Why supporting gay rights is the rational thing to do. (Californians, please vote no on Proposition 8)

I recognize that many people find homosexuality offensive, and having grown up in small-town bible-belt America, I too have been at least moderately anti-gay in the distant past. However, anti-gay efforts cause real, calculable harm to society.

The premise is simple. When we create an environment that is hostile to gay people, to a greater or lessor degree, they leave. When they leave, we lose their contributions to our communities. The greater the degree of hostility, the more likely they are to leave to find a place more accepting of them. Now this may be the goal of many, but as a society, this greatly harms us all.

To fully understand the potential harm we cause ourselves with such intolerance, consider the case of Alan Turing. A mathematical genius with a gift for bridging the theoretical and practical worlds, in 1936 Turing imagined a "universal" machine with physical embodiment capable of executing any algorithm sufficiently defined. In other words, he was the father of the modern computer.

While in America in the 1930s,and recognizing the prospect of war with Germany, Turing studied cyphers and cryptography and returned to England to aid his country. He was put to work at England's wartime cryptanalytic headquarters at Bletchley Park, and was instrumental in the development of the Turning-Welchman Bombe, a computing device that made reading German Luftwaffe signals routine.

He then turned his attention towards Germany's naval communications, secured by the "unbreakable" Enigma machine. As a result of Turing's efforts, by mid-1941 the English were regularly decrypting German u-boat communications. Although the Germans added complexity to their machines, temporarily stopping England's interception, this too was defeated, setting the stage for Germany's demise.

In 1952, Turing was arrested, tried, and convicted for the "crime" of homosexuality, identified as "gross indecency" under an 1885 statute. He was given a "choice" between a prison sentence, or estrogen injections to treat his "illness." He opted for the injections, as prison may well have been fatal for him. As a known homosexual, he was ineligible for a security clearance, and fell into a downward spiral, ultimately committing suicide in 1954.

As a direct result of Turing's contributions to the Allied war effort, literally hundreds of thousands of lives were saved, including countless Americans. Imagine the course of history had Turing been outed in 1939 and driven from England. What if the Germans had a gay-friendly society, and welcomed him with open arms? I shudder to think of how WWII could have turned out very differently without Turing on our side.

Before you say "that was then, and this is now, and don't we prosecute gays any more," recognize that our anti-gay bias is still causing grave harm to our national security. Our "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the military forces gay people to either live a lie, or be fired, and has directly resulted in the expulsion of a significant number of language translators fluent in Arabic and Farsi. Imagine, in this "post 9/11" world, and in the midst of the Iraq war, we are still booting some of the same people we desperately need to help us figure out what the hell is going on.

I recognize that many, particularly those with deep-seated religious beliefs, may find it difficult to happily accept gay people. If this is you, please follow Jesus' teachings in the book of John, that "He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone," and leave it to god to sort out. You may also want to note that the anti-gay passages of the bible are contained in the book of Leviticus, which has more than a few rather odd pronouncements (consider this, this, or this), and may not be a reliable guide as to how to live your life.