UK spy agency chief apologizes for old prejudice about gays (GCHQ)

Associated Press ^ | Apr 16, 2016 11:02 AM EDT | Danica Kirka

[Olog-hai]

The head of Britain’s digital espionage agency has apologized for the organization’s historic prejudice against homosexuals, saying it failed to learn from the treatment of World War II codebreaker Alan Turing.

In a rare public speech, GCHQ chief Robert Hannigan told a gathering organized by the rights group Stonewall that the agency’s ban on homosexuals had caused long-lasting psychological damage to many and hurt the agency because talented people were excluded from working there. […]

The speech offered a poignant tribute to Turing, the gay computer science pioneer and architect of the effort to crack Nazi Germany’s Enigma cipher. Turing was convicted of indecency in 1952 and stripped of his security clearance. He later committed suicide. …

[Cowboy Bob]

Queers are not loyal to any country. They are only loyal to the next bung hole they come across. And then that loyalty last only untill the next bung hole comes along...

[sparklite2]

Without Turing, the Enigma code might never have been broken, greatly extending the war in Europe. His treatment was abominable, but then the Brits also booted Churchill from office as soon as the war was over, so there you go.

[onedoug]

If Turing had not used his skills to effect advantage over the nazis, the nazis may have used theirs to effect advantage over him. And I doubt that a British homosexual would have fared well under nazi rule, despite the pink swastika.

[Reverend Wright]

Burgess, McClean, Cairncross, Vassos, Blunt, Driberg, Foote, Gott, Oldham

I can’t understand why MI5 would be suspicious of fags / sarc

[DIRTYSECRET]

They can still be blackmailed.

[sparklite2]

The guy who coined the phrase and wrote the book Pink Swastika claimed Hitler was a homosexual, too. Might as well say he was communist, then. He did the commies in no less than the homos.

[JLS]

Anyone can be blackmailed. What Mr. Apology seems not to understand is that given the culture at that time blackmail potential was great enough that there rules of that time maybe made sense. Instead he foolishly is trying to pretend that the past was different and the agency was wrong.

I guess leftists successfully managed to get everyone to forget how much they like eugenics and national socialism so history is just a story to them now.

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

He shouldn’t apologise. Even if being gay is not a big deal now, back then they were certainly vulnerable to blackmail when it was a surefire way of being ostracised by society and possibly even sent to prison. The intelligence services had to deal with the world as they were living in it, not as they might have wished it to be.