[jacquesm]

It's about two things: First of all a point of principle, a sense of justice for Turing and all those like him, wrongfully branded criminals for simply following their nature.

Even today there are plenty of cases of overt violence against homosexuals and it certainly won't hurt to remind potential perpetrators on the current stance of the government in these matters.

Second, to put the spotlight on all kinds of discrimination happening today, not just because of sexuality.

Maybe it will make some people think about what the long term consequences of these stupid policies can be.

You can't bring the dead to life, that's for sure. But at least we can make the living think a little bit about the consequences of their actions.

The country that I live in (nl) does all kinds of unspeakable things to foreigners (jail them, make them take tests to prove their going to be good dutch people and so on), in short discriminates against them left, right and center.

For gays, lesbians and 'others' (no, I'm not forgetting you this time), the battle here (nl) is mostly won, there are plenty of others that still need doing. (see http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/05/14/netherlands-discrimina...)

Alan Turing being British and gay instead of Moroccan, Turkish or from some other 'scary' country with a 'scary' religion seems to be unrelated, but these cases are all about unjust laws singling out groups that have done absolutely nothing wrong.

I'm sure that for other groups this has absolutely no weight, but with every apology by some government official for past wrongdoings we get one step closer to governments that can be held accountable in the present.

50 years is way too long, but it is better than nothing.

So, I agree there is lots of more important stuff that we need to deal with. But it's 'cost free' because it does not actually go at the expense of one of those things, and it may help in the future to avoid stupid 'mistakes' like these so that at that time there will be less important stuff that needs dealing with.

[pbhjpbhj]

" ... wrongfully branded criminals for simply following their nature." The argument that an action is simply a persons "nature" is impotent. Do you hold forth that same argument when such pederasty, due to age restrictions, is classed as child abuse?

People probably levelled the same argument against Socrate's [reported by Plato and Xenophon] denouncement of the buggery of juveniles by older men.

[jacquesm]

I think the discriminating factor here is 'consent', which was implied in the example of Turing and notably absent in cases involving children.

The 'teenage boy' (which implies anybody between the age of 10 and 19 inclusive) was in fact 19, Turing himself was if I get it all right 42 at the time.

[yangyang]

Teenage = 13-19 (ends with -teen).

[jacquesm]

> (which implies anybody between the age of 10 and 19 inclusive)

So ? That's what I wrote wasn't it ? I realize 19 is 'a teen' but it is at the end of the spectrum. Saying just 'teenage' makes it ambiguous and is suggestive of someone much younger than nineteen, you tend to guess that must be in the middle of the range, whereas in fact it was the last entry in the range.

[yangyang]

I'm being pedantic, yes, but it's 13 to 19 inclusive. Not 10 to 19.

[jacquesm]

This is a language issue then, here in NL when you are '10' you are officially a 'tiener', even if you are a young one.

It used to be 13 to 20 here, but that was a long time ago.

Apologies, I just took the dutch word 'tiener' to mean 'teenager' in English. My bad.

So that raises the median age by a year and a half.