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Carly Fiorina Calls Apple's Tim Cook a 'Hypocrite' On Gay Rights
HughPickens.com (3830033) writes "David Knowles reports at Bloomberg that former Hewlett-Packard CEO and potential 2016 presidential candidate Carly Fiorina called out Apple CEO Tim Cook as a hypocrite for criticizing Indiana and Arkansas over their Religious Freedom Restoration Acts while at the same time doing business in countries where gay rights are non-existent. "When Tim Cook is upset about all the places that he does business because of the way they treat gays and women, he needs to withdraw from 90% of the markets that he's in, including China and Saudi Arabia," Fiorina said. "But I don't hear him being upset about that."
In similar criticism of Hillary Clinton on the Fox News program Hannity, Fiorina argued that Clinton's advocacy on behalf of women was tarnished by donations made to the Clinton Foundation from foreign governments where women's rights are not on par with those in America. ""I must say as a woman, I find it offensive that Hillary Clinton travels the Silicon Valley, a place where I worked for a long time, and lectures Silicon Valley companies on women's rights in technology, and yet sees nothing wrong with taking money from the Algerian government, which really denies women the most basic human rights. This is called, Sean, hypocrisy." While Hillary Clinton hasn't directly addressed Fiorina's criticisms, her husband has. "You've got to decide, when you do this work, whether it will do more good than harm if someone helps you from another country," former president Bill Clinton said in March. "And I believe we have done a lot more good than harm. And I believe this is a good thing.""
In similar criticism of Hillary Clinton on the Fox News program Hannity, Fiorina argued that Clinton's advocacy on behalf of women was tarnished by donations made to the Clinton Foundation from foreign governments where women's rights are not on par with those in America. ""I must say as a woman, I find it offensive that Hillary Clinton travels the Silicon Valley, a place where I worked for a long time, and lectures Silicon Valley companies on women's rights in technology, and yet sees nothing wrong with taking money from the Algerian government, which really denies women the most basic human rights. This is called, Sean, hypocrisy." While Hillary Clinton hasn't directly addressed Fiorina's criticisms, her husband has. "You've got to decide, when you do this work, whether it will do more good than harm if someone helps you from another country," former president Bill Clinton said in March. "And I believe we have done a lot more good than harm. And I believe this is a good thing.""
This religious freedom thing in Indiana is bullshit.
One of my best friends is a Methodist minister. He's the kind of Christian you want to be around. He's there just to help people solve problems in their lives and teach basic Christian concepts of forgiveness and repentance (which, in case you didn't know, means owning up to the shit you did).
Most religious people aren't like this. They use their religion as a means to feel superior and discriminate against others. That's why these laws in Indiana and Texas are dangerous. It's one thing to believe something. It's entirely another to treat other people as second-class citizens because either they believe differently or they have some attribute that your religion arbitrarily singled out that you or some religious figure decided is wrong.
So why do we do business with other countries? Hell, why do we want to do business with communist Cuba? Because our influence can be positive. They're backward people, and exposing them to our culture can do them some good. We don't turn a blind eye to it exactly, but screaming at them about how stupid they are is not going to change their minds. It'll make them angry and shoot bombs at us. On the other hand, Indiana is a US state, where this kind of political pressure and hollering CAN have a positive impact.
Ok, so why do religions think that homosexuality is wrong? Keep in mind that they come from the ancient world where things were different. These were times when populations were smaller, manpower was at a premium, and men had to be in charge of everything. You'll notice that in the ancient world, homosexuality among women wasn't particularly frowned upon, while it was often forbidden among men. Why? Because in those days, the sex act between two men was perceived as putting one of the men in the role of a woman, and you just couldn't h permit that. This is why pederasty was common, because it was between a man and a teenager, where the man maintained his position of power. Also, homosexality completely unchecked could have consequences, such as the population decline it caused in Sparta. So, because of certain neolitic beliefs and population issues, along with a desire to control who fathered a woman's children, certain religions codified certain rules about homosexuality.
The thing is, WE HAVE NONE OF THESE ISSUES TODAY. Ok, sure we have AIDS, and sex between men is a more significant disease vector than between a man and a woman or between two women. But that's a matter of personal responsibility. Learn to control your urges a bit, use protection, and only have sex with people you know really really well. I don't care what your sexual orientation is, hooking up with random people puts you, them, and anyone else you sleep with at risk of disease and death. We shouldn't try to control who you sleep with, but we can make it a criminal or civil offense for you to give someone your disease. But the point is, we're not in a world where women should be subordinated to men, and we don't have a declining population. In the countries where there is a declining population, homosexuality isn't responsible -- it's women in the workforce without systems in place to allow them have children while also having careers and fathers still assuming that most of the child rearing responsibility should be shouldered by women. Women may have full civil rights on paper, but our culture still puts them between a rock and a hard place.