IT IS hard to remember a time when going to the cinema was filled with possibilities beyond crunching popcorn and admiring Daniel Craig’s ripped abs. One of my friends discovered a love of Ealing comedies at roughly the same time he realised he was attracted to men.

In the plush seats of Fife’s finest cinemas, he enjoyed his first sexual encounters with strangers. Such occasions were furtive and, to some minds, seedy if not downright sordid. In the 1970s, before homosexual acts in Scotland were decriminalised, there were few other relatively safe options for a young man hoping to find a partner. Public toilets were notoriously dangerous and clubs or bars too risky, since the man offering you a drink might turn out to be a policeman.

Thus, for decades, the fear of going to court for a consensual act of sex ruined the lives of many, either by turning them into convicted criminals or forcing them to spend their lives in hiding or denial. Such a climate seems more like a blast from the ice age than something any civilised society could condone. Yet some of those convicted under the Sexual Offences Act might now only be in their mid-50s, showing just how recent their ordeal was. The majority, however, will be older, their lives blighted by the indelible stain of state-sanctioned intolerance.

It was awareness of this lingering injustice that inspired SNP MP John Nicolson. Last Friday he brought a Private Members’ Bill to the House of Commons, calling for a blanket pardon for the 65,000 people charged with crimes because of their sexuality.

At least 15,000 are still alive, and yet the proposal was crushed.Tory Justice Minister Sam Gyimah filibustered, talking until time for a vote ran out. He claimed a wholesale pardon that included the living would allow paedophiles to slip through the net. To an onlooker, however, his objection was not just tactical but seemed symptomatic of an old-style conservatism that cannot abide gay men.

This is not the place to rehearse the iniquities of that emotional and shocking debate. It is, however, right to ask why a pardon matters. For those who fell foul of this obsolete law one understands the desire for a public avowal that they had done nothing wrong. Mr Gyimah said, however, that such people can still be pardoned if they apply directly to the Home Office. Terrific! Watch the queue of nonagenarians racing to file their applications at the Post Office.

It is a double insult to expect individuals to outline their case, request a pardon and then await the verdict while a civil servant assesses their claim.When Alan Turing was pardoned in 2013, nobody felt this was a gimmick. Turing’s chemical castration to “cure” his sexual condition, which effectively led to his suicide, was by no means unusual.

His long-overdue exculpation has, until now, surely stood for all who suffered under this legislation. But why not accord everyone the same dignity or, at least, the chance to bite the hand that is trying to say sorry?

If I were a man convicted for such an offence in 1960, say, by a government whose members’ record of fidelity, probity and honour had been demonstrably woeful, I would not touch their apology with gardening gloves. But that is for each of those cleared of their crime to decide for themselves.

While there is no question about the justification of offering a pardon to those still alive (we should call it an obligation), the issue arises of how far back such pardons should stretch. For the likes of Turing and his fellow accused, hasn’t too much water already flowed under the bridge? What earthly good can it do to have their names cleared and their records wiped clean now they are gone? Unless you believe in an afterlife, then on one level it achieves nothing at all. Even so, it is far from an empty gesture. Families and friends carry the deceased’s shame almost as if it were their own for as long as they live or the stigma is remembered.

Look at the relief of those descendants of Scottish soldiers court martialled and shot for deserting in the First World War. We now know what their families always suspected: that they were not cowards but were suffering from shell shock.

Having that affirmed is a great step towards healing because shame afflicts not just the person accused but also all of those who love them. Even if it comes years after they’re dead, a pardon allows that festering sense of unfairness to end. The whole story has been told, and it is one nobody need feel ashamed of.

Yet is the practical purpose of a pardon limited to those within recent memory, for whom it has an immediate, personal relevance? I don’t think so. Some years ago the fishing town of Prestonpans made headlines by issuing an apology to the 81 witches who had been burned there in the 16th and 17th centuries. It was a far-sighted gesture, and one that ought to have been taken up by the rest of the country, with its grim record of persecution.

In the space of two centuries, between 1,000 and 1,500 witches, mostly women, were executed (and thousands more accused) for a crime that was taken off the books in 1736.

These victims died for allegedly practising the dark arts, though many had done nothing more hocus-pocus than keep a cat or brew a pot of nettle tea. But why stop there? What about those petty criminals and children who were hanged or transported for the theft of a tumshie? Or who went to the scaffold for questioning the existence of God?

Once you begin, the problem becomes where to call a halt. What was considered heinous in a particular age or class barely raises eyebrows today, except in horror at the barbarity of their treatment. If the authorities were to offer a pardon to every convict punished by now outdated legislation, the country would grind to a halt.

Hundreds of thousands have been vilified, punished or executed for doing or being something we no longer consider unacceptable. It is sobering to contemplate how many have been wronged over the centuries, and why. Always it comes down to power and control, to dislike or terror of those who are different or who prick people’s conscience or challenge their beliefs; or, worst of all, to simple delight in causing harm.

The day we officially pardon all those persecuted by the forces of the law is far off, and might never come. Yet imagine what it would be like to live in a country where the sins of the past are openly confessed, and the state bows its head for what it has done.

As civilised nations strive for enlightenment, the path ought to be strewn with apologies and the names of the cleared writ large. Reparation is due to the long departed as well as the recently dead, but it is owed first, and most urgently, to the living. What they do with it, of course, is for them to decide.