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From: rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: Re: Alan Turing biography
Message-ID: <747@bbncca.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 29-May-84 13:25:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: bbncca.747
Posted: Tue May 29 13:25:00 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 30-May-84 00:18:25 EDT
References: <7869@watmath.UUCP>
Organization: Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Ma.
Lines: 44

I think it ultimately is homophobia not to have heard biographical details
about Turing that would at least suggest if not plainly state that he was
gay.

For example, in literature classes where biography is considered relevant
to the author's work, gayness is systematically "covered up" or even bla-
tantly denied when it can be, except for well-known gay writers like Wilde
(& believe it or not, there are currently afoot attempts to deny Wilde was
ever sexually active homosexually, even though there's well-known documen-
tation in eg. Andre Gide's journals about Wilde's sexual adventures in
Morocco: see Richard Ellmann's absurd speculations in his article on Wilde
at Oxford in a recent New York Review of Books);  this was true at least
when I was in school in the late 60s/early 70s.  And current "revisionist"
efforts among some major literary scholars to deny that Walt Whitman or
Emily Dickinson were gay AT ALL make me believe the situation is much the
same today (well, maybe a little better, but academic homophobia can hard-
ly be discounted).

If you major in computer science, surely Turing's name comes up more than
once AND in different contexts in both classrooms & texts.  Think of how
often Charles Babbage is mentioned: many people know scattered biographi-
cal facts, including his wife's damn name, their pictures on massproduced
T-shirts, etc.  Yet Babbage is relatively unimportant today: interest in
him is primarily historical.  Yet Turing, like Babbage, and Goedel, or 
Einstein for that matter, is a prime candidate for iconography both within
science & popularly because of the startling correspondence between perso-
nal eccentricity and scientific originality in his life (think how much
many people know about the Einsteins, and how few know that Isaac Newton
was most likely homosexual -- information buried in a biography of Newton
by Frank Manuel).

I understand Sophie Quigley's point (and in this instance, in regard to 
the computer science curriculum of the particular school in question she
may in fact be right), but it can obscure the fact that homophobia is still
endemic in (even higher) education, perhaps less directly but maybe more
damagingly because of the indirection: that few mathematics, natural or
computer science or engineering majors in any school knew as a result
of their education that Turing (or Newton) was gay, yet they often receive
substantial biographical information from courses, teachers, or teaching
assistants about other scientific greats, even though few educators consider
biography very relevant to science.

					Cheers,
					Ron Rizzo