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Tim Cook: "I'm Proud To Be Gay"
An anonymous reader writes Apple CEO Tim Cook has publicly come out as gay. While he never hid his sexuality from friends, family, and close co-workers, Cook decided it was time to make it publicly known in the hopes that the information will help others who don't feel comfortable to do so. He said, "I don't consider myself an activist, but I realize how much I've benefited from the sacrifice of others. So if hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it's worth the trade-off with my own privacy."
Cook added that while the U.S. has made progress in recent years toward marriage equality, there is still work to be done. "[T]here are laws on the books in a majority of states that allow employers to fire people based solely on their sexual orientation. There are many places where landlords can evict tenants for being gay, or where we can be barred from visiting sick partners and sharing in their legacies. Countless people, particularly kids, face fear and abuse every day because of their sexual orientation."
Cook added that while the U.S. has made progress in recent years toward marriage equality, there is still work to be done. "[T]here are laws on the books in a majority of states that allow employers to fire people based solely on their sexual orientation. There are many places where landlords can evict tenants for being gay, or where we can be barred from visiting sick partners and sharing in their legacies. Countless people, particularly kids, face fear and abuse every day because of their sexual orientation."
Hell, I'm proud to have been born with 10 fingers, 10 toes, and have balls the size of churchbells.
How can you be proud of something you're born as, or did he actually make a hard choice to be gay, and is thus proud of his choice?
Getting back to Tim Cook's "letter to..." someones and the quote therein: "I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me". ok, probably unfortunate to drag a deity in this; but does this imply that being gifted with non-gayness isn't a gift? i'll leave the sophistry to others.
Honestly, I'm glad to hear the guy is proud to be gay. He should be. We should ALL be proud of who we are, instead of regretting it or wasting time wishing we were different.
The world would be a really boring place if all of us were "wired" exactly the same, with the exact same interests, habits and tendencies.
But his sexual orientation was published years ago, and came up again some time earlier this year in news articles. So I'm not sure exactly how THIS time around is supposed to mean anything special?
I hate to say it, but I do think all of this is at least partially motivated by a marketing angle for Apple. The company has long been known to be relatively "gay friendly" in hiring practices and in loyal user-base. (Perhaps some of that simply stems from a tendency for the gay community to care more than others about product attributes like style, design or elegance .... all areas not so often associated with computer technology but embraced by Apple since early on?) Perhaps it's just that Tim Cook feels it's a good "climate" to promote Apple as a very equal-opportunity company to work for? I don't know ... but it doesn't seem relevant to bother mentioning it (especially if he's serious about valuing his privacy like he claims), otherwise?
But considering just how straight white male oriented the tech industry is
You mean demographic-wise or acceptance-wise? If the former, maybe, I haven't really taken a statistical sample. But if you mean the latter, where have you been working? I mean, when I was working in NYC and SF, and even Seattle, I suppose it would be expected that most of my fellow geeks didn't care about sexual orientation and were vocally pro gay rights, but even now in Phoenix almost all of my geek friends feel the same. I've always assumed it was a natural result of being future-oriented and of geekiness being an outsider culture. If your geek friends are homophobes, they'd strike me as statistically rare. Maybe you just need new friends.
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You can grouse if you want, but the fact is that the whole "proud" strategy has gotten them pretty damn far. Eventually it will be anachronistic, but it's been pretty successful to date. It wasn't so long ago that it was socially acceptable to beat the holy hell of them, and now most states recognize their marriage. Amazing.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
And yes, talking about your sexual orientation is talking about your sex life.
Nope, and here is why.
:)
In order to talk about one's sex life, one must first have had sex. And yet people can still make proclamations like "I'm hetero!" and "I'm homo!" without ever having had sex. Ergo, it is possible to talk about ones sexual orientation without talking about ones sex life.
Says the guy who's plainly never been part of a despised minority treated as second-class citizens simply because of how you were born.
Well. I say that and then remember that some black folks old enough to remember Jim Crow still think that it's OK to treat gays like second-class citizens, because religion.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
No, but we're getting there. Like with race: The true end of that campaign can be declared not when the country has a black president, but when no-one notices.
Proud is the opposite of ashamed. That's why they put emphasis on proud.
There is nothing wrong with having a sexual orientation, no matter what it is.
Acting upon it can be bad.
Btw, Pedophiliacs are the only one of those three which is a sexual orientation, and a very sad one at that.
You can only romantically love pre-pubescents.
That is terribly sad.
Raping children is horrible though and is entirely separate.
Bestiality is the act of having sex with animals.
I believe you are looking for the term zoofiliacs, which is, just like Pedophiles, very sad.
And raping animals is a complex issue, especially since we do it with insemination.
Defining exactly why it feels worse when we enjoy raping them then when we do it to kill and eat their children is for me impossible, but, hey, not really the topic here?
Incest is not something which is related to sexual preference.
It's not like people who have sex with their family have no ability to be attracted or romantically involved with other people.
The issue is two-folded:
1: High risk for problematic offpsring, explaining why almost all humans have an aversion to the behaviour.
2: There is a high risk of problematic situations occuring when children have sex with parents or siblings.
It's not so much that homosexuality is different from any other sexual orientation, it's just that there is no logical reason to argue against it being a perfectly fine way to live your life.
Most sexual orientations barring hetero or BTQ are way less easy to incorporate into a decent life.
"Being homosexual" is not a behavior, it is an existential state.
Like the existential state of being poor, it's what you do with that being in state that is in question, ethically.
Nobody (including religious stances) condemns the mere fact of being homosexual. How one acts upon it, though, has significant social effects, e.g. AIDS, considered from either a secular or religious viewpoint.
Unfortunately, we've becoming accustomed to using "homosexuality" to refer ambiguously to the orientation, and/or any actions stemming from the orientation, ambiguously, which helps clarity none. Because apparently the notion that one can want something and not always act on it, based on wider considerations, is simply mind-blowing to our present-day "consumerist" culture.
But yeah, distinguish between thoughts and actions. "Even" the bible does that clearly on this topic.