t I know this story? It seems unbelievable that someone who is a war hero, someone who is the father of the modern computer age — and a gay icon — could remain in such relative obscurity to the scale of his achievements in his brief time on this planet. 

One of the main reasons I was really attracted to playing him was to try and bring his story to as wide an audience as possible. It still seems unfathomable to me that Turing is not on bank notes; that he’s not on the front cover of a textbook. I’m serious. I mean, Newton and Darwin are on bank notes for Christ’s sake. 

This man, as acknowledged by Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and other titans of the digital age… was the forefather of modern computing. He was an extraordinarily important man. I just think he should be celebrated as a social-cultural hero as well as someone of extraordinary importance in the scientific and modern worlds.”

Pretty strong words, but 100% on point.  The reason for Turning's obsurity can be spelled out in one word: religion.  The Christofascist and their willing prostitutes censor anything and everything that might expose the lies of their anti-gay propaganda and sick religious beliefs.  A second piece in The Daily Beast follows up on earlier post on the injustice done to Turning.  Here are highlights:

The Imitation Game, the new movie in which Benedict Cumberbatch plays the prodigal computer pioneer Alan Turing, opens an uncomfortable window on the still-festering swamp of British sexual behavior. When I saw the movie in London there was a palpable frisson of disgust from the audience on learning how Turing had been treated by the country he had served with enormous distinction in World War II.

In 1952, Turing was found guilty on three counts of “gross indecency contrary to Section II of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885”—a law that had its first sensational effect in the trial of Oscar Wilde.  Turing had not contested the charges—he gave an explicitly detailed admission of them. He had invited a 19-year-old drifter named Arnold Murray to his house and they had had consensual sex.

Murray had not made a complaint—Turing had triggered a police investigation himself by reporting a petty burglary at his house that, it transpired, had been carried out by an acquaintance of Murray’s.

Turing was given the choice of either prison or submitting himself to the officially mandated nostrum of the day: “cure” by what Turing himself described as “organo-therapy,” chemicals believed to turn homosexuals into heterosexuals. He was prescribed a course of hormone pills that caused him to grow breasts and rendered him impotent.

I realized that the effect of this barbarity on the movie audience around me was a measure of how distant the world of such a moral regime now seems.

Turing’s term of probation ended in April 1953. In the final months of his treatment, the doctors ended the course of pills and inserted an implant of hormones into one of his thighs. Correctly suspecting the effects would be lasting, Turing removed it, although by then the fundamental physical effects were irreversible.  Despite the publicity the case brought to them, Turing’s employers at the University of Manchester appointed Turing a Readership in the theory of computing that guaranteed him work for at least ten years.

Nonetheless, Turing killed himself on June 7, 1954, in a deliberately prepared way, by eating a cyanide-laced apple.

What happened to Turning was horrible - I would dare say criminal and monstrous - but what is disturbing is the realization that Turning was but one of countless hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of gays tortured and/or killed over the centuries thanks to the poisonous beliefs disseminated by Christian missionaries around the globe.  As noted in prior posts, the book "The Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relations in Human Societies," demonstrates that acceptance of homosexuality and bisexuality on the part of much of society historically have been the norm - just as it is in many other parts of the animal kingdom - and that it was the rise of the Roman Catholic Church that lead to homophobia as we know it today.  The beliefs of the Christofascists and the Vatican need to be shown for the lies that they are and defeated and thrown on the trash heap of history where they belong.

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.”