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Google To Add Pay To Cover a Tax For Gays
GrApHiX42 writes "Starting on Thursday, Google is going to increase the salaries of gay and lesbian employees whose partners receive domestic partner health benefits, largely to compensate them for an extra tax they must pay that heterosexual married couples do not. Google is not the first company to make up for the extra tax. At least a few large employers already do. But benefits experts say Google's move could inspire its Silicon Valley competitors to follow suit, because they compete for the same talent."
Put a sock in it. Your government discriminates against unmarried people of all sexualities, Gogole discriminates against unmarried heterosexual people.
Straight people can't marry people of the same sex either...
Your argument looks good except for the fact that the two similar looking issues are actually to very different things.
Yes, because Google is actively defying fair labor laws in order to push their agenda. Will Google rescind this liberal salary policy when the "Working Families Tax Relief Act" is not reauthorized and the marriage penalty returns (or actually returns to its pre-2003 level since the marriage penalty didn't fully disappear)?
Well actually I'm for gay marriage.
However your argument is invalid because I could be for the enforcement of fair labor laws and against the legalization of gay marriage. They are two different topics. A bigot could take the position that he is not only against gay marriage but he is sickened by the thought that Google is paying them extra to be gay.
So I conclude that the following statement:
is invalid since you mixed up the topic of fair labor practices with the more personal topic of gay marriage. Nice try though.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
There are no similarities between the movement for black civil rights and the movement for homosexual "civil rights". One is a movement that is about what someone is born like (with very dark skin). The other is a movement about what someone does (have sex with people of the same gender).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Either legalize same-sex marriage, or just do away with any kind of legal marriage at all. The latter is what I would do if I had my way. Why does the state meddle in what should be a commitment between two people?
Because the state is enforcing that relationship. If one spouse is in an accident and goes comatose, the other spouse is the medical and legal proxy and gets to decide whether or not to pull the plug, even over the wishes of blood relatives of the first spouse. Without marriage, that second spouse would not have rights that trump the rights of blood relatives. Same goes for probate-free inheritance and intestate succession. Marriage is not a "commitment between two people", it's a contract between two people and the state.
That's the way it is now in your jurisdiction. Whether is should remain like that is debatable. In some jurisdictions, all those things can be signed without a marriage, and undone without a cumbersome, painful divorce. Anyway, that's peripheral to my main point: that marriage law or lack thereof, should be the same for all couples, straight and same-sex.
"Man bed" seems pretty clear cut to me..
which is totally what she said
Sexual preference is not a protected class, so it is actually okay to discriminate. It's the law of the land.
Anyway, Google is a private business, and if you do not like their policies, then you may choose to neither work there nor purchase their products.
Have you ever heard the phrase, "Love the sinner, hate the sin."? All the Christians I know (and I know a few) hate sin (the acts) but would welcome all individuals. The problem for many homosexuals is that they let their activity define who they are--no heterosexual adulterer would ever do that. Both are sexual acts, why does the homosexual let their acts define them? We all struggle with some sort of activity that God considers bad (i.e. sin); why should we wear our sins openly? I don't go around announcing I like to ; no one wants to know anyway.
No, I am saying that who you have sex with is a choice. For that matter whether or not you have sex is a choice (except for rape victims, but I don't consider someone homosexual because someone of the same sex raped them). As far as I'm concerned, if you have never had sex with someone of the same sex, you are not homosexual (even if you would like to).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Yes, I see a difference between a movement that is about equal rights for all people regardless of who they are versus a movement that wants to give people "equal rights" regardless of what they do.
Whether or not one is homosexual is determined by what actions a person takes. A person who has sex with people of the same gender is homosexual. A person who does not have sex with people of the same sex is not homosexual, whether they find people of the same sex attractive or not.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Most of those are related (ie the what you can put in your body relates to how "clean" things are, which was also related to the Jews/Gentiles divide), but fair point. It's been a while since I've thought of any of this stuff, and it's all just intellectual masturbation to me at this point.
which is totally what she said
I understand what you're saying, but there are several passages that talk of same sex relationships being wrong. Pulling the "oh but the culture has changed now" or "the interpretation obviously is wrong" card in this case is just as I said, horse shit. I am aware of many more of the cultural differences back then than most Slashdotters considering I sat through >20 years of sermons, which did explain cultural context and were given by many guys who could read the original Greek, some who could read the Hebrew etc.
There were some many more fundamental things I had issues with, say for example God creating fallible creatures then punishing them for failing. Say the bible is true, what would have happened if nobody had sinned for hundreds of generations, what would have happened then? And surely if God is omnipotent and omniscient then he'd know beforehand exactly when/how/where his creations were going to sin, according to the original parameters he set when creating them? If I wasn't so interested in AI then perhaps that kind of thing wouldn't have been an issue, but I think that if the God of the bible exists and is all knowing, then everything that has happened in the Universe is his responsibility. From there I stopped worshipping him, and since then it's easy to see that Christianity is just as made up as any other religion. If you approach any religion from the point of view that it isn't true then it's easy to notice the flaws, and you don't have to make stupid excuses for them like you do if you're approaching it from the point of view that it's already true. Any true religion shouldn't have to make excuses (nor would it only have been given to one race while millions of others were and still are being punished eternally despite not even being given a choice - this is another one that people make excuses for, but it's stupid - if you don't even need to hear of the religion to be saved, then why bother evangelising?). From the tone of your post you may not even be religious, but I think that anyone who is serious about their beliefs should be a "fundamentalist".
which is totally what she said
The Dead Sea Scrolls found in the 1940s and 1950s prove that the old testament books were passed on unaltered from the time of Jesus until now. There are apparently enough quotations of the new testament in ancient writings that it can be almost entirely reconstructed. Sure, there may be minor variations in spelling, word order, and the occasional missing phrase. These are listed in the footnotes of most bibles. There is no evidence whatsoever for any alteration of doctrine. Furthermore, the bulk of the new testament is in the form of circulation letters ("copy and pass along"). It would be impossible to change them.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The ones that say stuff like "thou shalt not worship false idols" or "don't worship false gods" etc, ie the AV, KJV and NIV were common. There was also a gaelic one but I don't know gaelic so it wasn't much use.
If their sin was simply worshipping other gods he could just say that rather than go into specifics of mentioning sexual "deviancy". The fact that he did go into specifics makes it seem like those specifics themselves are considered wrong.
which is totally what she said