[matthewdgreen]

It's an evergreen that can be easily repaired by eliminating silly categories of crime and social conventions. See e.g., the old restrictions on allowing gay people to hold security clearances, which stemmed from the fact that it was easy to blackmail gay people in a society that (foolishly) kept penalizing people for being gay. We lost Alan Turing because of stupid crap like that, god only knows what else we lost.

[dragonwriter]

> See e.g., the old restrictions on allowing gay people to hold security clearances, which stemmed from the fact that it was easy to blackmail gay people

AFAIK, they did not stem from that fact, that was a later rationalization from keeping them around. They stemmed from the fact that being gay was seen as a serious moral failing in its own right, and indicative of propensity for other moral failings.