On this day in queerstory: Alan Turing is born

January 28 shows up in queer history as a date when things are formally acknowledged—by courts, governments, and cultural institutions that would often prefer plausible deniability. It’s when realities get logged instead of ignored.

On January 28, 1915, Alan Turing was born in London. His work would later shape modern computing, cryptography, and artificial intelligence, while his prosecution for homosexuality would expose the lethal consequences of state-sanctioned moral policing. January 28 marks the birth of a figure whose life and death would become central to global conversations about queer persecution, scientific legacy, and posthumous justice.

The law enters sharply on January 28, 1981, when the European Commission of Human Rights registered complaints challenging criminalisation of homosexual acts in several member states. Registration didn’t make headlines, but it mattered: governments could no longer claim ignorance, and cases were formally queued for review. These early procedural steps fed directly into later rulings that reshaped sexual privacy rights across Europe.

In the United States on January 28, 1987, LGBTQ+ organisations submitted coordinated challenges to federal immigration policies that excluded people living with HIV. The filings argued that medical status was being used as a proxy for moral judgment and sexual stigma. These challenges would help erode restrictions that treated queer bodies as inherently suspect at national borders.

January 28 also appears in struggles over education. On January 28, 1994, advocacy groups in the United Kingdom submitted formal objections to proposed school policies restricting discussion of homosexuality, building on resistance to Section 28. The documentation compiled evidence of harm to queer students and teachers, ensuring the issue stayed active within parliamentary review processes rather than fading into administrative silence.

In Brazil on January 28, 1999, courts accepted filings challenging police raids on queer bars and clubs, particularly those targeting trans women and sex workers. The cases documented patterns of harassment, extortion, and violence, forcing municipal authorities to respond in legal rather than moral terms.

On January 28, 2005, LGBTQ+ activists in South Africa submitted briefs to the Constitutional Court addressing the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage protections. The arguments framed marriage as a material legal structure rather than a symbolic institution. Less than a year later, South Africa would become the first African country to legalise same-sex marriage.

More recently, January 28, 2014, saw coordinated releases of data on anti-LGBTQ+ violence across Russia and neighbouring states, timed to coincide with international legal and diplomatic meetings. The reports challenged state narratives of cultural tradition by documenting arrests, assaults, and censorship in detail that could not be easily dismissed.

In January 28, 2020, queer-led organisations submitted evidence to international sports bodies documenting discrimination against trans and intersex athletes. The filings pushed governing institutions to acknowledge the medical and ethical failures of sex verification regimes, placing bodily autonomy on the agenda rather than deferring endlessly to “fairness” rhetoric.