Thousands of Men to Be Pardoned for Gay Sex, Once a Crime in Britain

October 27, 2016

From the NYT: LONDON — The men were convicted — tens of thousands of them — of crimes like buggery, gross indecency and loitering with intent. They had been arrested in bars, coffee houses and public bathrooms, and sometimes in the privacy of their homes and with their partners. In many cases, their only offense was seeking intimacy with another man.

Decades after homosexuality was decriminalized in Britain, the government announced on Thursday that it would posthumously pardon thousands of gay and bisexual men who were convicted, in essence, of having or seeking gay sex. Since 2012, men with such convictions who are still alive have been able to apply to have their names cleared.

The law providing for the pardons, which could take effect in a matter of months now that it has the support of the Conservative government, is named for Alan Turing, the mathematician who made a major contribution to Britain in World War II by cracking Germany’s Enigma coding machineand was a central figure in the development of the computer….

George Chauncey, a history professor at Yale, said he was not aware of any similar blanket pardon being offered in the United States for sodomy, degenerate disorderly conduct or other charges commonly used against men caught trying to pick up other men. The closest, he said, is the Obama administration’s policy, since 2011, of allowing military veterans who were discharged for homosexuality to apply to have their discharges reclassifiedas “honorable” rather than “undesirable.” But those decisions are made on a case-by-case basis.

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