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New 'Turing Law' proposed

rynner2

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Gay men convicted of now-abolished sex offences to be pardoned

Thousands of gay and bisexual men convicted of now-abolished sexual offences are to receive posthumous pardons, the government has announced.
It will mean formal pardons for those convicted over consensual same-sex relationships before homosexuality was decriminalised in the UK.

Justice Minister Sam Gyimah said the move was "hugely important".
It honours a government commitment made after World War Two code-breaker Alan Turing was pardoned in 2013.
Under the move - dubbed "Turing law" - deceased people who were convicted of sexual acts that are no longer deemed criminal will receive an automatic pardon.

Anyone living who has been convicted of such offences can already apply through the Home Office to have their names cleared through a "disregard process", which can remove any mention of an offence from criminal record checks.

However, those still alive will also receive a new, automatic statutory pardon - once their offences have been successfully deleted through the disregard process.
Mr Gyimah said it was "hugely important that we pardon people convicted of historical sexual offences who would be innocent of any crime today".

The Sexual Offences Act decriminalised private homosexual acts between men aged over 21 in England and Wales, in 1967.
The law was not changed in Scotland until 1980, or in Northern Ireland until 1982.
Calls for wider pardons strengthened after Turing was given a posthumous royal pardon in 2013.

The Bletchley Park code-breaker was convicted in 1952 of gross indecency with a 19-year-old man.
He was later chemically castrated and died in 1954 after poisoning himself with cyanide.

His pardon, nearly 60 years later, followed a Private Member's Bill introduced by Lord Sharkey.
The Lib Dem peer said the latest government announcement was "a momentous day for thousands of families up and down the UK".
He said: "It is a wonderful thing that we have been able to build on the pardon granted to Alan Turing during the coalition."

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37711518
 
Gay men convicted of now-abolished sex offences to be pardoned

Thousands of gay and bisexual men convicted of now-abolished sexual offences are to receive posthumous pardons, the government has announced.
It will mean formal pardons for those convicted over consensual same-sex relationships before homosexuality was decriminalised in the UK.

Justice Minister Sam Gyimah said the move was "hugely important".
It honours a government commitment made after World War Two code-breaker Alan Turing was pardoned in 2013.
Under the move - dubbed "Turing law" - deceased people who were convicted of sexual acts that are no longer deemed criminal will receive an automatic pardon.

Anyone living who has been convicted of such offences can already apply through the Home Office to have their names cleared through a "disregard process", which can remove any mention of an offence from criminal record checks.

However, those still alive will also receive a new, automatic statutory pardon - once their offences have been successfully deleted through the disregard process.
Mr Gyimah said it was "hugely important that we pardon people convicted of historical sexual offences who would be innocent of any crime today".

The Sexual Offences Act decriminalised private homosexual acts between men aged over 21 in England and Wales, in 1967.
The law was not changed in Scotland until 1980, or in Northern Ireland until 1982.
Calls for wider pardons strengthened after Turing was given a posthumous royal pardon in 2013.

The Bletchley Park code-breaker was convicted in 1952 of gross indecency with a 19-year-old man.
He was later chemically castrated and died in 1954 after poisoning himself with cyanide.

His pardon, nearly 60 years later, followed a Private Member's Bill introduced by Lord Sharkey.
The Lib Dem peer said the latest government announcement was "a momentous day for thousands of families up and down the UK".
He said: "It is a wonderful thing that we have been able to build on the pardon granted to Alan Turing during the coalition."

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37711518
It's about time .. there is still some good left in the world then ..
 
The prosecution of gay men didn't stop in 1968 though. There were huge police operations to round up men who had sex in public toilets and quite illegal methods of entrapment were used. This went on in some areas right up to the early 1980s. Men were taken to court and fined. Many had their reputations ruined and lost jobs and families; some committed suicide.

These cases were extensively covered in the Sunday tabloids. I can remember reading about them as a teenager in my parents' Sunday People, along with lurid accounts of the doings of covens. (There were also salacious although not explicit stories about rape cases. Probably not the best way for enquiring young minds to learn about sex. At least these days they get pictures!)

I'm not sure exactly when police forces stopped pursuing gay men in toilets but there was certainly a time when it was acknowledged that the process amounted to persecution.

By contrast, a relation of mine told me that these days, if the Manchester police happen upon men enjoying themselves along the canals they'll say 'I'm not judging you but would you mind leaving room for people to pass please?'

Will the men who were entrapped and prosecuted, possibly illegally, after 1968 be pardoned? I wonder.
 
The prosecution of gay men didn't stop in 1968 though. There were huge police operations to round up men who had sex in public toilets and quite illegal methods of entrapment were used. This went on in some areas right up to the early 1980s. Men were taken to court and fined. Many had their reputations ruined and lost jobs and families; some committed suicide.

These cases were extensively covered in the Sunday tabloids. I can remember reading about them as a teenager in my parents' Sunday People, along with lurid accounts of the doings of covens. (There were also salacious although not explicit stories about rape cases. Probably not the best way for enquiring young minds to learn about sex. At least these days they get pictures!)

I'm not sure exactly when police forces stopped pursuing gay men in toilets but there was certainly a time when it was acknowledged that the process amounted to persecution.

By contrast, a relation of mine told me that these days, if the Manchester police happen upon men enjoying themselves along the canals they'll say 'I'm not judging you but would you mind leaving room for people to pass please?'

Will the men who were entrapped and prosecuted, possibly illegally, after 1968 be pardoned? I wonder.
To be honest though, any kind of sexual intercourse, gay, LTBG or straight taking place in a public place such as a public toilet isn't very fair to anyone .. remember that underage kids use public toilets. Can't people just save up some cash to get a premier inn room or similar for the night to fuck each other ? .. that's not homophobia, that's just normal in my eyes .. buy a caravan ! .. ask a mate if you can use their spare room ! .. public toilets are seedy.
 
To be honest though, any kind of sexual intercourse, gay, LTBG or straight taking place in a public place such as a public toilet isn't very fair to anyone .. remember that underage kids use public toilets. Can't people just save up some cash to get a premier inn room or similar for the night to fuck each other ? .. that's not homophobia, that's just normal in my eyes .. buy a caravan ! .. ask a mate if you can use their spare room ! .. public toilets are seedy.
Yeah, I don't why anyone feels the need to do that these days. But some still do.
 
Yep, gay or straight, arrest the fuckers.
 
There were huge police operations to round up men who had sex in public toilets and quite illegal methods of entrapment were used. This went on in some areas right up to the early 1980s.

I saw the police descend on one such notorious venue in Cheetham Hill in the early nineties! It was like the League of Nations! There were about a dozen blokes: Jews, Muslims, Blacks and Caucasians, all being loaded into the black maria. In the same period, routinely, the streets of the Gay Village were patrolled by a police film unit, which used to intimidate the part-timers of the community greatly. The camper brethren would yank up their fish-nets and blow kisses! :clap:
 
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There was a notorious 'cottage' on North Street in Brighton that was partly underground, when the council bulldozed and backfilled it cira 90s, one newspaper reputedly alleged that some of 'them' might still have been at it down there at the time. :eek:
 
I'm not sure exactly when police forces stopped pursuing gay men in toilets but there was certainly a time when it was acknowledged that the process amounted to persecution.

Cira 2000 I was involved with a local community policing hate crime initiative, police operations involving public lavatories and parks were still taking place then and got raised a lot by gay male activists.

Mght be worth throwing Operation Spanner into the works (ha!) here too, it's arguable as to whether the prosecution would have happened at all if it had involved heterosexuals rather than gay men. The police and courts really went a long way to nail the guys involved.

However, upon comparing this judgement to similar court cases involving heterosexual couples or others whose cruel and sadistic actions resulted in intentional or reckless infliction of injuries with the alleged victim's consent, some legal experts and advocacy groups have noted why they consider the R v Brown judgement to be an example of homophobia in the English legal system, a legislature which allows judges to legislate from the bench using unequal and arbitrary applications of the law, and "paternalism" which intrudes on liberty.[2][3][4][6]
 
Probably not the best way for enquiring young minds to learn about sex. At least these days they get pictures!)

Didn't do us any harm though did it? It's not like we ended up with a warped fascination with weird sex or anything.:rofl:
 
To be honest though, any kind of sexual intercourse, gay, LTBG or straight taking place in a public place such as a public toilet isn't very fair to anyone .. remember that underage kids use public toilets. Can't people just save up some cash to get a premier inn room or similar for the night to fuck each other ? .. that's not homophobia, that's just normal in my eyes .. buy a caravan ! .. ask a mate if you can use their spare room ! .. public toilets are seedy.

Yes - as I said to a gay friend of mine of an adventurous bent (pun intended): I couldn't give a flying fuck about what you're doing - it's not about what you're doing, it's about where you're doing it.

I once walked in on a guy giving another a blow job in front of the urinals (classy...not even a cubicle for this pair) in a public toilet in Edinburgh. It was almost comical - I walked briskly into a stall, slammed the door and shouted something of a vaguely miffed nature and the two disappeared in a flurry of the campest sounding squeals you could imagine outside of an episode of Julian and Sandy - like they were really, really surprised that they'd been caught out: it was two o'clock on a Sunday afternoon - ferfucksake - by a busy road, leading into one of the most popular bits of the capital.

But the really shocking thing? White jeans!! - he was on his knees, in front of a public urinal, on piss swimming muddy wet tiles...in white jeans!!

Bugger sodomy, I'd have arrested him for persil related negligence and crimes against laundry.
 
Yes - as I said to a gay friend of mine of an adventurous bent (pun intended): I couldn't give a flying fuck about what you're doing - it's not about what you're doing, it's about where you're doing it.

I once walked in on a guy giving another a blow job in front of the urinals (classy...not even a cubicle for this pair) in a public toilet in Edinburgh. It was almost comical - I walked briskly into a stall, slammed the door and shouted something of a vaguely miffed nature and the two disappeared in a flurry of the campest sounding squeals you could imagine outside of an episode of Julian and Sandy - like they were really, really surprised that they'd been caught out: it was two o'clock on a Sunday afternoon - ferfucksake - by a busy road, leading into one of the most popular bits of the capital.

But the really shocking thing? White jeans!! - he was on his knees, in front of a public urinal, on piss swimming muddy wet tiles...in white jeans!!

Bugger sodomy, I'd have arrested him for persil related negligence and crimes against laundry.

I had a bloke earnestly ask me if I'd like a blow job in a nightclub toilet in Birmingham's china town area once .. after politely saying no thank you but thanks for the offer he shuffled off somewhere. I left the toilet and told a lesbian girl I was mates with who refused to believe me because she seemed to think I was trying to be 'gay cool' or something so I found myself in the strange situation of trying to convince her I was telling the truth about the situation (I'm straight btw). I went to the club with her knowing it was a gay hang out because I'd heard gay parties were wild and a good laugh but, in truth, it was just a bunch of depressed looking blokes trying to get laid in really awkward ways and all a bit sad .. so I went back to my rave clubs instead .. perhaps I was missing the point because I'm not gay? ..
 
These days, if the police happen across men shagging along the Manchester canals they say 'I'm not judging you but would you mind leaving a space for people to pass please?' and the blokes reply 'Ooh sorry Mate' and shuffle over a bit.
All very civilised.
 
There was a gay bloke interviewed on the radio who had been arrested back in the day and was absolutely furious about the very idea of being pardoned. His view was that the entire prosecution should never have happened, so there was nothing to pardon. Not sure what he wanted the law to do so long after the fact.
 
it's about where you're doing it.

I think I had been about ten minutes in Berlin before witnessing the pink-oboe situation in a bar. This was not any special bar - so far as I knew - and not in the bogs. The lads just used the handy step of a dance-floor to facilitate their fellatial folly. After about twelve minutes, it seemed a bit provincial to be at all bothered by it - and, an hour after that, I gave up watching. :D
 
Labour MP Chris Bryant fought back tears in the House of Commons as he praised gay and bisexual MPs and others criminalised for their sexuality.

The former minister was visibly emotional as he paid tribute to several deceased Tory and Liberal MPs who had fought against Nazi fascism but were hounded over their private lives.

Bryant’s speech came as he urged the Government to go further in pardoning all gay men, alive and dead, who were convicted of now abolished sexual offences.

SNP MP John Nicolson tried on Friday to get MPs to progress a private member’s bill to create an automatic pardon for those who were still living too.

But the bill ran out of Parliamentary time and shouts of “shame!” greeted minister Sam Gyimah as he effectively killed it off by talking it out.

In his speech, Bryant recounted a group of gay and bisexual Tory MPs who “faced down” Adolf Hitler, insisting they and others should receive “something that feels like an apology” rather than just a pardon.

He went on to explain how MPs Ronald Cartland, Robert Bernays, Victor Cazalet, Jack Macnamara and Anthony Muirhead were among those who campaigned against appeasement of Nazi Germany.

Bryant pointed out that some MPs had wanted Nicholson’s legislative move to be named after Alan Turing, the British code breaker who killed himself after he was convicted of a relationship with another man.

“I don’t want to call it the Turing Bill. I want to call it the Cartland, Macnamara, Muirhead...”

Bryant paused, close to tears, before continuing: “…Bernays, Cazalet Bill.”

Referring to their courage in fighting the Nazis, he went on: “It is my very, very strong belief that if it hadn’t been for those gay men and bisexual men, we would never have faced down Hitler and we wouldn’t enjoy today the freedoms that we do.”

At another point in his speech, Bryant choked back tears as he pointed out that the MPs were killed in the war and commemorated by shields inside the Commons chamber, alongside others who had died in the First and Second World War.

“I mention some of the names because they’ve got shields in the chamber..,” he said.

“I just say that we as a country owe not just to those people, but to so many other men…something that feels like an apology, that really says ‘I’m sorry we got this wrong, you were brave, courageous men. We got it wrong, you were right, we owe you a debt of gratitude’.”

Bryant, who was applauded by SNP MPs after he finished his speech, explained how the group of Tory MPs had visited Germany in the 1930s and realised the true nature of the Nazi regime after visits to concentration camps.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ent...ics&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed
 
Didn't Chris Bryant once attend a public meeting with a set of handcuffs attached to one wrist, stuffed up his sleeve, after they jammed during a spot of bondage?
 
But the bill ran out of Parliamentary time and shouts of “shame!” greeted minister Sam Gyimah as he effectively killed it off by talking it out.

There's rather a lot of that happening of late, maybe we need to look at whether the buggers get paid if they can't or won't actually do their jobs.
 
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