{"id":151547,"date":"2020-01-13T12:00:49","date_gmt":"2020-01-13T12:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=151547"},"modified":"2020-01-12T11:46:05","modified_gmt":"2020-01-12T11:46:05","slug":"alan-turing-gay-man-who-saved-the-world-yet-died-in-disgrace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/01\/alan-turing-gay-man-who-saved-the-world-yet-died-in-disgrace\/","title":{"rendered":"Alan Turing: Gay Man Who Saved the World yet Died in Disgrace"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What do you do to a homosexual mathematician whose code-breaking genius saved the world during World War II? Not figuratively, but actually saved the world from Nazi domination? You put him on trial, of course! You convict him of gross indecency. You force him to choose prison or chemical castration. You strip him of all dignity and hound him until in shame and despair he swallows a cyanide pill and dies.<\/p>\n

The story of\u00a0Alan Turing<\/a>\u00a0is one of the most disgraceful episodes of modern civilization. A man who should have been a hero of the free world and idolized next to Einstein and Newton in the history books was instead hounded to death because of religion-inspired homophobia.<\/p>\n

In World War II, Alan Turing\u2019s genius at breaking Nazi secret codes was so successful that the Allies could have sunk almost every single U-boat and convoy that left Germany. Turing\u2019s work was so good it was like cheating at cards: if you win every hand, the other players will quickly figure out that the game is rigged. The Allies had to employ all sorts of tricks to hide their success; if you want a fascinating account, I highly recommend Neal Stephenson\u2019s semi-fictional\u00a0Cryptonomicon<\/a>, the story of the rise of modern cryptography.<\/p>\n

Alan Turing literally saved the world from Nazi domination. Without his work, WWII would have ended very differently. The Nazi regime might have remained undefeated,\u00a0still in control of Northern Europe and western Asia. The Japanese might have retained control of East Asia. Our world maps would look vastly different today. And even if we\u2019d won the war, without Turing\u2019s work it\u2019s likely that millions more soldiers and civilians would have died in the fight.<\/p>\n

And Turing\u2019s work didn\u2019t end with cryptography. Today he\u2019s best known as the inventor of the modern digital computer, the one who laid down the mathematical foundation for all computer science. His name is even enshrined in two of the most important computer-science concepts, the\u00a0Turing machine<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Turing test<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If Alan Turing hadn\u2019t been homosexual, his name might be a household word like Einstein, Newton and Galileo. What home doesn\u2019t have a computer? If you count the laptops, cell phones, digital TVs, iPods, digital cameras and microwave ovens in your home, I\u2019ll bet you own more than a dozen computing devices. Every one of them works on the principles laid down by Alan Turing during WWII when he was trying to develop a computing machine to break the enemy\u2019s codes even faster.<\/p>\n

Turing\u2019s fall from grace came at the hands of the religious commi-bashing right, the British equivalent of America\u2019s\u00a0McCarthyism<\/a>. In 1952 a gay lover helped an accomplice rob Turing\u2019s house. During the police investigation, it came out that Turing was a homosexual. He was arrested and convicted of gross indecency, and given a choice of prison or chemical castration. Turing choose castration.<\/p>\n

On June 7, 1954, at just forty two years of age, Alan Mathison Turing killed himself by swallowing cyanide. One of the greatest minds in the history of humankind was lost forever, and one of the greatest heroes of World War II died in shame and disgrace.<\/p>\n

But the real shame is on the rest of us, not Alan Turing. In spite of his sexual orientation and consequent hardships he must have experienced, he remained a true patriot and mathematician. He put his mind to work to save the very society that persecuted him. It is possible that he changed history and saved more lives than any other single person in the twentieth century.<\/p>\n

On September 10, 2009, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown finally issued a public apology to Turing\u2019s memory:<\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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 \u2026 So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan\u2019s work I am very proud to say: we\u2019re sorry, you deserved so much better.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is stories like Turing\u2019s that keep me writing. It\u2019s easy to have a live-and-let-live attitude toward the immoral \u201cmorality\u201d of the Bible. It sounds nice to advocate tolerance and respect. But Alan Turing is dead, and the Bible is where it all started.<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=gtRLmL70TH0&feature=emb_logo<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ASfAPOiq_eQ&feature=emb_logo<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=nEomYB94TTI&feature=emb_logo<\/p>\n

_________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Reprinted with permission from the author.<\/em><\/p>\n

Craig A. James<\/em> is a writer, computer scientist, evolutionist, and movie producer. He lives in Southern California.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 churchandstate.org.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alan Turing was the inventor of the modern digital computer, laying down the mathematical foundation for all computer science. In World War II, his genius at breaking Nazi secret codes saved the world from Nazi domination– not figuratively, but in actuality. But in 1954 homosexuality was illegal in England; Turing was given a choice between imprisonment and chemical castration. He committed suicide. If Turing hadn\u2019t been homosexual, his name might be a household word like Einstein, Newton and Galileo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":151548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181],"tags":[1771,1772,1775,1145,1144,1147,1773,1774,581],"class_list":["post-151547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sexualities","tag-alan-turing","tag-computer-science","tag-enigma","tag-gay-rights","tag-homosexuality","tag-nazism","tag-turing-machine","tag-turing-test","tag-wwii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}