Anti-Gay Law Pardons Going to Thousands of Dead or Alive Brits

The abolishment of British anti-gay laws will trigger pardons for thousands of men who were convicted under laws against homosexuality, the government announced on Thursday.

But many men who were convicted want more than a pardon, said the BBC, they want an apology.

Of the pardoned, those who are still living will be eligible to have their criminal records expunged, said the San Diego Union-Tribune.

The men who have been pardoned were originally convicted for having consensual same-sex sexual relations decades ago, before homosexuality was made legal in the U.K..

Justice Minister Sam Gyimah said the government had been trying “to put right these wrongs.”

“It is hugely important that we pardon people convicted of historical sexual offenses who would be innocent of any crime today,” he said.

Calls for a general pardon have been in the works since Alan Turing, a World War II codebreaker, was prosecuted for having sex with another man after the war.

He was stripped of his security clearance.

Turing died in 1954, but sex between men remained illegal in England until 1967, said Fox News.

Men wanting pardons will have to apply to have their criminal records wiped clean, but gay rights campaigners disagree with that notion. They believe the government should issue a blanket pardon in which the men wouldn’t be required to apply.

Others want more.

“To accept a pardon means to accept that you were guilty. I was not guilty of anything,” said 94-year-old writer George Montague, who was convicted of gross indecency in 1974, Fox noted. “I think it was wrong to give Alan Turing, one of the heroes of my life, wrong to give him a pardon,” Montague told the BBC.

“What was he guilty of? Being born only able to fall in love with another man,” he added.

Montague is committed to fighting to get an apology from the government for how he and others were treated.

“We were treated very badly. I can’t understand it, even today, that there are so many people who do not understand or accept homosexuality,” he said, according to CNN.

Montague says being gay should have never been considered a crime.

“How can that be a crime? It’s not fair,” he said. “The law didn’t apply to heterosexuals – they could have sex anywhere. But if you were gay and all you did was kiss your boyfriend in public you were convicted.”

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