Today is Alan Turing’s birthday, if he were alive he
would be 100 years old
Alan
Turing was one of those people who changed the world. His work, his genius
was incredible. He is, deservedly, considered one of the fathers of computing
and it’s not an exaggeration to say his work had a pivotal effect on the
outcome of the Second World War, certainly in helping Britain survive the
constant U-Boat attacks. He did work in Mathematics I won’t even pretend to
understand.
In short, he is a man whose name should have a guaranteed
place in the history books.
Yet it did not. I grew up not knowing his name, not once
was it mentioned in the history books. A depressing number of people have never
heard of him. Many of those who knew his name didn’t realise the sheer
magnitude of what he’d achieved. A large number of those who had heard of him
hadn’t learned that he was gay and fewer still had heard what had happened to
him.
Because Alan Turing was gay. As a gay man he was
convicted and branded a criminal, as a gay man he lost his security clearance that
allowed him to provide us with his brilliant work, and as a gay man he was
chemically castrated. He endured, but his writings showed a man who hated what
had happened to him, until he finally committed suicide.
We killed one of our heroes.
We can’t change that. But now, today, he’s remembered
again. I think it’s no lie to say more people know his name now than even 10
years ago. We’ve campaigned to have the government apologise, we’ve campaigned
to have him recognised, we’ve campaigned to have the crimes against him noticed
and we’ve campaigned to have him remembered. This has been an incredible
victory.
This is why it’s desperately important we look back at
history. There are GBLT heroes in the past, there are GBLT role models, there
are GBLT people who changed the world and made our presents. But they are often
hidden, or forced into the closet by their homophobic society or generations of
homophobic historians – and we have to find them while we still can, if we
still can.
