Alan Turing pardon

I suppose it was the word castration, with its surgical connotations, which shocked me When. Is that really what libido reduction means? I agree with j08 that sex offenders are different - though I suppose 60 years ago homosexuals were regarded as sex offenders.
I am still not sure that the State has a right to 'forgive' retrospectively - the fact that homosexuality is now not a crime, must imply that at the time when it was, the State must have been in the wrong.
When we have been wrong about something, we don't forgive the person we have wronged, do we ? - we ask for their forgiveness.
It should be Alan Turing forgiving us, not the State forgiving him.
That's why the idea of a pardon seems inappropriate, to me.

Yes when. I appreciate what the rationale was at the time.

I think chemical castration would do a bit more than reducing libido.

Yes, you're right jane. There was no crime to pardon.

Yes indeed - and hardly likely turn them 'straight'!

'to'

Before anyone shouts, "it was a crime in those days", what I mean is, if you pardon it now you are saying that there really was something to pardon.

Is there any way a criminal record can be cancelled after a person's death? Surely that is what is needed. Not a "pardon".

Androcur and other libido-reducing drugs have been used on the general population as well as offenders since they were developed. No surgery is involved, and once they are stopped, obviously the effect wears off. It's not that long ago that gay men were being persuaded to opt for this treatment, even when the legislation on homosexuality was being changed.

It does no more than reduce libido. It doesn't affect attitudes, sexual orientation or proclivities. The therapy that accompanies such treatment is designed to change behaviour and challenge entrenched thinking.

I can see no point in pardon or apologies once someone is dead. I think the pardon was discussed in relation to living people whose previous offence was no longer an offence as the law had changed.

I cannot see the point in looking back at the way people behaved in the past through modern moral spectacles. Nobody now would countenance the gladiatorial and other arena based animal/human activities of the Roman period but it would be ridiculous to tut over them and expect modern Italians to be embarrassed by them because 21st century moralists consider such behaviour unacceptable.