press release to say how sorry the British state is that for 21 years, from 1945 to 1966, it did everything it could to extirpate homosexuality from the British. That thousands, probably tens of thousands, of men were surveilled, stalked, arrested, and sent to prison, or offered — as Turing was — chemical castration, or aversion therapy consisting of electric shock torture or the administration of emetics to ‘correct’ homosexual behavior. That tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of gay lives — including mine — were warped, twisted, damaged, and destroyed by the British state’s blithe belief that it knew best.
"The most insulting part of the press release is the party political point Brown cannot resist making. It is, according to Brown, entirely down to New Labour that LGTB people have any rights at all. How dare he patronize us. Twelve measly, miserable, weasel-worded lines in which Brown fails to acknowledge the half-century-long journey of gay activists who struggled to try and right these wrongs, to try and achieve justice for gay men. I can remember the late 1980s and the early 1990s when Labour was far from friendly towards gay men, when it writhed in a sea of lies, half-truths, and half-promises about reforming the law. I can remember the time was Brown was as silent and as sullen on these issues as the grave.
"We deserve more than twelve measly, miserable, weasel-worded lines. If Gordon Brown was really, truly, feelingly, passionately sorry he should set up a Royal Commission to document and enquire into the holocaust of gay men that took place in Britain. And while we are about it, when is Gordon Brown, on behalf of the British Government, going to apologize for returning those ‘pink triangle’ prisoners liberated from the concentration camps to German Prisons with the foul and twisted logic that these men had been convicted of criminal offences and as concentration camps were not prisons, they had to serve their sentences?
"Brown’s statement means nothing to the LGTB movement. It probably means nothing to Brown himself. It has no historical significance. There has been a change in establishment attitudes towards gay men, but this change has come about over the last fifteen years, beginning with John Major’s invitation to Ian McKellen to Downing Street to talk about a gay rights agenda. I very much doubt whether Gordon Brown even wrote it himself. The statement was only issued in response to an e-petition which thousands had signed. The real question to ask is: would Brown have issued this statement without the e-petition? The answer is quite clearly no. Labour has had twelve years in power. Ample time to apologise. But, curiously, no apology has come forth, until now.
"If Gordon Brown really cared about gay men rather than about saving his miserable political skin in the face of a potential electoral defeat for Labour that will make Dunkirk look like a Sunday School outing, then he would set up compensation schemes for those gay men who were victims of state persecution. Many are still alive. Many more have died. I grew up in a provincial city where I got to know many of these men. I feel their pain. I feel my pain. They were angry, but not angry enough. I am still angry. Furious. Outraged. Disgusted. Twelve measly, miserable, weasel-worded lines to wash away 50 years of pain. It’s not enough. Not anything like enough," McKenna concluded.
Turing’s persecution came at the height of anti-gay Cold War hysteria provoked by the defection to Moscow of the diplomats Guy Burgess, a notorious homosexual, and Donald Maclean, and in the climate of the day homosexuality was virtually equated with treason in the minds of the police. (For more on what is known as The Great Purge of the early 1950s, which ensnared some 5,000 British gay men, see this reporter’s September 6-12, 2007 article, "Free the Buggers.")
In a way, Turing, who had never made a secret of his same-sex orientation, was a victim of his own candor. In January 1952, Turing — who had received an OBE, or Order of the British Empire, for his war wo