Althouse: "Hey, Al, do you remember that time, back in the day, when we chemically castrated you for no good reason?"

December 27, 2013

"Hey, Al, do you remember that time, back in the day, when we chemically castrated you for no good reason?"

"Yeah? Well, we forgive you. Also, you’re dead."

81 comments:

David said...: We forgive you . . . because you're dead.

Now pardon me while we congratulate ourselves.; 12/27/13, 10:47 AM
Anonymous said...: Makes me wonder why some conservatives want to go back to the bad old days...ahem, Shouting Thomas.; 12/27/13, 10:51 AM
YoungHegelian said...: Now maybe we can apologize to Rosemary Kennedy for lobotomizing her, too.

If we're going to amble through the history of psychiatric abuses, we're going to be here all day. And that's just in the 1st world countries. Bring in the commies, and we'll be here all year!

It's not like the gays were the only people psychiatry abused or abuses.; 12/27/13, 10:52 AM
I Have Misplaced My Pants said...: I don't understand the wailing and keening over Alan Turing. It's not like that was the first, last or only time that a medical treatment that we now consider misguided or harmful was given.

On the Stuff You Should Know podcast the guys--whom I normally like and respect--had me banging my head against the steering wheel when they discussed moral relativism and how they had rejected it. Once upon a time, you understand, they had refused to judge other cultures and times, blah blah blah, but that they had changed their minds to the position that there is such a thing as inherent, objective evil.

They went on to give two examples: Inca child sacrifice and the chemical castration of Alan Turing.

Guess which one they decided was The Most Horrible Evil Which Must Be Condemned and which was a "Meh, they thought they were doing the right thing at the time?"

Something is a bit off with your moral reasoning when you are Horribly Offended by an anachronistic medical therapy at the same time as you are unwilling to find fault with likkering up ten year old girls and leaving them to die of exposure alone on a mountaintop.; 12/27/13, 10:57 AM
Shouting Thomas said...: @Inga,

OK, you want martyrs.

Look up Jesse Dirkhising. Kidnapped and tortured for serveral days and then murdered by two gay guys looking for kicks.

Every political group has its martyrs. If you want to have a pissing match over martyrs, you're welcome to it.; 12/27/13, 11:01 AM
Michael K said...: "Something is a bit off with your moral reasoning when you are Horribly Offended by an anachronistic medical therapy at the same time as you are unwilling to find fault with likkering up ten year old girls and leaving them to die of exposure alone on a mountaintop."

Agreed. We all know you have a gay son.; 12/27/13, 11:02 AM
pm317 said...: What difference does this pardon at this point make? A brilliant human being was driven to death by an ill-conceived society.; 12/27/13, 11:12 AM
I Have Misplaced My Pants said...: I told the podcast story as an example of how bewildering it is to me that there is an Alan Turing Canonization Brigade out there.

Has Oscar Wilde been officially pardoned yet? (I honestly don't know and I'm too lazy to look it up.) And who the hell cares? These smug, masturbatory exercises in We're So Much More Evolved than those cretins from sixty years ago (but only as regards certain carefully chosen and trendy moral issues) sicken me. Either shrug and accept that people in other times/places had different views than you do now and let them all off the hook, or be equally critical of all other cultures.; 12/27/13, 11:14 AM
Illuninati said...: Turing was a great man who made significant contributions to his country. The way he was treated was terrible. We're sorry it happened.

The difference between the right and the left is that the left does terrible things but rarely if ever apologizes. The reason I point out the crimes on the left is because the moral arrogance and self righteousness on the left is insufferable especially when the left doesn't even have any absolute standard to support their moral claims.; 12/27/13, 11:18 AM
Anonymous said...: The seemingly unquestionable "wisdom of today's crowd" is only called into question by a recitation of what yesterday's crowd did.

You can't logically or persuasively argue that everyone is in agreement and history is on your side at the same time that you cite an event to which the march of history led, and to which the crowd back then agreed.

All you can logically or persuasively say is that crowds do what crowds think are best.

So what absolute wisdom does the crowd hold now that in the future we'll see as not only wrong but barbaric?

How about the theory that man evolved from lower forms?

How about state forced socialism?

All potentials for being held in ridicule by some future "even more progressive" society.; 12/27/13, 11:19 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: I've read that Turing was convicted of "being gay" (here, for instance: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2528697/Queen-pardons-wartime-codebreaking-hero-Alan-Turing.html).
Not true. Being gay is an orientation, a mental state. Turing was convicted of gross indecency, not of having an orientation.

Sexual orientation refers to an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic and/or sexual attractions to men, women or both sexes. Sexual orientation also refers to a person’s sense of identity based on those attractions, related behaviors and membership in a community of others who share those attractions.

http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/sexual-orientation.aspx; 12/27/13, 11:21 AM
Known Unknown said...: Man. History sucks, doesn't it?; 12/27/13, 11:32 AM
pm317 said...: Turing was convicted of gross indecency

What was the gross indecency? It was a politically motivated killing using social mores of the day.; 12/27/13, 11:34 AM
Anonymous said...: ST,

Is that 34 million number only due to gays? Also, looking at wikipedia I see large numbers of AIDs patients in such gay friendly countries as India, China, South Africa and many other parts of that continent. Is Althouse to blame for those too or just the Americans?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_HIV/AIDS; 12/27/13, 11:44 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: PM317 wrote: "What was the gross indecency? It was a politically motivated killing using social mores of the day."
Exaggerate much?
Turing admitted to a homosexual relationship with a man -- not an orientation. This was a result of an unrelated police investigation. Turing was given the choice between prison and 'chemical castration'. He chose the latter and killed himself more than year afterward.
Turing was not convicted of 'being gay', or of being sexually attracted to men. He was convicted for his actions, not his identity.; 12/27/13, 11:44 AM
cubanbob said...: "Guess which one they decided was The Most Horrible Evil Which Must Be Condemned and which was a "Meh, they thought they were doing the right thing at the time?"

I wish I had a working crystal ball. I would like to know sixty years hence what will be considered the most horrible evil that must be condemned and meh they thought they were doing the right thing at the time.; 12/27/13, 11:50 AM
Anonymous said...: In general I feel terrible about how Alan Turing was treated by the government of the UK at the time. He made contributions to many fields, mathematics, computing, cryptography, physics, developmental biology, and the war effort. He was a true polymath.

Alan Hodges has a great biography of him:

http://www.amazon.com/Alan-Turing-Enigma-Centenary-Edition/dp/069115564X; 12/27/13, 11:54 AM
pm317 said...: Turing admitted to a homosexual relationship with a man

So what! Thank God, a gay Turing in the present day won't be driven to death. Thank God, the laws that drove him to death are outdated. But unfortunately the immoral politicians still stick around. He was an extraordinary human being who should have been given a pass on his ordinary behavior.; 12/27/13, 11:55 AM
Illuninati said...: Shouting Thomas said:
"What opprobrium should be attached to gay men who caused the deaths of 34 million people so that they could spend every night enjoying anal gangbangs in the bathhouses of San Francisco and New York City?"

This post is the reason I believe the present gay leadership is still as irresponsible now as the original leadership at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. Rather than accepting blame for their mistakes and learning from them, they have moved forward always on the attack usually against people who would normally be supportive of them. I don't know Shouting Thomas, but from his posts I image he would not usually have any problem with gay people.

Everything I know about AIDS leads me to believe that it started in Africa and was first detectable in retrospect in the USA about 1966. It was probably brought over by Haitians and lay dormant until the sexual revolution with unbridled promiscuity enabled it to flare into a raging inferno. The epidemic in other countries may have happened even if the gay community in the USA had been more responsible. Certainly the epidemic in Africa would have happened anyway.

October 31, 1980 "French-Canadian flight attendant Gaëtan Dugas pays his first known visit to New York City bathhouses. He would later be deemed "Patient Zero" for his apparent connection to many early cases of AIDS in the United States."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_AIDS

As I recall the story, "Gaetan was known to have sex with another man and afterwards inform him that by the way, you have now been exposed to a lethal disease." No one stopped him because of he politics surrounding the gay community.; 12/27/13, 11:57 AM
William said...: I agree with Illuminati. Some martyrs are more martyred than others. This grievance will not be properly redressed until homophobes are driven to suicide for shame of their evil thoughts,; 12/27/13, 12:00 PM
pm317 said...: My stomach turns at the thought of "chemical castration". Who gives anybody or any entity the right to put another human being through that kind of indignity? And, especially if you are a gifted man who contributed so much to the society.; 12/27/13, 12:03 PM
Saint Croix said...: My state, North Carolina, had a Eugenics Board and they would often force women on welfare to be sterilized. And my city, Charlotte, sterilized more people than anybody.

It's only been in the last year or two that liberals decided that forced abortion is evil.

Contrast this essay in Time Magazine from 2009.

Apparently, kidnapping and assaulting pregnant women "helped spur economic growth" in China.; 12/27/13, 12:04 PM
Stephen A. Meigs said...: Only someone with sodomizer tendencies would try to cure a gay person by giving him effeminizing hormones. Most of the cruel things done to effeminate gays are probably done in the same spirit that sodomizers use when they sodomize people. For instance, according to Stephen Jiminez, there is evidence that [Matthew] Shepard and at least one of his killers (McKinney) had been occasional sexual partners.

Insanity, when it is not caused by simple brain disease, often has much to do with people grappling with their anti-sodomy feelings. People will sense there is something like sodomy that people at times need to be more paranoid about, but they can't quite figure their feelings out, and so they end up being convinced there be aliens chasing them rectal probes, or whatever. Anti-sodomy sentiment is in the center of what non-diseased insanity is insane about, not because it's insane to be paranoid about it, but because it's so useful (yet difficult given the chemical effects of sodomy and the frequency with which societies underestimate it's evil) to be paranoid about sodomy that people have evolved to tend to be paranoid about everything that resembles it, even if missing the mark means insane fear of aliens inserting rectal probes, or whatever. Anyway, insanity has a strong anti-sodomy character, which causes pro-sodomy types who hate anti-sodomy ideas to flock to psychiatry for the opportunity to belittle or torment the mentally ill. Particularly was this the case formerly, when Freud was more in favor. Clearly, Freud's theory that the anti-sodomy ("anal retentive") qualities of the mentally ill were basically caused by parents terrifying their children too much during potty training was pro-sodomy claptrap of the highest order. Clearly lobotomies were just nasty sadistic crap, and so too probably is electroshock treatment. In fact, another reknowned mathematical logician, Emil Post, died of a heart attack probably caused by electroshock. Rational thought is a kind of defense against sodomy or indeed any addiction, addictions affecting mainly the feelings. People in anti-sodomy mode can think so hard and determinedly they just wear the rational part of their brains out until they can scarcely think coherently anymore.; 12/27/13, 12:06 PM
pm317 said...: My state, North Carolina, had a Eugenics Board and they would often force women on welfare to be sterilized. And my city, Charlotte, sterilized more people than anybody.

Wow, this is news to me. When something like this, forced sterilization, happened in India in the 70s, under Indira Gandhi's emergency rule, there was revulsion and revolution and she was booted out of power. Some third world democracy, hah.; 12/27/13, 12:12 PM
Illuninati said...: Stephen A. Meigs said...

"Clearly lobotomies were just nasty sadistic crap, and so too probably is electroshock treatment"

Electroshock therapy has a bad reputation, but it is still effective against severe depression. Fortunately we have many effective drugs now so electroshock therapy is not needed very often.; 12/27/13, 12:22 PM
Anonymous said...: So, is Terry saying that the punishment was warrented for acting on his sexual orientation and having gay sex? Perhaps you should try to never have straight sex again to understand how difficult it might be to abstain from sex your entire life.; 12/27/13, 12:26 PM
William said...: During the Spanish Inquisition, heretics were burned at the stake. During the French Revolution, citizens with insufficient egalitarian fervor were made to wear "liberty caps". Liberty caps were caps filled with hot tar. It caused the brain to boil within the skull when put on. Not everyone died. Some suffered massive strokes. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition, but the French Revolution comes along at frequent intervals.; 12/27/13, 12:36 PM
MadisonMan said...: He was an extraordinary human being who should have been given a pass on his ordinary behavior.

If you're giving passes to the extraordinary, you have to give passes to the ordinary as well.

It is a relief to human dignity that laws have evolved.; 12/27/13, 12:54 PM
Michael K said...: "My stomach turns at the thought of "chemical castration". Who gives anybody or any entity the right to put another human being through that kind of indignity? And, especially if you are a gifted man who contributed so much to the society."

The same treatment used to be offered to child molesters as an alternative to prison. It does seem to work fairly well in pedophile males. I'm sure you prefer prison for the rest of their lives. It is no longer offered due to pressure from the civil rights lobby. The same one that denies there is any connection between homosexuality and pedophilia.

Pedophiles now spend their lives in prison.; 12/27/13, 12:58 PM
Known Unknown said...: Inga-

I think Terry is being (perhaps) overly technical about wording.

I could be wrong. I'm not a mind/soul reader like R&B.; 12/27/13, 1:19 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: It is a wording issue, EMD, because laws are made of words.
We have been told, over and over, by LGBT activists, that "sexual orientation" is not a conduct, it is an identity. Turing was not charged with "being gay", he was charged with gross indecency, a conduct. Something he did, not something he was.
If Turing had been married with children, and denied being a homosexual in spite of his sexual acts with a man he had just met, he would have charged with the same crime because the act would have been the same.; 12/27/13, 1:40 PM
chickelit said...: Shouting Thomas linked: Look up Jesse Dirkhising.

Kudos to ST for linking that. I'd never heard of the case. Why was that story so downplayed? That's just obscene.; 12/27/13, 1:44 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: No one on the Left seems to realize that they are treading on very dangerous ground when they claim that sexual orientation is not a choice, cannot be changed, and causes individuals to behave in certain ways.; 12/27/13, 1:51 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Warning to people who look up the case Pollo and ST are talking about. The details of that case are particularly horrible, so don't read them if you are the sensitive type. That happened in the town just south of the town where I grew up. I didn't know about it until a few years ago because I was off at college when it happened.; 12/27/13, 1:54 PM
chickelit said...: The details of that case are particularly horrible, so don't read them if you are the sensitive type.

Like the Shepard case, methamphetamine seems to have played a role.; 12/27/13, 2:02 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Meth seems to be a factor in a lot of brutality, doesn't it?; 12/27/13, 2:04 PM
jeff said...: "Look up Jesse Dirkhising. Kidnapped and tortured for serveral days and then murdered by two gay guys looking for kicks."

Relevant if your accurately claiming the two gay guys represented the state. I'm guessing not.; 12/27/13, 2:29 PM
Greg Hlatky said...: Lord Birkenhead, the Lord Chancellor, was asked by a judge what he should give a man for sodomy. His reply was, "Oh, forty shillings, two guineas, whatever you have on you."; 12/27/13, 2:42 PM
Lydia said...: The pardon doesn't seem to have ended things on the other side of the pond, where a Turing expert has speculated that Turing was not a suicide and may have died due to careless handling of cyanide in experiments he was conducting, and a gay-rights campaigner thinks the government's secret services may have done him in.; 12/27/13, 2:46 PM
Lydia said...: Here's the correct BBC link.; 12/27/13, 2:50 PM
Darrell said...: Yes, he killed himself with poor chemical handling discipline. He didn't even open a window during the electroplating operation. And the doctor who administered the estrogen injection confided to a friend that he didn't administer the required dose because he disagreed with the practice. The partner Turing chose was a boy who had just turned 16--he brought him home and police saw the boy there when they visited him on an unrelated matter. Bletchley Circle might have looked the other way during the War, but the war was over.; 12/27/13, 2:53 PM
Darrell said...: He was replating his tableware with gold--and he often did. No experiments. But let no crisis go to waste.; 12/27/13, 2:55 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Darrell wrote:
"The partner Turing chose was a boy who had just turned 16--he brought him home and police saw the boy there when they visited him on an unrelated matter."
I think it's worse than that -- for Turing (though I heard the boy/man was 19).
Turing picked him up and took him home in December. In January Turing noticed objects missing from his office and home (keep in mind that Turing was involved in cryptography and had a security clearance). He contacted the police. The police asked Turing and his pal some uncomfortable questions about their relationship. The boy/man implicated a friend of his in the burglary. Turing openly admitted the homosexual nature of his relationship with the boy/man.
Turing plead guilty to gross indecency. the boy/man was given conditional release.
Turing's hormone treatments were finished before his death, he had just been rewarded with a readership position, he was continuing his research, and his friends and acquaintances were quite surprised by the suicide verdict.; 12/27/13, 3:06 PM
chickelit said...: Relevant if your accurately claiming the two gay guys represented the state. I'm guessing not.

The generic topic at hand is media martyr-making. I concede that ST's interjection of Dirkhising would be more relevant in a Shepard thread or a non-existant Dirkhising one.; 12/27/13, 3:07 PM
Scott said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 12/27/13, 3:09 PM
pm317 said...: If you're giving passes to the extraordinary, you have to give passes to the ordinary as well.

What was Turing's crime? I am assuming the laws related to some anti-sodomy or some such behavioral thing.

Same response to Michael K. What was Turing's crime? Was Turing a pedophile? And I don't know what the right punishment is for such people, prison or the other thing.; 12/27/13, 3:10 PM
Scott said...: This post is the reason I believe the present gay leadership is still as irresponsible now as the original leadership at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic."

Who the fuck is the "present gay leadership"??? Name names. Name ONE name. If you can't, then mayhaps you are engaging in straw dog arguments.

When I used to live in the Twin Cities, there was a guy named Tim Campbell who published a little free newspaper called the "GLC Voice". And anytime there was a local news item involving gay pride, bath house raids, police trolling for gay hookers in Loring Park, they would immediately show up at Tim's office and ask him for his opinion. And Tim would give it. And Tim, being a radical, would have pretty outrageous opinions. Thus, Tim became a "gay leader" because the local press was eager for facile explanations of things they were too lazy to understand. Tim, although a nice guy (I've met him dozens of times) and pretty brave, didn't lead anybody.

I'm not gay because I signed up for it. I'm not part of any conspiracy. I don't need or want any opinion leaders telling me what to think. And I do think that almost all gays and lesbians are similarly situated.

As for Alan Turing: I think this pardon rights no wrongs. It's just cheap politics on the part of a government trying to burnish its image with the reputation of a dead man. It's tasteless and meaningless.

(Do you know what apology needs to uttered, but never will be? An apology for the actions of the Ku Klux Klan by the Democrats.); 12/27/13, 3:11 PM
n.n said...: We have made great progress since Turing's day. Today, we enjoy Democratically-approved and state-sponsored (i.e. taxpayer funded) murder using lethal injection or physical assault of over one million wholly innocent human lives, Baracks, Alans, Nancys, etc. every year in America alone; and for no other reason than money, sex, or ego.; 12/27/13, 3:19 PM
Darrell said...: Maybe the Queen should pre-emptively pardon Jimmy Savile, Chris Denning, and Michael Souter, too. You know the age restrictions and consent will go away one day as well.; 12/27/13, 3:39 PM
Anonymous said...: "Yes, he killed himself with poor chemical handling discipline."

I'm not certain that is true.

"In his authoritative biography, Andrew Hodges suggests that the experiment was a ruse to disguise suicide, a scenario Turing had apparently mentioned to a friend in the past.

Stilboestrol tablets
Turing was injected with Stilboestrol - a synthesised form of oestrogen
But Jack Copeland argues the evidence should be taken at face value - that an accidental death is certainly consistent with all the currently known circumstances.

The problem, he complains, is that the investigation was conducted so poorly that even murder cannot be ruled out. An "open verdict", recognising this degree of ignorance, would be his preferred position."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18561092; 12/27/13, 3:42 PM
Illuninati said...: Scott said:

"Who the fuck is the "present gay leadership"??? Name names. Name ONE name. If you can't, then mayhaps you are engaging in straw dog arguments."

No straw man arguments. The most odious individual among the gay leadership that I know is Perez Hilton who attacked Carrie Prejean on national TV because she stated her personal opinion that marriage is between one man and one woman. The rest of the gay community doubled down on the attack and began looking into her personal life for details of her private sex life to embarrass her.; 12/27/13, 4:17 PM
Anonymous said...: The most odious individual among the gay leadership that I know is Perez Hilton

Perez Hilton is in the "gay leadership"?! Who knew, that must mean you consider Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian to be among the "heterosexual leadership".; 12/27/13, 4:22 PM
Anonymous said...: The partner Turing chose was a boy who had just turned 16-

Can you provide any link for this assertion. Everything I found indicates he was 19, not 16.

I think you are willfully lying and attempting to imply, with no evidence, that Turing was a pederast.; 12/27/13, 4:28 PM
Anonymous said...: The partner Turing chose was a boy who had just turned 16--he brought him home and police saw the boy there when they visited him on an unrelated matter

Even if true, the age of consent (although only for heterosexual sex--as we have already established homosexual sex was illegal regardless of age) in England at the time was (and remains) 16.; 12/27/13, 4:34 PM
Illuninati said...: Freder Frederson said...

"Perez Hilton is in the "gay leadership"?! Who knew, that must mean you consider Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian to be among the "heterosexual leadership"."

Your second sentence is a non sequitur. By joining in the attack and doubling down on the Perez Hilton's odious behavior the gay community gave their sanction to Perez Hilton's behavior. Looking into Carrie Prejean's personal sex life compounded the stink. If prominent leaders of the gay community had come forward and denounced Perez Hilton's behavior and had supported Prejean's right to have her own opinion then it would be wrong to consider him a representative of the community.; 12/27/13, 4:37 PM
Anonymous said...: Your second sentence is a non sequitur.

No, you clearly claimed Perez Hilton as being "among the gay leadership".; 12/27/13, 4:54 PM
Anonymous said...: Ah, but Broccoli Scott, they think you chose to be gay and you are a sinner because you engage in gay sex. These are your fellow conservatives, aren't they?; 12/27/13, 4:59 PM
chickelit said...: Freder Frederson said...
No, you clearly claimed Perez Hilton as being "among the gay leadership".

From his Wiki bio:
After graduation from New York University in 2000, and before beginning his blogging career, Hilton attempted a career as an actor.[6] He briefly worked as a media relations assistant for LGBT rights organization GLAAD, was a freelance writer for gay publications, worked as a receptionist for NYC gay events club Urban Outings, and was briefly the managing editor of Instinct, a gay men's magazine.[7] He says he started blogging "because it seemed easy."

Hilton sounds like more of GLAAD-hander loudmouth than a leader.; 12/27/13, 5:04 PM
Illuninati said...: Freder Frederson said...
Your second sentence is a non sequitur.

No, you clearly claimed Perez Hilton as being "among the gay leadership".

Yes indeed. I did refer to Perez Hilton as among the gay leadership. So far as I know, the only relation between Perez Hilton and Paris Hilton is the similarity of their names.; 12/27/13, 5:04 PM
Michael K said...: "What was Turing's crime? I am assuming the laws related to some anti-sodomy or some such behavioral thing.

Same response to Michael K. What was Turing's crime? Was Turing a pedophile? And I don't know what the right punishment is for such people, prison or the other thing."

The law in England was the source of the crime. From the story, he was skirting pedophilia as so many mature gay men I know do.

The "chemical castration" is beneficial to pedophiles as it reduces their sexual urges and fantasies. Give the circumstances of Turing's arrest, it wasn't effective on him. It keeps pedophiles out of prison, which I would call beneficial. If you approve of pedophilia, you would disapprove of suppressing their fantasies by hormone manipulation.

Do you consider birth control pills punishment ?; 12/27/13, 5:09 PM
Anonymous said...: So far as I know, the only relation between Perez Hilton and Paris Hilton is the similarity of their names.

My point that Perez Hilton, like Paris Hilton, is famous simply because he is famous. They are both vacuous non-entities who are obsessed with celebrity.; 12/27/13, 5:14 PM
Darrell said...: Friends, trying to use Turing's death to help change the law, are certainly reliable witnesses. So are pro-gay writers trying to do the same. It was established at the inquest that he often re-plated his dinnerware because he was a fussbucket. The equipment was well used. He could have killed his mother with the fumes as well. She lucked out because her door was shut. Seem to recall that she often asked him to open the window with the smell, but he hated drafts.; 12/27/13, 5:19 PM
Illuninati said...: Freder Frederson said...

"My point that Perez Hilton, like Paris Hilton, is famous simply because he is famous. They are both vacuous non-entities who are obsessed with celebrity."

Perez Hilton was influential enough to be a judge on a nationally televised beauty contest. That alone puts him in a different league from the average person. If he were nothing but a rude non-entity as you claim, who represented nobody but himself, Donald Trump wouldn't have fired Carrie Prejean.; 12/27/13, 5:25 PM
Dr Weevil said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 12/27/13, 5:26 PM
n.n said...: Since pro-aborts perceive that human life has no intrinsic value, presumably from conception to death; and since pro-choice perceives that human life only has value when it offers a personal benefit; why are people concerned with this long-dead guy/girl, social construct?

Is it because he exhibited a dysfunctional behavior, which can today be wielded as a weapon, along with other Dodo behaviors, as well as exploited for profit? Otherwise, there is no reason to even recall this dead and buried clump of cells.

One million human lives... I mean clumps of cells, are prevented from being born every year, or are terminated shortly thereafter. They are execute by the state, at the mother's behest, for money, sex, ego, or merely convenience, through lethal injection, decapitation, castration, disembowelment, etc., then flushed down the toilet, out of sight and out of mind, and this is what "decent" people decide is outrageous or noteworthy? Seriously?; 12/27/13, 5:27 PM
Dr Weevil said...: Freder Frederson notes that in Turing's day, homosexual acts were entirely illegal, while the age of consent for heterosexuals was 16. He might also have noted that when "Homosexual acts were decriminalised under the Sexual Offences Act 1967" (Wikipedia), "the age of consent for such acts was set at 21". It was only lowered to 18 in 1994, to 16 in 2001.; 12/27/13, 5:29 PM
pm317 said...: Michael K said...
----------

You are crossing the line by putting words into my comment. I do not condone pedophilia -- no one in their right mind would. Show me a piece of concrete evidence that Turing was a pedophile. You seem to conclude that since he was gay he must be a pedophile. The story I have read is that he was hounded for being gay which is horrible.; 12/27/13, 5:30 PM
Anonymous said...: Perez Hilton was influential enough to be a judge on a nationally televised beauty contest.

Yes, that is proof positive that he is a world leader.; 12/27/13, 5:33 PM
Anonymous said...: But he influenced the Donald! Now that is powerful.; 12/27/13, 5:34 PM
pm317 said...: Do you consider birth control pills punishment ?

This question is so ludicrous but I will deign to respond to it.
Yes, it is a punishment if the birth control pills are force fed to poor women by a government agency.; 12/27/13, 5:47 PM
Illuninati said...: Freder Frederson said...
Perez Hilton was influential enough to be a judge on a nationally televised beauty contest.

Yes, that is proof positive that he is a world leader.

OK you are getting silly here.

Inga said...
"But he influenced the Donald! Now that is powerful."

Actually pressure from the gay community influenced the Donald. If the gay community hadn't coalesced around Perez Hilton the Donald would have ignored the situation.; 12/27/13, 5:47 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: It is intriguing to compare the lifestyles of near-contemporary, upper-middle-class English homosexuals Alan Turing, John Maynard Keynes, and Hugh Walpole.
Turing and Keynes picked up "rent boys". Walpole had a long term relationship with his chauffeur. The idea that being 'gay' means that you share an identity with other 'gays' is a fiction invented for political reasons, that is, to change or enforce public policy.
Just like the words 'sexual orientation'.; 12/27/13, 6:04 PM
Scott said...: "No straw man arguments. The most odious individual among the gay leadership that I know is Perez Hilton ..."

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ... !; 12/27/13, 6:16 PM
Scott said...: "That sounded like a petard," said Illuminati. "Is that mine? And why do I find myself being hoisted?"; 12/27/13, 6:20 PM
Michael K said...: "You are crossing the line by putting words into my comment."

"This question is so ludicrous but I will deign to respond to it. "

To repeat:

"From the story, he was skirting pedophilia as so many mature gay men I know do."

They do and this was what was said.

The "chemical castration" is beneficial to pedophiles as it reduces their sexual urges and fantasies. Give the circumstances of Turing's arrest, it wasn't effective on him. It keeps pedophiles out of prison, which I would call beneficial. If you approve of pedophilia, you would disapprove of suppressing their fantasies by hormone manipulation."

If you don't say so. None of this faux outrage. Do you agree that suppressing illegal urges and fantasies is beneficial to men who go to prison for expressing them ?

I think much of the prosecution of men who download such images on computers is misguided.

All you have to do is say so. Your outrage prompts some questions in my mind.; 12/27/13, 6:28 PM
Scott said...: If urges and fantasies can be illegal, what good is the First Amendment?

Perhaps when the metadata scraping activities of the NSA are finally approved as being outside the scope of the Fourth Amendment, the data can be used to identify anyone who accesses websites catering to illegal urges and fantasies. Such potential predators can be preemptively rounded up and put into detention camps, for the greater good.

We could call it the Urges and Fantasies Enforcement Administration.; 12/27/13, 6:35 PM
Anonymous said...: And they could send gays to the Rainbow Gulag.; 12/27/13, 6:37 PM
Scott said...: Also known as the Florida Keys, Inga.; 12/27/13, 6:40 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Instead of 'chemical castration', Turing could have gone for the six months in the pokey (har!).
If we can pardon dead men based on current sensibilities, why can't we condemn them, as well?

“Then Stephen, Pope and seventh of the name,
“Cried out, in synod as he sat in state,
“While choler quivered on his brow and beard,
“‘Come into court, Formosus, thou lost wretch,
“‘That claimedst to be late the Pope as I!’
“And at the word, the great door of the church
“Flew wide, and in they brought Formosus’ self,
“The body of him, dead, even as embalmed
“And buried duly in the Vatican
“Eight months before, exhumed thus for the nonce.
“They set it, that dead body of a Pope,
“Clothed in pontific vesture now again,
“Upright on Peter’s chair as if alive.
“And Stephen, springing up, cried furiously
“‘Bishop of Porto, wherefore didst presume
“‘To leave that see and take this Roman see,
“‘Exchange the lesser for the greater see,
“‘— A thing against the canons of the Church?’
“Then one (a Deacon who, observing forms,
“Was placed by Stephen to repel the charge,
“Be advocate and mouthpiece of the corpse)
“Spoke as he dared, set stammeringly forth
“With white lips and dry tongue — as but a youth,
“For frightful was the corpse-face to behold —
“How nowise lacked there precedent for this.
“But when, for his last precedent of all,
“Emboldened by the Spirit, out he blurts
“‘And, Holy Father, didst not thou thyself
“‘Vacate the lesser for the greater see,
“‘Half a year since change Arago for Rome?’
“‘— Ye have the sin’s defence now, synod mine!’
“Shrieks Stephen in a beastly froth of rage:
“‘Judge now betwixt him dead and me alive!
“‘Hath he intruded or do I pretend?
“‘Judge, judge!’— breaks wavelike one whole foam of wrath.; 12/27/13, 6:51 PM
Known Unknown said...: Perez Hilton is a gay leader like Tim Tebow is a football leader.; 12/27/13, 10:56 PM
Unknown said...: How about the Liberals when they ran the Tusckogee Experiments?

Or when a liberal President sent Japanese to internment camps?

Or when liberals banned DDT causing the death of millions from malaria.

Or when liberals allowed Rwanda to continue

Oh, wait, they are the caring ones.; 12/28/13, 1:37 PM