Quote Originally Posted by Armando View Post
We should not forget that Alan Turing's name has also been informally appended to a section of the 2017 UK Policing and Crime Act which pardons all who had been found guilty of most homosexual acts under the old Victorian era law. Around 50,000 men were thereafter posthumously pardoned. However, certain activities of living gay men were excluded from the Act, including cottaging (importuning in a public place), rape and under age sex.

Although parliament had declared its willingness to pass such a law, it took a lottery to achieve it. Each year, there is a lottery amongst members of parliament with the winners being allowed to introduce bills. It was a Scottish National Party MP John Nicholson who won the ballot and his Pardon Bill to provide blanket pardons was debated. Unfortunately the government chose to water down the provisions of the bill and include them as part of their larger bill Crime Bill. This has sadly made it much more difficult for those still living to gain their pardons due to the requirement of extensive bureaucratic paperwork and background checks. Within two years of the passage of the Act, only 200 applications for a pardon had been approved. 71% had been turned down. I am sure Alan Turing would be embarrassed to have his name informally linked to any Act that did not make it far easier for living gay men to receive their pardons.
Too late for the ones who were executed.