“Breaking the Code” Offers Insight to Irvine Measure N

What has to be a leading candidate for the Orange County irony of the year is the juxtaposition of a play called “Breaking the Code” at South Coast Repertory and the upcoming election referendum in Irvine to decide whether to remove homosexuals from the protection of a municipal human rights ordinance.

“Breaking the Code” should be required viewing for everyone eligible to vote in that election. The play dramatizes the story of British mathematician Alan Turing, whose genius was responsible for breaking the Germans’ enigma code, thus making it possible for the Allies to know in advance of German troop movements and strategy. Some historians give Turing a large share of credit for the Allies’ victory in World War II.

But the real drama in Turing’s story came several years after the war when he almost off-handedly acknowledged his own homosexuality to a police officer investigating a robbery. As a result, Turing ended up in a British jail for the crime of gross indecency and several years later apparently took his own life.

To add to the current irony, Turing was able to break the Germans’ code by inventing the computer he called an “electronic brain.” And the computer, with its various permutations, forms the backbone of the enormous industrial development that has taken place in Irvine.

Yet, if Alan Turing were living in Irvine today and Proposition N prevails, he would be denied the protection of the human rights ordinance because of his homosexuality.

Thus it would appear that our ability to deal logically and responsibly with the homosexuals in our midst hasn’t changed very much in the four decades since his country publicly humiliated its erstwhile hero, Alan Turing.

Why should this be?

To answer that question and put the matter in some sort of historical perspective, I talked with two UC Irvine social ecology professors who have conducted extensive research in criminology and law.

John Dombrink points out that Orange County is no more backward in its sexual attitudes than many other areas of the United States. He estimates that half of our states have sodomy laws that apply to both heterosexual and homosexual behavior, in and out of marriage, and that our only protection against such laws is that they aren’t generally enforced. (I recalled that when I passed through Georgia last summer, an Atlanta man had been thrown in jail for having consensual oral sex with his wife; she later got mad at him and turned him in.)

“Sexuality,” Dombrink said, “doesn’t follow Orange County political conservatism. Every public opinion poll shows Orange County very close to the national pro-choice consensus and sexual attitudes in general. That’s why I think the people in Irvine are educated and sophisticated enough to defeat Proposition N.

“Our laws haven’t caught up yet with the drastic changes in the American family that have led to a much greater diversity of accepted life styles and household arrangements that would have been considered deviant 30 years ago. As a result, we have become more tolerant of diversity of all kinds and generally more respectful of personal privacy.”

If this is true, then why the growing agitation in Orange County about homosexuality?

“Because the surfacing of this diversity has been seen as an enormous threat to certain types of religious people who are both committed and activist. And in an area of 2 million citizens, one-tenth of 1% who are really committed can seem like a movement.”

Professor emeritus Gil Geis agrees. “This wasn’t an issue before,” he told me, “because it stayed in the closet. What’s happening now is a reaction to homosexuality coming out of the closet. That causes an anti-gay group to coalesce, while the people who have no problem with this tend to be more passive, with a lower-decibel level. Most of them don’t see it as an attack on their own rights, which is probably why, historically, the anti-gay groups win most of these referendums.

“The thing that fascinates me most is the argument over whether homosexuality is biological or by choice. I don’t think the evidence that it is genetic is very conclusive, but the point seems irrelevant to me. In this free society, shouldn’t people have a right to choose?”

“Breaking the Code” dramatizes these points without preaching. Such even-handed treatment of what has turned into an almost exclusively emotional issue is hard to come by these days.