Scotland apologizes to gay men for historical convictions – thoughts?
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I don't know how I feel about this. The state did this but an individual is apologizing. It feels strange. The people who enforced the policy aren't apologizing. Neither are the people who enacted the initial legislation. Is this just more PC or it this necessary?
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/scotland-apologizes-gay-men-historical-convictions-153855710.html
EDINBURGH (Reuters) - Scotland's devolved government issued an apology on Tuesday to men convicted in the past for same-sex activity and passed a new law which will allow them to clear their names.
"It is only right that we address this historic wrong," First Minister Nicola Sturgeon told the Scottish parliament.
"Discriminatory laws, although abolished, continue to have implications for people to this day," she added. "The wrong has been committed by the state to them, not by the individuals."
She added: "I categorically, unequivocally and wholeheartedly apologize for those laws and for the hurt and the harm they did to so many."
Watching from the gallery, same-sex couples wept, held hands and applauded.
Consensual homosexual acts between men aged over 21 in Scotland were decriminalized in 1981.
"(The) apology will give a great deal of comfort to many who were unjustly prosecuted and will help draw a line, once and for all, under a dark period in Scotland's history," gay rights group Stonewall said in a statement.
The legislation "acknowledges the wrongfulness and discriminatory effect of past convictions for certain historical sexual offences" by pardoning people convicted of those offences and providing a legal process for convictions to be disregarded.
In January, the UK government passed a similar law relating to England and Wales.
(Reporting by Elisabeth O'Leary; editing by Stephen Addison)
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Here are some points on why people do this.
1/ Cultures don't work if they aren't accurate about their own past and how their past affects their present. (It's an enormous problem in Canadian culture. Just to start with, a quarter of our population is French and there's been a major separatist movement since the '60s. If we can't figure out how to bridge those differences our country will break up.)
2/ People who were hurt by these laws are still alive. It's possible that there are people who aren't allowed to travel since they have 'sex offender' on their police records.
3/ Injustices that are ignored are like unhealed wounds. Acknowledgement of the past and acknowledgement that it was wrong can helps societies heal. -
yes
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**a step forward!
:)**
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The state did this but an individual is apologizing. It feels strange. The people who enforced the policy aren't apologizing.
Is this just more PC or it this necessary?
from the article,
"passed a new law which will allow them to clear their names."
I think yes, it's necessary because it's not just empty words. What you described would be ideal, yes, but I think it helps to see cases like this as governments being a separate being from individuals running it (compare/contrast: the American Government between Obama and Trump)
And then what JohnAllenson said, all of them.
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A huge step forward, people who were still classed as sex offenders all because they loved a man are now free of that brand they were given.
Scotland has followed in the UK governments footsteps who did the same a few months ago.
