Bobservations

We have delegated some of the chores around casa bob y Carlos; I take care of what goes into the cats, while Carlos takes care of what comes out of them … at either end. I do the laundry; Carlos cleans the bathrooms. We both cook; we both clean; we both do the yards.

But this is why Carlos does not is not allowed to do laundry: he doesn’t know from a full load. I came home from work the other day and, while he was cooking dinner, I said I’d start some laundry.

“Oh, I started it already.”

“WHAT? DID YOU … IS THERE … WHAT?”

“I was doing the towels so I decided to help with the laundry so you wouldn’t have to do it after work.”

And help he did… he took the towels and then dug through the clothes hamper for his ratty yard work shorts, at-shirt that had the sleeves cut off and was permanently stained with …something …and a pair of his socks. He bypassed all of the other clothes and anything of mine, for that particular outfit of his.

Towels. Ratty jeans. Ratty shirt. Socks.

And he helped.

Goddess, I adore that man.

With all these state legislatures trying to pass these voter suppression bills, they are the perfect place to start voting out the RepubliQAnons.

Remember Boozy and Clod, that white St Louis couple who channeled their inner mobsters and waved guns art the Black Lives Matter protesters who dared walk through their neighborhood?

Well, Boozy, AKA Patricia McCloskey, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor harassment and was fined $2,000, while Clod, AKA Mark McCloskey, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor fourth-degree assault and was fined $750.

Clod, who announced in May that he was running for a US Senate seat in Missouri, was unapologetic after the hearing:

“I’d do it again.”

Racists say what?

Dear Americans

Stop using the phrase ‘full stop’ when you speak and want to punctuate the end of a sentence. You aren’t British, it doesn’t make you smart, and it annoys me. Full stop.

And I’m lookin’ at you Meghan McCain.

Fox News host Dan Bongino is the network's version of Chrissy Teigen.

See, Bongino has returned to Twitter after telling his supporters in January that he would be leaving and never returning to the “anti-American” social platform. Bongino even told Twitter to “fuck off” while pledging he would never return to the popular social media site. And now he’s come crawling back like a typical spinless hypocritical wannabe.

You, sir, can truly fuck off.

The GQP doesn’t wanna protect voting.

The GQP doesn’t wanna know what happened on 1/6/2021.

The GQP doesn’t wanna do anything except obstruct the agenda of the president on infrastructure, climate change, healthcare, etc..

The GQP does not want America.

But … the GQP wants you to believe that thousands of Thing 45 supporters showed up on 1/6/2021 to hear him order them to attack the Capitol and take back America, but after his speech they all quietly went home while Antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters donned MAGAt wear and attacked the Capitol.

Seriously. That’s what they want you to believe.

Speaking of Thing 45, did you know he asked the DOJ to look into Saturday Night Live because they were making fun of him.

True.

The My Pillow loon, Mike Lindell, has moved the date of Thing 45's "return to power":

“We’re bringing in all the cyber guys … we’re bringing all the media … we’re going to bring in all senators, governors … legislatures, secretary of states, and every single government official that wants to be there … It’s going to be a worldwide event … and those Supreme Court justices are going to … go 9-0 that this country was attacked. The election is gonna come down.”

This is Lindell’s third time changing the date of Hair Furor’s “return”.

In LGBTQ+ Good News … the Bank of England began circulating a £50 note featuring World War II codebreaker Alan Turing on what would have been the pioneering math genius’ 109th birthday.

Turing is known as the “father of computer science and artificial intelligence,” a war hero and honored by King George VI for helping to defeat the Nazis. Despite all of this, he died a disgraced “criminal”—because he was gay. 

This is the first time that a gay man is featured on a British bank note.

It’s about time.

Adam Phillips is a tall British drink of water with some gorgeous eyes and a handsome face and a love for posing in his underwear.

Or sometimes in suits that he likes to strip off. In clothes, out of clothes; yes ma’am!

Cumberbatch And Fry Seek Pardons For "The Other 49,000"

After portraying war hero Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, Benedict Cumberbatch has joined the call in England for overturning the so-called "indecency" convictions handed down to gay men like Turing.

Turing, you may recall, was a computer scientist and mathematician who cracked the Nazi’s Enigma machine World War II, leading to the Allied victory. Turing was also gay, and in 1952 was prosecuted for being gay under Great Britain’s indecency laws; instead of being imprisoned for his "crime," Turing chose chemical castration.

Alan Turing died two years later; and nearly sixty years after that, in 2013, his "crime" was pardoned by Queen Elizabeth II.

After a recent screening of The Imitation Game comedian Stephen Fry started the call to pardon the thousands other gay men who were convicted under the indecency laws, and Cumberbatch agreed:

"Alan Turing was not only prosecuted, but quite arguably persuaded to end his own life early, by a society who called him a criminal for simply seeking out the love he deserved, as all human beings do. Sixty years later that same government claimed to ‘forgive’ him by pardoning him. I find this deplorable, because Turing’s actions did not warrant forgiveness — theirs did — and the 49,000 other prosecuted men deserve the same."

Cumberbatch is right, though, when he says these men, like Turing, do not need to be forgiven for being gay; the government of England needs to ask for their forgiveness — at least of the 15,000 men still alive today who were convicted under this archaic law — and pardon every last one of them.

New ads for The Imitation Game — nominated nominated for several Oscars, including Best Picture — appeared this week, highlighting the plight of Alan Turing and the “other 49,000”:

“Honor this movie. Honor this man. And honor the movement to bring justice.”

An open letter has been addressed to Her Majesty’s Government, imploring young political leaders, like the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, William and Kate, to see that these “convictions” are overturned; the letter reads, in part:

“The apology and pardon of Alan Turing are to be welcomed but ignores over 49,000 men who were convicted under the same law, many of whom took their own lives. An estimated 15,000 men are believed to still be alive. The UK’s homophobic laws made the lives of generations of gay and bisexual men intolerable. It is up to young leaders of today including The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to acknowledge this mark on our history and not allow it to stand.”

In a sad side note: Prince William and Catherine have opted not to publicly support the campaign to pardon these thousands of men because as a palace spokesperson explained that the royal family felt as if the issue was a purely governmental affair and that they had no place in the discussion.

Some say it was less about that, and more about the royal’s decision to distance themselves from this particular campaign because of the less high-profile men who would be exonerated.

I guess if you were imprisoned for being gay but weren’t a war hero, but just a regular bloke, the royals don’t give a fig for you.

Hopefully, without the help of these fools, the movement will keep on and men punished simply for being who there were, and are, and simply for loving who they loved, will one day no longer be considered criminals.

Can’t say that for the royals, though.

via Huffington Post

Random Musings

Well, well, well, another Christmas come and gone.

While Carlos and I did not exchange gifts -- except for the flu he gave me and the dirty looks I gave him -- because we're remodeling a bathroom as a Christmas gift, it was still a nice day.

Mellow and sleepy with one pleasant surprise right at the very end.

Last night, for the first time in many nights, i slept all the way through with no coughing jags and sneezing fits and bathroom runs and no Carlos snoring.

I'm feeling better ... in time to go back to work tomorrow.

Feliz Navidad my culo.

Enough of this talk about Climate Change; that's just a hoax.

The fact that is was 80 degrees in Smallville the Saturday before Christmas means nothing except that I had a Summer Cold , because on Christmas it was just 35-degrees and suddenly it was a Winter Cold.

Uh huh.

Look, I get me some Facebook; I’m on Facebook. I get some of my news from there and keep in contact with my Left Coast friends and family. But what I don’t do is let everyone know what I’m doing at every single minute of every single day…

Sitting down to chicken soup!

Off to bed. Night all.

Watching the _____ game! Go team!

Are you really enjoying the moment or are you just enjoying updating the moment to your status?

I don’t eat fast food; it’s just not my thing. But if I were a diner at a fast food establishment, I doubt I would be eating at McDonald’s.

An official from McDonald's Corporation announced at a Chicago Sports Commission luncheon last week that the company would not make a statement about anti-gay laws implemented in Russia:

"If we as a sponsor, or any sponsor, were to pull [out of their deal] or boycott, we'd be hurting the U.S. Olympic team. Our mission really is to make sure that we do not penalize the U.S. athletes. The [U.S. Olympic Committee] is not going to boycott, so we're not going to subjugate that by not supporting athletes."

No said boycott, they asked you to make a statement regarding the hateful anti-gay laws in Russia and you said ...

:::crickets::::

That same official then added,  "We try to keep the politics out of it and try to focus on sport."

And making money.

There’s nothing like a good Christmas movie on Christmas Eve to get ready for the big day … which is why we watched Frances, the story of 30s actress Frances Farmer and her descent into alcohol and drug addiction, and mental instability, ending up being raped in hospitals in exchange for money and then undergoing a lobotomy.

Good Christmas fare, no?

Well, it starred the great Jessica Lange and was really a good film.

Just sayin’.

Where does a single unwed mother with barely a high school education who made a name for herself dancing on TV and selling her private life to a reality channel get a pulpit.

Yes, Blister Palin, demon spawn of the Mama Grizzly Bore™ is speaking out, and throwing her considerable heft, behind bigot and homophobe, Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson, saying:

“[I]f you don’t agree with their lifestyle, they spread the most hate. It is so hypocritical it makes my stomach turn. They need to learn how to respect others’ opinions and not just jump to the conclusion that everyone who doesn’t support homosexuality and gay marriage is homophobic.”

This is what Robertson said about The Gays:

“They’re full of murder, envy, strife, hatred. They are insolent, arrogant, God-haters. They are heartless, they are faithless, they are senseless, they are ruthless. They invent ways of doing evil.”

And yet I am a hater because I question his statements?

Blister? Can’t you find another Alaskan unemployed hockey monkey to knock you up so you’ll go away again?

Glee’s Dot-Marie Jones, AKA Coach Shannon Beiste, married her longtime girlfriend Bridgett Casteen at their Los Angeles home last weekend.

Close friends had been invited to a holiday party at the couple's home, but Jones and Casteen surprised their guests by informing them that they were actually gathered together for a wedding.

Loverly. And congrats to the happy couple!

Since we were sick over the holidays there was a lot of movie watching — as in the Christmas Eve Frances Film — and one more we watched was Jason Segal and Emily Blunt in The Five Year Engagement.

Good movie, but I had no idea it would be told in real time.

Seriously. It seemed that long.

Filed under Finally:

This week the British government granted a royal pardon to Alan Turing, the computer genius who committed suicide after being chemically castrated following a conviction for homosexuality.

Turing, who played a major role in breaking the Enigma code – which arguably shortened the war by at least two years – was pardoned under the Royal Prerogative of Mercy by the Queen, following a request from the justice secretary, Chris Grayling.

Like I said, Finally!

Repost: LGBT History Month: Alan Turing*

*originally posted October 15 2009

Alan Mathison Turing was a genius, and a hero, and changed the way the world works. the very idea that I can put these words here and they can be read all over the world instantly is, in part, a testament to Allan Turing.

Born in Great Britain, he was a mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist, and was influential in the development of computer science and provided an influential formalisation of the concept of the algorithm and computation with the Turing machine. I know, it's all blibbety-blah-blay-blue to me, too; but somebody had to do it, and Alan Turing was the man.

In 1999, Time Magazine named Turing as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century for his role in the creation of the modern computer, and stated: "The fact remains that everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a word-processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine."

During World War II, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School, Britain's code-breaking center, and for a while he headed up the section responsible for German Naval cryptanalysis where he devised a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers.

After the war, he worked at the National Physical Laboratory and created one of the first designs for a stored-program computer. In 1945, Turing was awarded the Order of the British empire [OBE] for his wartime services, even though for years what he did, his work, remained a secret.

The biggest secret of all, however, was that Alan Turing was also a gay man. And even though, after his death, he has been honored in the United Kingdom and all over the world, for what he did during the war and afterwards, the harshest reality is that he was punished, cruelly punished, for being gay.

In January 1952 Turing picked up a 19-year-old man, Arnold Murray, outside a movie theater in Manchester. After a lunch date, Turing invited Murray to spend the weekend with him at his house, an invitation Murray accepted although he did not show up. The pair met again in Manchester the following Monday, when Murray agreed once again to accompany Turing to his home.

A few weeks later Murray visited Turing again, and apparently spent the night. Several days later, Murray and an accomplice broke into Turing's home, and when Turing reported the crime to the police, he admitted to a sexual relationship with Murray.

Since homosexual acts were illegal in the United Kingdom at that time, both men were charged with gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, the same crime that Oscar Wilde had been convicted of more than fifty years earlier.

Turing was given a choice between imprisonment or probation conditional on his agreement to undergo hormonal treatment designed to reduce libido. He accepted chemical castration via estrogen hormone injections, one of the side effects of which was that he grew breasts.

But that wasn't his only punishment. The conviction led to the removal of Turing's security clearance, and barred him from continuing with his cryptographic consultancy. At the time, there was acute government anxiety about spies and homosexual entrapment by Soviet agents, due to the recent exposure of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean as KGB double agents. Turing was never accused of espionage but was not allowed to continue his work.

On June 8, 1954, Turing's housekeeper found him dead. An autopsy revealed the cause of death to be cyanide poisoning. When his body was discovered, a half-eaten apple lay beside his bed and although the apple was not tested for cyanide, it is speculated that this was the means by which a fatal dose was delivered. It was determined that Alan Turing had committed suicide, however, his mother strenuously argued that the ingestion was accidental, due to his careless storage of laboratory chemicals.

Turing biographer Andrew Hodges suggests that Turing may have killed himself in an ambiguous way quite deliberately, to give his mother some plausible deniability, while others suggest that Turing was re-enacting a scene from Snow White, his favorite fairy tale. Still others speculate that he may have been murdered by the British Secret Service. Whatever the reason, however he died, it is quite clear that his death occurred because of his criminal conviction for being gay.

In August 2009, John Graham-Cumming started an internet petition urging the British Government to posthumously apologize to Alan Turing for prosecuting him as a homosexual. The petition received thousands of signatures, forcing Prime Minister Gordon Brown to publicly acknowledge the petition, to release a statement describing Turing's treatment as "appalling," and to apologize for Alan Turing's treatment:

"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....So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work I am very proud to say: we're sorry, you deserved so much better."

It seems somehow fitting that I can use this computer, and this particular space on the web to remind us of Alan Turing. I think he'd be quite pleased to know that a gay man is using a computer to acknowledge him, and to thank him.

One interesting sidenote: Urban legend has it that the logo of Apple computers is a tribute to Alan Turing, with the bite mark a reference to his method of suicide. The company denies this.

Still..........................

On This Day In LGBT History

October 15, 1952 – One, Inc. was founded in Los Angeles to publish One Magazine. The magazine was published until 1969. One, Inc. still continues as an educational institution.
October 15, 1969 – New York City’s Gay Liberation Front joined a moratorium protest against the war in Vietnam.
October 15, 1973 – The formation of the National Gay Task Force was announced in New York City.
October 15-16, 1977 – The First National Congress of Quebec Gays meets.
October 15, 1977 – The Santa Barbara, California, board of education voted to ban discrimination against GLB students, making it the first US school board to do so.
October 15, 1983 – Eddie Murphy’s HBO special “Delirious” aired. It raised controversy because of several tasteless AIDS jokes and a long diatribe about “faggots.”
October 15, 1987 – Ken Dawson, who had been director of Senior Action in a Gay Environment for six years, resigned. When he began the organization had an annual budget of $45,000 and 100 volunteers, when he resigned the annual budget was $750,000 and 600 volunteers.
October 15, 1988 – A gay rights ordinance was passed in Alexandria, Virginia.
October 15, 1993 – Federal district court judge Kimba Wood ruled that shareholders of Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores Inc should be allowed to vote on retaining a company policy that would forbid employment of gays and lesbians.
October 15, 1999 – The US State Department issued a statement to the government of Uganda expressing “deep concern and consternation” over anti-gay statements made by President Yoweri Museveni.
October 15, 1999 – Washington Times columnist Cal Thomas reported that George W. Bush told a small group of conservative Republicans he would not knowingly appoint a practicing homosexual as an ambassador or department head if elected president.

Finally! Alan Turing Given Posthumous Pardon

Alan Turing, the British mathematician who created the Turing machine—considered the model for the modern computer—was responsible for breaking German codes, including the method of finding the settings for the German Enigma machine.

But, Alan Turing was also gay, and that was a crime. After the war, in 1952, Alan Turing was arrested on the grounds of gross indecency and, to avoid prison, he consented to chemical castration as his punishment.

He committed suicide in 1954.

For years people have worked to have Turing pardoned based not only on the idea that being gay is not a crime, but also based on his many accomplishments that helped England, and the world, during World War II.

In September 2009, following an Internet campaign, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for "the appalling way [Turing] was treated." And then in May 2012, a private member's bill was put before the House of Lords to grant Turing a statutory pardon.

Now, finally, nearly sixty years after his death by cyanide poisoning, it looks like Alan Turing will get his pardon.

The announcement by Parliament marks a change of heart by the government, which just last year had declined to grant pardons to the 49,000 now dead gay men—including Oscar Wilde—who were convicted under the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act.

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, a government whip: "Alan Turing himself believed that homosexual activity would be made legal by a royal commission. In fact, appropriately, it was parliament which decriminalised the activity for which he was convicted. The government are very aware of the calls to pardon Turing, given his outstanding achievements, and have great sympathy with this objective … That is why the government believe it is right that parliament should be free to respond to this bill in whatever way its conscience dictates and in whatever way it so wills."

It took them awhile, but finally Alan Turing’s so-called criminal history, his crimes, will be erased from his record. Alan Turing committed no crime, and all he should be remembered for are the gifts he gave the world.

source

Repost: LGBT History Month: Alan Turing*

*originally posted October 15 2009

Alan Mathison Turing was a genius, and a hero, and changed the way the world works. the very idea that I can put these words here and they can be read all over the world instantly is, in part, a testament to Allan Turing.

Born in Great Britain, he was a mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist, and was influential in the development of computer science and provided an influential formalisation of the concept of the algorithm and computation with the Turing machine. I know, it's all blibbety-blah-blay-blue to me, too; but somebody had to do it, and Alan Turing was the man.

In 1999, Time Magazine named Turing as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century for his role in the creation of the modern computer, and stated: "The fact remains that everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a word-processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine."

During World War II, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School, Britain's codebreaking center, and for a while he headed up the section responsible for German Naval cryptanalysis where he devised a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers.

After the war, he worked at the National Physical Laboratory and created one of the first designs for a stored-program computer. In 1945, Turing was awarded the Order of the British empire [OBE] for his wartime services, even though for years what he did, his work, remained a secret.

The biggest secret of all, however, was that Alan Turing was also a gay man. And even though, after his death, he has been honored in the United Kingdom and all over the world, for what he did during the war and afterwards, the harshest reality is that he was punished, cruelly punished, for being gay.

In January 1952 Turing picked up a 19-year-old man, Arnold Murray, outside a movie theater in Manchester. After a lunch date, Turing invited Murray to spend the weekend with him at his house, an invitation Murray accepted although he did not show up. The pair met again in Manchester the following Monday, when Murray agreed once again to accompany Turing to his home.

A few weeks later Murray visited Turing again, and apparently spent the night. Several days later, Murray and an accomplice, broke into Turing's home, and when Turing reported the crime to the police, he admitted to a sexual relationship with Murray.

Since homosexual acts were illegal in the United Kingdom at that time, both men were charged with gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, the same crime that Oscar Wilde had been convicted of more than fifty years earlier.

Turing was given a choice between imprisonment or probation conditional on his agreement to undergo hormonal treatment designed to reduce libido. He accepted chemical castration via estrogen hormone injections, one of the side effects of which was that he grew breasts.

But that wasn't his only punishment. The conviction led to the removal of Turing's security clearance, and barred him from continuing with his cryptographic consultancy. At the time, there was acute government anxiety about spies and homosexual entrapment by Soviet agents, due to the recent exposure of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean as KGB double agents. Turing was never accused of espionage but was not allowed to continue his work.

On June 8, 1954, Turing's housekeeper found him dead. An autopsy revealed the cause of death to be cyanide poisoning. When his body was discovered, a half-eaten apple lay beside his bed and although the apple was not tested for cyanide, it is speculated that this was the means by which a fatal dose was delivered. It was determined that Alan Turing had committed suicide, however, his mother strenuously argued that the ingestion was accidental, due to his careless storage of laboratory chemicals.

Turing biographer Andrew Hodges suggests that Turing may have killed himself in an ambiguous way quite deliberately, to give his mother some plausible deniability, while others suggest that Turing was re-enacting a scene from Snow White, his favourite fairy tale. Still others speculate that he may have been murdered by the British Secret Service. Whatever the reason, however he died, it is quite clear that his death occurred because of his criminal conviction for being gay.

In August 2009, John Graham-Cumming started an internet petition urging the British Government to posthumously apologize to Alan Turing for prosecuting him as a homosexual. The petition received thousands of signatures, forcing Prime Minister Gordon Brown to publicly acknowledge the petition, to release a statement describing Turing's treatment as "appalling," and to apologize for Alan Turing's treatment:

"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....So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work I am very proud to say: we're sorry, you deserved so much better."

It seems somehow fitting that I can use this computer, and this particular space on the web to remind us of Alan Turing. I think he'd be quite pleased to know that a gay man is using a computer to acknowledge him, and to thank him.

One interesting sidenote: Urban legend has it that the logo of Apple computers is a tribute to Alan Turing, with the bite mark a reference to his method of suicide. The company denies this.

Still..........................

On This Day In LGBT History

October 15, 1952 – One, Inc. was founded in Los Angeles to publish One Magazine. The magazine was published until 1969. One, Inc. still continues as an educational institution.
October 15, 1969 – New York City’s Gay Liberation Front joined a moratorium protest against the war in Vietnam.
October 15, 1973 – The formation of the National Gay Task Force was announced in New York City.
October 15-16, 1977 – The First National Congress of Quebec Gays meets.
October 15, 1977 – The Santa Barbara, California, board of education voted to ban discrimination against GLB students, making it the first US school board to do so.
October 15, 1983 – Eddie Murphy’s HBO special “Delirious” aired. It raised controversy because of several tasteless AIDS jokes and a long diatribe about “faggots.”
October 15, 1987 – Ken Dawson, who had been director of Senior Action in a Gay Environment for six years, resigned. When he began the organization had an annual budget of $45,000 and 100 volunteers, when he resigned the annual budget was $750,000 and 600 volunteers.
October 15, 1988 – A gay rights ordinance was passed in Alexandria, Virginia.
October 15, 1993 – Federal district court judge Kimba Wood ruled that shareholders of Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores Inc should be allowed to vote on retaining a company policy that would forbid employment of gays and lesbians.
October 15, 1999 – The US State Department issued a statement to the government of Uganda expressing “deep concern and consternation” over anti-gay statements made by President Yoweri Museveni.
October 15, 1999 – Washington Times columnist Cal Thomas reported that George W. Bush told a small group of conservative Republicans he would not knowingly appoint a practicing homosexual as an ambassador or department head if elected president.

LGBT History Month: Alan Turing

Alan Mathison Turing was a genius, and a hero, and changed the way the world works. the very idea that I can put these words here and they can be read all over the world instantly is, in part, a testament to Allan Turing.

Born in Great Britain, he was a mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist, and was influential in the development of computer science and provided an influential formalisation of the concept of the algorithm and computation with the Turing machine. I know, it's all blibbety-blah-blay-blue to me, too; but somebody had to do it, and Alan Turing was the man.

In 1999, Time Magazine named Turing as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century for his role in the creation of the modern computer, and stated: "The fact remains that everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a word-processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine."

During World War II, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School, Britain's codebreaking center, and for a while he headed up the section responsible for German Naval cryptanalysis where he devised a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers.

After the war, he worked at the National Physical Laboratory and created one of the first designs for a stored-program computer. In 1945, Turing was awarded the Order of the British empire [OBE] for his wartime services, even though for years what he did, his work, remained a secret.

The biggest secret of all, however, was that Alan Turing was also a gay man. And even though, after his death, he has been honored in the United Kingdom and all over the world, for what he did during the war and afterwards, the harshest reality is that he was punished, cruelly punished, for being gay.

In January 1952 Turing picked up a 19-year-old man, Arnold Murray, outside a movie theater in Manchester. After a lunch date, Turing invited Murray to spend the weekend with him at his house, an invitation Murray accepted although he did not show up. The pair met again in Manchester the following Monday, when Murray agreed once again to accompany Turing to his home.

A few weeks later Murray visited Turing again, and apparently spent the night. Several days later, Murray and an accomplice, broke into Turing's home, and when Turing reported the crime to the police, he admitted to a sexual relationship with Murray.

Since homosexual acts were illegal in the United Kingdom at that time, both men were charged with gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, the same crime that Oscar Wilde had been convicted of more than fifty years earlier.

Turing was given a choice between imprisonment or probation conditional on his agreement to undergo hormonal treatment designed to reduce libido. He accepted chemical castration via estrogen hormone injections, one of the side effects of which was that he grew breasts.

But that wasn't his only punishment. The conviction led to the removal of Turing's security clearance, and barred him from continuing with his cryptographic consultancy. At the time, there was acute government anxiety about spies and homosexual entrapment by Soviet agents, due to the recent exposure of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean as KGB double agents. Turing was never accused of espionage but was not allowed to continue his work.

On June 8, 1954, Turing's housekeeper found him dead. An autopsy revealed the cause of death to be cyanide poisoning. When his body was discovered, a half-eaten apple lay beside his bed and although the apple was not tested for cyanide, it is speculated that this was the means by which a fatal dose was delivered. It was determined that Alan Turing had committed suicide, however, his mother strenuously argued that the ingestion was accidental, due to his careless storage of laboratory chemicals.

Turing biographer Andrew Hodges suggests that Turing may have killed himself in an ambiguous way quite deliberately, to give his mother some plausible deniability, while others suggest that Turing was re-enacting a scene from Snow White, his favourite fairy tale. Still others speculate that he may have been murdered by the British Secret Service. Whatever the reason, however he died, it is quite clear that his death occurred because of his criminal conviction for being gay.

In August 2009, John Graham-Cumming started an internet petition urging the British Government to posthumously apologize to Alan Turing for prosecuting him as a homosexual. The petition received thousands of signatures, forcing Prime Minister Gordon Brown to publicly acknowledge the petition, to release a statement describing Turing's treatment as "appalling," and to apologize for Alan Turing's treatment:

"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....So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work I am very proud to say: we're sorry, you deserved so much better."

It seems somehow fitting that I can use this computer, and this particular space on the web to remind us of Alan Turing. I think he'd be quite pleased to know that a gay man is using a computer to acknowledge him, and to thank him.

One interesting sidenote: Urban legend has it that the logo of Apple computers is a tribute to Alan Turing, with the bite mark a reference to his method of suicide. The company denies this.

Still..........................

On This Day In LGBT History

October 15, 1952 – One, Inc. was founded in Los Angeles to publish One Magazine. The magazine was published until 1969. One, Inc. still continues as an educational institution.
October 15, 1969 – New York City’s Gay Liberation Front joined a moratorium protest against the war in Vietnam.
October 15, 1973 – The formation of the National Gay Task Force was announced in New York City.
October 15-16, 1977 – The First National Congress of Quebec Gays meets.
October 15, 1977 – The Santa Barbara, California, board of education voted to ban discrimination against GLB students, making it the first US school board to do so.
October 15, 1983 – Eddie Murphy’s HBO special “Delirious” aired. It raised controversy because of several tasteless AIDS jokes and a long diatribe about “faggots.”
October 15, 1987 – Ken Dawson, who had been director of Senior Action in a Gay Environment for six years, resigned. When he began the organization had an annual budget of $45,000 and 100 volunteers, when he resigned the annual budget was $750,000 and 600 volunteers.
October 15, 1988 – A gay rights ordinance was passed in Alexandria, Virginia.
October 15, 1993 – Federal district court judge Kimba Wood ruled that shareholders of Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores Inc should be allowed to vote on retaining a company policy that would forbid employment of gays and lesbians.
October 15, 1999 – The US State Department issued a statement to the government of Uganda expressing “deep concern and consternation” over anti-gay statements made by President Yoweri Museveni.
October 15, 1999 – Washington Times columnist Cal Thomas reported that George W. Bush told a small group of conservative Republicans he would not knowingly appoint a practicing homosexual as an ambassador or department head if elected president.