The GLAAD Media Award nominated Alan Turing biopic The Imitation Game this weekend became the highest grossing indie film release of 2014 with a domestic box office take of over $60 million, and a global box office take of over $110 million. The film has played in more than 2,000 theaters in the eight and a half weeks since its release and scored eight Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Best Actor in a Leading Role for star Benedict Cumberbatch.
As the film illustrates, Alan Turing was convicted for "gross indecency" and chemically castrated in 1952 for being gay, and received a posthumous royal pardon over 60 years later in 2013. Now Cumberbatch and out British actor Stephen Fry are urging the British government to pardon the 49,000 other British citizens who, like Turing, were persecuted under anti-gay laws.
"Alan Turing was not only prosecuted, but quite arguably persuaded to end his own life early, by a society who called him a criminal for simply seeking out the love he deserved, as all human beings do," Cumberbatch wrote in an e-mail to The Hollywood Reporter. "60 years later that same government claimed to ‘forgive’ him by pardoning him. I find this deplorable, because Turing’s actions did not warrant forgiveness — theirs did — and the 49,000 other prosecuted men deserve the same."
"Should Alan Turing have been pardoned just because he was a genius when somewhere between 50 to 70 thousand other men were imprisoned, chemically castrated, had their lives ruined or indeed committed suicide because of the laws under which Turing suffered? There is a general feeling that perhaps if he should be pardoned, then perhaps so should all of those men, whose names were ruined in their lifetime, but who still have families," Fry said following a screening of the film. "It was a nasty, malicious and horrific law and one that allowed so much blackmail and so much misery and so much distress."
You can sign the campaign's Change.org petition here and find a screening of The Imitation Game near you.
"The @ImitationGame is an incredible film that shows how hugely destructive anti-LGBT culture can be." pic.twitter.com/9JnlKEbspv
— Sarah Kate Ellis (@sarahkateellis) January 6, 2015