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Agreed. There's been many atrocious things done in the past by almost every country, and it would be very simple to whitewash everything out of existence with p

Agreed. There's been many atrocious things done in the past by almost every country, and it would be very simple to whitewash everything out of existence with pardons, however it doesn't change what happened or what resulted from it. It's better to stand by your mistakes than to pretend they never happened.

GiraffeNecktie 15y ago
It would not be, in any sense, a "whitewash", actually the reverse. A whitewash covers up mistakes. This would be an acknowledgement that the laws of the time were injust.
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- robertskmiles 15y ago
  We have had an unequivocal apology, made on national television by the Prime Minister himself, saying that the conviction was "horrifying" and "utterly unfair". I think that counts as "an acknowledgement that the laws of the time were injust". A pardon is a separate and distinct legal action, which is unwarranted.
  - GiraffeNecktie 15y ago
    Sure. But warranted or unwarranted, it's anything but a whitewash.
    - electromagnetic 15y ago
      It is a whitewash. The treatment of the homosexual community at that time was horrendous. Pardoning his act because it's non-objectional today is stupid. Why not pardon all the Jews of the pogroms for having the wrong ethnicity. It's whitewashing because the act of doing it is more offensive than simply leaving it as is. Pardoning Turing would be pardoning him for being gay and makes no correction for the horrendous treatment he received, which was the point of the apology. An apology is what Turing deserved. A pardon is an insult to his memory.
      - GiraffeNecktie 15y ago
        I'm sorry, but you simply don't understand the meaning of the word "whitewash" http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whitewash http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whitewash. You don't "whitewash" something by publicly apologizing for it or by pardoning someone who has been wronged. That's almost exactly the opposite of what the word "whitewash" actually means. When you "whitewash" something you DENY that it happened or try and BURY it.

GiraffeNecktie 15y ago

It would not be, in any sense, a "whitewash", actually the reverse. A whitewash covers up mistakes. This would be an acknowledgement that the laws of the time were injust.

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robertskmiles 15y ago
We have had an unequivocal apology, made on national television by the Prime Minister himself, saying that the conviction was "horrifying" and "utterly unfair". I think that counts as "an acknowledgement that the laws of the time were injust". A pardon is a separate and distinct legal action, which is unwarranted.
- GiraffeNecktie 15y ago
  Sure. But warranted or unwarranted, it's anything but a whitewash.
  - electromagnetic 15y ago
    It is a whitewash. The treatment of the homosexual community at that time was horrendous. Pardoning his act because it's non-objectional today is stupid. Why not pardon all the Jews of the pogroms for having the wrong ethnicity. It's whitewashing because the act of doing it is more offensive than simply leaving it as is. Pardoning Turing would be pardoning him for being gay and makes no correction for the horrendous treatment he received, which was the point of the apology. An apology is what Turing deserved. A pardon is an insult to his memory.
    - GiraffeNecktie 15y ago
      I'm sorry, but you simply don't understand the meaning of the word "whitewash" http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whitewash http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whitewash. You don't "whitewash" something by publicly apologizing for it or by pardoning someone who has been wronged. That's almost exactly the opposite of what the word "whitewash" actually means. When you "whitewash" something you DENY that it happened or try and BURY it.