It’s not Alan Turing who needs an apology

My invitation to the Pink News dinner (where David Cameron won an award) on Wednesday night promised ‘an inspirational evening’ which would be a ‘celebration of the contritions of politicians, businesses, and community groups’ after ‘another historic year for LGBT equality’. I assumed, at first, that ‘contritions’ was a misprint for ‘contributions’, but maybe not. Contrition for any deed committed or word spoken against gay people in the past is now compulsory for all who wish to take part in public life, rather as Catholics must be absolved before taking communion. I agree that the criminalisation of consenting, adult, private, homosexual acts was cruel madness. But I am suspicious of all this breast-beating. It privileges concern about one past injustice over many others, and it is displacement activity. We would do better to address current injustice than grovel for things we did not personally do. In every age, the relation between sexual acts and the criminal law is fraught, because of rows about mores, consent, policing and evidence.