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Google Launches International Campaign For Recognition of Same-Sex Marriage
Apple and many other tech companies have offered benefits to same-sex couples (and sometimes made them a sticking point) for quite some time now, but Google is taking its position of inclusion for sexual minorities outside the company itself; the company has announced an international campaign to promote legal marriage equality for same-sex couples, called "Legalize Love." According to CNN's version of the story, while this represents Google's policies overall, the campaign will at first "focus on countries like Singapore, where certain homosexual activities are illegal, and Poland, which has no legal recognition of same-sex couples." dot429 quotes
Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe of Google, speaking in London Saturday at a summit where the initiative was announced: "We want our employees who are gay or lesbian or transgender to have the same experience outside the office as they do in the office. It is obviously a very ambitious piece of work."
Also at CNET.
See corporations are people without gender. They want to be able to marry each other.
Then they can file a joint tax return and have children.
Possibly worth noting that on Saturday in London was World Pride 2012, and representatives from Google were among the groups in the parade (photo)
Because the mind of a 7-year-old is not mature enough to know whether or not it really wants to marry anyone, let alone a 68-year old. I don't see why that's relevant.
The US still has a long way to go for full LGBT equality. I can understand stuff like trying to stop stoning of homosexuals in countries where it is illegal, but as for the same-sex marriage fight, it hasn't even been won on the home front yet. I hate to call it a war... but why expand the territory of a war when you're still losing battles in disputed territory you're trying to occupy?
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Google promoting same sex marriage is great and all, but what about ladyboys and the so called third gender? No, you cannot lump it under homosexuality as it's a different issue. Same sex marriage is old thing, everyone should fight for people's right to be whatever gender - or a third gender - if they so want to. Even on Slashdot I always get modded down when I mention ladyboys, and I hope not this time because this issue needs to see some daylight.
I'm not sure what being natural has to do with a man-made institution like marriage, but homosexuality is indeed natural: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_animals
Also, the difference between homosexuals marrying and children marrying is consent. The same goes for marrying animals as that is another argument that is often brought up by homophobic people like yourself in this kind of debate.
Corporations should stick to their core mandate, and not get into 'social engineering'.
Be it a 'worthy' cause or not, its not their place to stick their noses into it and 'pick sides'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Why shouldn't gays have the right to live in misery like the rest of us?
As far as the government is concerned marriage should be treated like any other contract. They should have no say in the contents. If there is a breech take it to court and let a jury decide. Then purge out of law any benefits or tax considerations based on material status and just people as individuals.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
I'll be the last to say that Google can do nothing wrong (and avoid using their services as much as I can for privacy reasons), but it's things like this that in my eyes put them a step above their competition ethically. Do we see Facebook do this? Microsoft? Apple? Same thing with withdrawing from China rather than censoring on behalf of their government, and a bunch of other examples.
Corporations aren't people, but as Google demonstrates, they can occasionally show their human face.
Wow only two comments in and some idiot managed to compare a consensual relationship between adults to pedophilia. Next up, some ignoramus saying "but what if a guy wants to marry his Great Dane?"
OK, I am not promoting the original commenter view, but then how about 3 or more mature adults who love each other?
Why do corporations and governments have any say in who we love, live with, and raise together?
The whole gay marriage issue seems like such a tiny specific issue to have a problem with.
And the how they always bring love into it, always bugs me. Love has nothing to do with legal marriage or what homosexuals want. Homosexuals, in general, want one thing to legalise marriage and gay sex. They do not want to legalise pedo-love, bestiality, or polygamy.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
The campaign will focus on countries like Singapore, where certain homosexual activities are illegal, and Poland, which has no legal recognition of same-sex couples.
It sounds like they're doing things wisely and focusing on countries in which the politics are not so turbulent and are not dominated by religious extremists. Poland and Singapore could probably be swayed. Egypt and Afghanistan obviously have bigger issues to contend with, and Afghanistan, that would be pissing money and effort away.
So I'm impressed that they seem to be taking a pragmatic approach and focusing on what they can actually do, rather than slamming their head against the biggest, sturdiest walls.
I'm fine with Google being free to promote homosexuality as long as I am free to disagree with them and promote heterosexuality. Vive la difference!
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
I generally support gay rights, but I've always been a little meh on the idea of gay marriage. What I'd really like to hear is for a gay marriage advocate to explain to me why polygamy should be illegal yet gay marriage should be legal. If we should let two guys or two girls get married because they really love each other and want to be together forever and all of that, then why shouldn't we let a guy marry two or three or more girls (or whatever other combination you can think of) if they all really love each other and want to be together in that way? It isn't something completely absurd like marrying dogs or cars or something - there have been and still are many societies where polygamy is normal and accepted and widely practiced. So why not?
I don't reply to ACs
Marriage is a religious rite [...]
This is not true for instance in Germany and many other european countries. There marriage is a legal procedure, performed by a municipal clerk. You can only go to your church, synagoge, mosque or whatever the sacred place is called in your religion to celebrate your marriage if you can show the official document sealing your marriage. Also the legal implications coming with marriage require the official procedure and the accompagnying paperwork.
"but what if a guy wants to marry his Great Dane?"
He'd have to train the Great Dane to say "I do" first.
If you can manage that feat, then it would ok.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
So if people who are getting married, they get married by the government. If they want to undergo a ritual somewhere else, like in a church, that can be done separately.
That is how it is done in at least Belgium and Germany and probably other countries as well.
It should then be extremely easy to allow same sex marriage as government should not discriminate on gender.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
They do not want to legalise pedo-love, bestiality, or polygamy.
Marriage confers rights that the state blocks from others. The issue isn't who can get married, but why the right to be "next of kin" is banned from private contracts, and only allowed in contracts "blessed" but the state. beastiality isn't marriage. That's like saying you should be able to marry your hand. Or poligimatically marry both hands. You hand can't consent, and can't own land, so the right of "next of kin" is denied to it already. Same as animals. You can form a trust to hold land on behalf of your favorite cat, but the cat can't own land. It's not about marying whoever you want. It's a rights issue about why some people can't enter into a legal contract with others on the same framework as other people.
That, and Congress has written a law explicitly contradicting the Constitution. The Defense of Marriage Act contradicts the "full faith and credit" clause. State A marries two gays, then they are married in all 50 states, as per the Constitution. Why Congress would pass an unconstitutional law explicitly against gay marriage, then take it upon themselves to champion the cause is beyond me. Just go back to Constitutional law. Let one state recognize it (say, New Hampshire) and then the gays can go there to get married, and then that "contract" will be recognized in the other 49. Problem solved. You can live in a place that doesn't recognize gay marriage, but still follows the Constitution, right?
Learn to love Alaska
I do not think it matters as marriage has typically been of religious control. The state got involved because many were being excluded from marriage and it was more or less a power struggle between the ruling powers and religious authorities. Eventually, marriage carried legal ramifications when widowers rights, automatic transfer of ownerships and other legal benefits started being assigned automatically because of marital status.
In the debate on gay marriage, if those assigned legal rights were to be removed and separated- say applied for and consented to separately, the gay marriage debate would likely disappear. The big problem is mostly the mixing of religious born rituals with legal procedures.
i got no problem with gay people whatso ever, but I think google should stick to gooogle things, and not political things.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
No problem with that.. but only if would stop recognizing marriage at all.
Scrap it from law all together. That way we would still end up with equallity for all.
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
one could argue everyone has the same right to marry someone of the opposite sex, there is no preferential treatment. But when we have the "gay olympics" or the "gay this" or "gay that" it is actually more exclusionary than one would think. People make the argument that so and so was persecuted and whatever for xx years in the past, but it isnt the past. One cant argue for equal treatment, and still seek preferential treatment. Example, If a straight man hits a gay man, he can be charged with a hate crime, when a gay man atackes a straight man, he must have provoked it. where is the equality?
I am sure I will burn off some karma with this post, but I honestly believe that equality is there, but as long as communities continue to differentiate and not assimilate, than it is only preferential treatment that is being sought after.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Again, no, it isn't. Monogamous marriages were a secular Roman practice (most societies before that were polygamous.) The Catholic church may have interpreted some scripture to turn a civil practice into a sacrament, but the civil practice preceded it historically and structurally.
The etymology of "marriage" is from the Latin "maritare."
Google should not be meddling with this. What happened to 'not be evil' This reeks of evil.
i don't think this is "evil", but i agree, google doesn't really need to be advertising one way or the other. Offering it to employees in same sex relationships is up to them, but to advertise? That's pushing it too far. What's next, abortion? I don't like seeing companies get political
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
every country can improve
by your logic, no one can ever criticize any other country in the world outside of their own, because their own country still has problems and always will
fucking bullshit
i can criticize any country i want, including my own, and it's not hypocrisy. because i am first and foremost a human being, concerned with human rights, and with a human conscience. nationalist silos may confine your thinking, but not mine
don't think the parameters of your own self-chosen provincialism has any bearing on me
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I don't know about the hate, but I will say that this is a divisive area and will create disdain with a portion of their user base. The country is about half split on the issue with alternatives to google popping up all the time.
This is a corporation getting involved in politics which seems to be the greatest evil that most people can agree on over the last 30 or more years. Of course some people will be shallow enough to excuse their favorite company getting into politics that do not directly involve their operation because it is something they want to support, but it doesn't change anything.
I guess the next question might be, what if Microsoft and GM decided to advocate the pro life argument and IBM all the sudden threw in support for teaching creation in schools. I'm assuming there would be differences in how that is viewed but in reality it is no different. These are just places that no corporation should be involved in- especially if they claim to do no evil which they are clearly participating in.
If companies publicly show support for certain things, I can avoid them. If they quietly throw millions of dollars at those causes, I won't know that I should.
Here in Norway you can go to a municipal clerk, but churches, mosques and other organizations like humanitarians can get a "license to marry" if they do their paperwork. So the priest is the one actually marrying you both in the legal and religious sense, but the paperwork will be exactly the same. Unlike the municipal clerk they are not required to marry anyone though, so they can have their own rules on who they'll marry and not. I think those two varieties cover pretty much all of Europe, it's a legal procedure in some way not just a marriage contract.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I support Freedom, and support the Support of Freedom wherever it comes from.
Google fights a good fight here.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Yes, I've never understood the conflation by the "Religious Right" of "marriage" in a secular sense versus "marriage" in a religious sense. Their stance equating the two seems to imply either a) God can be "forced" to recognize gay marriage in a -religious- sense by a vote of politicians, or b) the validity of marriage in a religious sense (and God per se, to some extent) is contingent upon public agreement.
Neither of which seems to be a stance a theist would actually want to take. Seems much more reasonable to leave the secular and religious scope of "marriage" to the sphere at hand, and not doing so seems much more indicative of political gamesmanship than dedication to one's religion.
As an aside, it's actually quite debatable whether the primary reason for censure of "gay sex" (not "homosexuality", as gay -orientation- in itself has not a single censure anywhere in the bible), is because it is homosexual, or whether it is because by definition as of the historical context, it would be unmarried, promiscuous sex, which is equally condemned for heterosexuals. But that, again, would be a debate for the religious sense of "marriage", and distinct from secular issues...
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
In my state, they tried to make it illegal for companies to offer domestic partner benefits. While this would have affected all unmarried couples, it was targeted at gays. The biggest employers in the state came out against it, because they know they can't attract the best employees if they can't offer those types of benefits that are attractive to employees. The same is true of a good city to live in: these companies know that by making their locations more attractive, they will get better employees. Google is trying to make their locations more attractive, and who can blame them? It's business, plain and simple, and in my opinion it's a nice example that shows that the interests of companies and individuals can indeed be aligned, though they often are not.
Can I mod something +1 Scary if it's true but I wish it weren't?
Can someone explain to me what's the big deal with gay marriage? What's the hang up against letting two people marry? Who cares, it doesn't affect you. What's the harm in letting two guys or girls marry? There are more important things to be angry about, like the banks defrauding taxpayers out of billions.
I'm a proponent for civil unions as a replacement for the legal institute of marriage. It is as simple as changing the name, but returns the term "marriage" to organized religion.
After all, the term "gay civil union" is much easier for the public to digest than "gay marriage". It would be functionally the same, but would be written into law much faster.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
The concept of marriage is not strictly religious. Many cultures have had marriage but not necessarily tied to any religion. Buddhism for example considers marriage a matter for the state and not the religion. Those who are opposing gay marriage want to thrust their religious beliefs into the definition. Predominantly the religion they want to define marriage is a Protestant Christian one. Marriage existed in some form long before Christianity. As an legal institution, marriage has been used to convey inheritance and transfer of property. Women were the property being transferred and children born in wedlock were considered true heirs to any wealth whereas other children were not.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
They don't. You are free to love, live with and raise together (sic) anyone you wish. Government provides benefits to married couples because households comprised of people in committed relationships contribute to social and economic stability. Personally, I don't believe it matters whether those relationships are between members of the opposite sex or not - they still contribute to social and economic stability.
On the other hand, outside of strict religious contexts, I don't believe that marital units comprised of more than 2 adults has the same effect of promoting stability. It's why you mainly see polygamy in strict religious cultures. Outside of strict religious cultures, you don't see polygamy working so well, for some reason.
Pair bonding of same-sex couples occurs in nature, as does, of course, pair bonding of opposite sex couples. I don't know if polygamous sexual bonding occurs in nature or not.
Pair bonding is good for society, regardless of the respective genders of the couple. It's healthy that society promotes it. As far as I can tell there are only two reasons to oppose same-sex marriage: on religious grounds or because of homophobia, and neither should enter into the law. Nobody's going to force anyone to engage in gay sex (Penn State locker rooms and rectories notwithstanding). I have yet to hear a legitimate reason for opposing same-sex marriage.
You are welcome on my lawn.
A lot of people are crypto-theocrats of religions where homosexuality is a sin (mostly variants of Christianity), but most won't openly admit that they wish to force their religious rules on others, so they make up all the pretzel-logic bullshit reasons that confuse us today.
That's the whole thing in a nutshell. Get enough of those crypto-theocrats in a room together and they'll drop the facade and talk about how they want their government to follow Biblical rules and how it would be a sin to support same-sex marriage.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
In our language, 'equal rights' means 'the same rights'. 'Equal but different' was deemed 'not equal rights'. Banning same sex marriage is like the old segregated water fountains. Saying, "Anyone can drink from a water fountain that is listed for use by their race is equal rights.", and "Blacks wanting to drink from white water fountains is asking for extra rights." is absurd. The same applies to marriage. Even if Joe is willing, Mike cannot marry Joe. Sharron can marry Joe. That is not equal.
As a somewhat liberal-minded person, I can't think of a reason why you or I would have any reason whatsoever to demand that other people explain to us why they want to enter into a mutual agreement. I know that the government marries some people. I know that some people want to marry some other people who happen to be same sex. That's all I need to know to be for gay marriage.
But since you bring it up. Gay people need marriage in order to get the same rights and benefits as straight people get when they marry. You could write a law that would allow gay people to have civil unions that would give them the same rights, but AFAIK there's no way to ensure that it stays that way over time as the laws change. Also, if one minority should have to settle for civil unions, why not another minority? For example why should Scientologists be allowed to marry? Can you prove that Scientologists are as good as non-Scientologists at parenting?
When you say that marriage is for a man and a woman you're merely making a fact claim, one that is true in some places and not true in other places. Don't confuse what is with what you think ought to be!
Poland has a much smaller population than California.
California 37.7 million. (2012)
Poland 38.4 million. (2011)
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
returns the term "marriage" to organized religion.
It doesn't belong to them.
Poland has a much smaller population than California.
California 37.7 million. (2012)
Poland 38.4 million. (2011)
California: 87 kg (191 lbs)
Poland: 76 kg (168 lbs)
FTFY