Posted on 04/16/2016 7:43:27 PM PDT by Cyberman
They did attempt to blackmail Turing (if not actually blackmail him) - and that was the ONLY REASON for the policy. More recently the Defense Department, as I understand it, would ask you if you were gay. If you said no, then fine. If you said yes, they’d ask if you were openly gay. If you said yes, you were fine - but if you were hiding it, you were susceptible to blackmail.
Like it or not, those policies made PERFECT SENSE sense at the time.
Turing lost his security clearance because he also molested children.
They don’t want to mention that part.
Is there a source for that? I know Oscar Wilde, another gay hero, did bugger 15 year old boys, which would certainly make him a sex offender by today’s standards, but I’ve never heard of Turing sexually abusing minors.
The age of (hetrosexual) consent in the UK has been 16 since 1885, having been as low as 12 10 years earlier.
But what is going on today is the attempt to whitewash wickedness by excusing it because of certain personal accomplishments in the worldly realm. By that reasoning, Hitler should be celebrated as a misunderstood hero because he did some great things on behalf of the German People.
I am reminded of the way the issue is handled in Charles Stross’ “Laundry” series — gay employees are required to be thoroughly out of the closet to insure that blackmail is not possible.
I just can’t imagine apologizing for a 75 year-old cultural norm.
Some suggestion he had Asperger’s.
What was inaccurate?.
Bloody good film though.
Here is one link:
He had been a marathon runner and an accomplished athlete.
No wonder he committed suicide.
The guy he had sex with not only burgled him, but also tried to blackmail him. That is why he reported the matter to the police.
Given that he cracked ENIGMA (which undoubtedly saved Britain’s ass) it’s a shame that the punishment was still either chemical castration or prison (where gays were treated like paedophiles in those days).
If you're old enough to be conscripted into the Army and face the Nazis on the battlefield then you are surely old enough to handle gay sex!
Bloody good film though.
The Imitation Game was an entertaining film. Unfortunately, if you read up on the facts surrounding the film not just one or two points but everything was portrayed in a slanted way that was not accurate. The first glaring problem is that they portrayed Alan Turing as a severely socially challenged introvert, when in reality he was actually not this way at all. He was actually known as being the “life of the party”. He had lots of friends and was socially savvy. His family initially complained about this but sort of changed their tune when the film became a success.
Basically none of the historical events and details were portrayed accurately. It is mostly a false narrative. Oliver Stone kept JFK closer to reality than those who were responsible for the Imitation Game. The article at Wikipedia appears to have been manipulated by LGBT advocates and doesn't even mention any more that the Poles were the ones primarily responsible for breaking enigma. But even Wikipedia mentions dozens of factual inaccuracies in the movie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imitation_Game
My criticism of the movie does not mean that I do not respect the actual accomplishments of Alan Turing. It is that the movie made very little attempt to be historically accurate. It was all about using an actual person's tragic ending to manipulate public opinion.
Cheers. I knew, as a historian and history buff, that there were mistakes like any film, I just was curious what you had spotted or thought were mistakes.
My wife and I actually saw The Imitation Game on its release date in the USA, Christmas 2014. The film was successful at creating an emotional response and as soon as we got back from the theater we immediately began researching all we could find out about Alan Turing.
My wife is a historian also who makes frequent presentations for the public and also at museums, schools and universities. She has been asked to help with the production of several independent films to help make sure that they were historically accurate. We are used to film makers working with scripts that are inadvertently not historically accurate.
The Imitation Game was a brilliant film, but it was also unapologetic LGBT propaganda which made no attempt to tell an accurate story about Alan Turing or the breaking of Enigma. We were very disappointed to find out that we had been manipulated.
Its kind of a stretch to describe a 19 year old as a ‘minor’. Back then they were conscripting 18 year olds into the armed forces and sending them into war in Korea. Even then the age of consent was 16 for straight partners, and I’m sure every country in the world has laws that state that by 18, they’ve reached the age of consent. Technically he was a sex offender by the standards of the day, but not by today’s standards. As for the sexual offences of Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris et all, they were illegal at the time, even if they were largely ignored at the time, so its not like they’re applying ex post facto law.
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