UK Pardons Thousands of Gays Convicted Under Defunct Laws

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

Canada: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
USA: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…UK has decided to issue pardons to thousands of gay and bisexual men convicted of crimes under sexual offence laws that are now abolished. It was not until 1967, when England decided to decriminalize homosexual acts and the age of consent for homosexuals was reduced to 16, bringing it into line with the law governing heterosexuals, only recently in 2001.

One of the most prominent figures urging the government to issue pardons, Lord John Sharkey revealed that over 65,000 men were convicted under the now-repealed laws and almost 15,000 of them are still alive. According to the promise, anyone who had been found guilty of consensual homosexual sex would have their names cleared, and for those still living, the offences would be removed from any criminal record checks via a “disregard process”. Justice Minister Sam Gyimah stressed that “it is hugely important that we pardon people convicted of historical sexual offences who would be innocent of any crime today.”

The move is being dubbed as “Turing’s Law” due to the 2013 exoneration of celebrated World War Two codebreaker Alan Turing. The brilliant wartime mathematician who cracked Nazi Germany’s “unbreakable” Enigma code was stripped of his job and chemically castrated after being convicted of gross indecency in 1952 for having sex with a man, and killed himself two years later, aged 41. It was not until 2013, when Queen Elizabeth issued a rare royal pardon. Speaking at a radio show, Turing’s niece Rachel Barnes stressed that “Alan Turing just so, so deserves this,” adding that “to think that this is the man who cracked the enigma code and saved countless of millions of lives during World War Two and to think of the treatments that he went through at the hands of the government in 1952 is still unbelievable to us.”