Nuts among the raisinsAlan M. Turing has gotten a long overdue apology from the British government for the way they treated him—a genuine World War II hero—for the high crime of homosexuality. I commend Prime Minister Gordon Brown for taking this small step in the interest of simple justice.
Others, of course, are not so pleased.
This is particularly true on the noisome fringe of American right-wing extremism. (Is it exaggeration to refer to our nation's right-wing extremists as having a “fringe”? I'm afraid not.) Excellent examples of reactionary fulminations are routinely served up by the loons with room-temperature IQs at Free Republic, the Fresno-based website that serves as the sweaty lint in the belly button of Central California. These comments (characteristic misspellings and all) were posted by “Freepers” in outraged response to Britain's apology:
Can’t trust poofers. Good rule of thumb.
3 posted on Friday, September 11, 2009 4:05:51 PM by pissant (THE Conservative party: www.falconparty.com)
Turing supposedly told the cops he was a homosexual when they visited his home to investigate a robbery he had reported.
He suggested that his 19 year old male lover might have been among the young men who robbed him.
He was later convicted on 12 counts.
Just looking up the Age of Majority in UK at that time, and it was 21. So Alan, like many risky gay blades of his time, was messing with a minor.
Certainly a well-known homosexual like Turing would not want for ADULT lovers ~ so he was taking risks ~ kind of like the office thief at work who liked to steal small things from people ~ personal things, and then set them out on her desk like trophies.
He later on may have commited suicide or accidentally poisoned himself while eating an apple.
Like many homosexuals of his time (or now) he may well have gloried in the tawdrier and more unwashed side of life ~ and all he had to do was wash his hands regularly to live (as suggested by his own mother).
I don't buy it that this genius commited suicide. He was just a nasty guy who wasn't all that clean.
Personal hygiene is not just a condom.
4 posted on Friday, September 11, 2009 4:06:35 PM by muawiyah
Britain sinks deeper into the black hole of political correctness. Should we go easier on a brilliant mathematician who is also a crazed killer? No. One has nothing to do with the other. If he is a great mathematician, he deserves to be recognized for it. If he is a depraved human being, he deserves to be ostracized for it — or worse.
Libs... always wanting to drag us deeper into that black hole. I know lots of mathematicians who should be castrated. All of them are libs.
7 posted on Friday, September 11, 2009 4:12:01 PM by LibWhacker (America awake!)
The guy was buggering underage (at that time) teenage boys?
Sick.
8 posted on Friday, September 11, 2009 4:26:57 PM by icwhatudo ("laws requiring compulsory abortion could be sustained under the existing Constitution"Obama Adviser)
The law at the time in UK made 21 the age of majority. I don't believe back in the early 1950s that they were into gradiations of buggery based on age differntials or time dilation factors.
Just a straight up and down ~ of age, or not of age.
So Turing was not satisfied with the law and violated it.
9 posted on Friday, September 11, 2009 4:29:53 PM by muawiyah
Every so often, however, the Free Republic echo chamber is disturbed by a discordant note. This time it was a Freeper by the handle of “steve-b,” the person responsible for the original post on the Turing apology. He had a rather telling observation about the way in which his fellow Freepers were falling all over themselves to justify compliance with law, although Free Republic is usually a hotbed of anti-government sedition.
So Turing was not satisfied with the law and violated it.
I'm sure the concept of disagreeing with and disregarding the government's decrees will give all good FReepers a severe case of the vapors.
11 posted on Saturday, September 12, 2009 7:02:23 AM by steve-b (Intelligent Design -- "A Wizard Did It")
Note that steve-b also mocks ID creationism. That alone suffices to make him suspect among Free Republic's creationist majority.Not to mention that highly questionable support for apologizing to a dead queer. Shocking! (If he's not careful, he'll get “expelled.”)
Yeah. Even the extremists have a fringe.
Posts
8 comments:
That's ... disturbing.
But I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
Oh, incidentally - Savage Love has been bickering a lot about asexuality lately. Not that I expect you to engage further in the matter.
wv: "liker" - ? I hardly know 'er?!
>"He later on may have commited suicide or accidentally poisoned himself while eating an apple."
I don't exactly see how...
>"Like many homosexuals of his time (or now) he may well have gloried in the tawdrier and more unwashed side of life ~ and all he had to do was wash his hands regularly to live (as suggested by his own mother)."
Of course! Everyone knows homosexuals love giving each other cyanide backrubs!
>"Libs... always wanting to drag us deeper into that black hole. I know lots of mathematicians who should be castrated. All of them are libs."
Gene Ray's a Freeper?
This is exactly the kind of filth one should expect from a place swarming with anti-gay, anti-intellectual lunatics. Even so, when I actually read this stuff, I never quite expect them to sink as low as they invariably do.
Recently I realized that Little Green Footballs has become the sane voice among the right-winged blogsphere. LGF!!!!
Of course, other right-wingers have started to call LGF left-winged.
Yeah, LGF being the voice of sanity is a true indication of how severely curved the political grading scale has become. LGF!
Regarding mathematicians, does that person mean that all mathematicians are liberals and thus deserve to be castrated? Or does he mean that all mathematicians who deserve to be castrated happen to be liberals? And these claims completely empirical or is he making a general statement? Quantifiers and precise language people! As G.H. Stevens said "Mathematicians are annoyingly precise." Oh, but he's a mathematician so I guess his opinions don't matter. Or something like that.
Some of these "conservative" asswipes should read their bibles. Wasn't it their sky fairy that wanted to kill the pregnant women and save the "virgens for da solders"to despoil
The age of consent in Britain at the time was 13, not 21.
The age of consent for heterosexual acts in England was set at 12 in 1275 and remained so for six centuries - due to the wording of the law, the age of consent only applied to women (consequently, all amendments to the law also only applied to women). The wording was along the lines of "It shall be deemed illegal to ravage a maiden who is not of age" - at the time "of age" being 12. Therefore, there was, and is, technically no age of consent for the male participant - unless the female participant is an adult in which case laws pertaining to sex with a minor and so on come into force. The English law became applicable in Wales following the Acts of Union (1536 and 1543). In medieval Welsh law there was no actual equivalent of the concept of the age of consent as such, but a girl was marriagable at 12-14 (the onset of puberty) and a fine was payable for the taking of a girl's maidenhood by force; the rules varied according to status and may not have been applied rigidly to commoners.[19]
A concern that young girls were being sold into brothels led Parliament to raise the age of consent to 13 in 1875 under the Offences against the Person Act 1875. After W. T. Stead's Maiden Tribute articles, the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 raised the age of consent to 16. Male-male homosexual activity had been illegal since the Buggery Act 1533 and this was reinforced in the Offences against the Person Act 1861 and the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 extended buggery laws to include any kind of sexual activity between males. It is common folklore that an amendment that would have criminalised lesbian acts was rejected by Queen Victoria because she refused to believe that some women did such things; but it is likelier that those presenting the amendment excluded it (as did the House of Lords 40 years later) on the assumption that it would give women ideas.[20]
Male homosexual acts were decriminalised under the Sexual Offences Act 1967, Section 1, although the age of consent for such acts was set at 21, whereas the age of consent for heterosexual acts was 16. However, the legislation applied only in England and Wales.
Wikipedia
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