Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site bbncca.ARPA Path: utzoo!linus!bbncca!sdyer From: sdyer@bbncca.ARPA (Steve Dyer) Newsgroups: net.motss Subject: Re: Turing Biography and Discrimination Message-ID: <756@bbncca.ARPA> Date: Sun, 3-Jun-84 14:02:29 EDT Article-I.D.: bbncca.756 Posted: Sun Jun 3 14:02:29 1984 Date-Received: Sun, 3-Jun-84 22:22:20 EDT References: <3501@fortune.UUCP> Organization: Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Ma. Lines: 32 Sorry, John, I cannot agree with your posting about "homophobophobia." First, you state: If we truly want to end discrimination, we should become not only color-blind but sexual-preference blind and bigotry-blind. And probably blind to a lot of other things as well. This paragraph could be a bit more precise, but I feel you are confusing the end-point (no discrimination) with our present condition (wallowing in it.) If we truly want to end homophobia and discrimination, we have to identify it and work against it. Pretending that it doesn't exist may be comforting until one tries to operate in the real world--the illusion vanishes pretty quickly. Witness the Deukmejian AB-1 veto, the opposition to forming 'net.motss', the fervent opposition to civil rights bills in most states...one could go on and on. As far as the discussions about "who was gay vs. who wasn't", well, at some very basic level, the sexual preferences of historical figures aren't usually very important. However, when facts are covered up, biographies bowdlerized, manuscripts mistranslated, history distorted, the omission of such information is symbolic of the homophobic attitudes which engender such untruths. As Ron Rizzo said, one even knows the damn name of Charles Babbage's wife! Yet Turing, a major figure in mathematics and C.S., who died tragically young, a suicide during "treatment" for his homosexuality, is only a name to most of us, an instance of "pure mind" freed from corruption by the facts. -- /Steve Dyer {decvax,linus,ima}!bbncca!sdyer sdyer@bbncca.ARPA