[freedomben]

Al Capone was also charged with tax evasion to the fullest extent of the law, even though the gov was rarely if ever that aggressive with tax evaders. Prosecutors/law enforcement go for the charge that stands the best chance of conviction, not necessarily the one that is most accurate.

Personally given how society was at that point in time, I think his gayness was a big factor in how he was treated, but there are better arguments than pointing to what he was charged with as that is easily refuted.

[foldr]

But this is nonsense in the case of Turing. He was simply charged because he admitted to the police officer investigating the burglary that he'd had gay sex. His treatment was in line with that of other gay men of the time who were charged with similar offences (perhaps more 'lenient' if anything). What evidence do you have that there was more to the case than this? I have seen no indication that security concerns entered into the prosecution or sentencing.

Beware that OP's post is full of random nonsense, such as the claim that the younger man in question was 'Eastern European'. (His name was Arnold Murray and he was born in the UK, as far as anyone has been able to ascertain.)

[freedomben]

I don't have "evidence" at all, other than that when the subject comes up most people say that it was kind of a "don't ask, don't tell" kind of thing. I.e. if you were doing it in public there could be issues, but there was a pretty good gay community where it was kind of an open secret[1]. If you don't believe that to be accurate, please let me know!

> His treatment was in line with that of other gay men of the time who were charged with similar offences (perhaps more 'lenient' if anything).

Not challenging you, but do you or anybody have some numbers on how often this was prosecuted? It's probably impossible to say since by definition much of the activity was underground, but that doesn't match my current understanding of the environment.

[1]: as is always a risk when stating facts, there's a risk of is/ought fallacy here with people interpreting my statement of facts with what I think should be the case. I'm not saying it ought to be this way, merely that it was. I think we've made great progress in this area and I'm glad for it.

[foldr]

It’s so easy to find information about this by googling. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38814338.amp

There’s nothing complicated about the Turing case. It was a crime at the time to have gay sex. He admitted to a police office that he’d had gay sex. This led to him being prosecuted.

I’d urge you to spend more time looking at the facts of the case and less time questioning the universally accepted narrative on the basis of what you admit is no evidence.

[freedomben]

You seem insistent that there's no nuance whatsoever involved in this, yet I find this hard to accept.

Just in the article you linked to, it says that 49,000 gay men were pardoned. It also says the law against "gross indecency with a man" was passed in 1885 and was only repealed in 1967. The law against "buggery" was first used in 1533 and was in place until the 19th century!

If we assume that 100 million people lived through those times, and that the conservative estimate of approximately 3% gay population held, then there would have been 3,000,000 gay people during that time. That means that 1.6% of gay people ended up prosecuted. If we only consider men, then 3.2% ended up prosecuted. This seems to me to be a little more nuanced than you are suggesting, otherwise there wouldn't be such a huge inconsistency in enforcement.

Since we're urging each other now, I’d urge you to spend more time thinking about how perception can differ from reality, what the pitfalls are of binary thinking and blind acceptance, and why Socrates encouraged people to have humility about what they think they know.

[foldr]

Most people didn’t tell a policeman that they were having gay sex. Turing did, so he was prosecuted. The police officer who initially arrested Turing would have had no idea about his security clearance or role in the war effort (which did not begin to be declassified until the 1970s). So what exactly is this “nuance” that you think needs to be added here? Could you at least be specific?

I’d also add that your hypothetical conviction rate of 3.2% is pretty high, considering that people generally have sex in private. As a point of comparison drawn at random, the current conviction rate for car thefts in England and Wales is 2.12%.