Too Little, Much Too Late

As of today, Christmas Eve, 2013, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II granted a pardon to Alan Turing.

His crime?  Being gay in Britain in the 1950's.

Yes, in the 20th Century Mr. Turing was convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to be chemically castrated.  The British government forced him to take estrogen in order to curb his baser animal urges.  You know, because he was rampaging around the English countryside gay-raping everyone he could get his hands on.*

While I appreciate the effort and the sentiment, pardoning Mr. Turing for a 'crime' that was as much an offense as me being brown-eyed or right-handed sends the wrong message.  The message is that the authorities weren't wrong in the first place when they convicted Mr. Turing of being gay.  They were nothing but wrong, and a pardon - even an extremely rare one from the Queen herself - is not justice.  The only justice would be to commute the sentence, or vacate it, or whatever they call it over in England when the judiciary realizes they've been party to a gross miscarriage of justice and they need to make it right.
    So, thanks, Your Majesty, for at least giving it a go.  But you needed to do better.

Who was Alan Turing?  A towering genius, a truly remarkable man whose achievements led to the very device you're using to read this blog right now.  Essentially, he invented the idea of electronic computers, along with the methods for programming them.  Without him the modern world would be a very, very, different place.  If you don't already know who he was, you need to find out right now.  It'll make you appreciate the difference one man can truly make, and what happens when small minds and petty bureaucracies interfere.
     Wikipedia is a good place to start.


* for the sarcasm-impaired, this is sarcasm