There are biracial people here--like the amazingly [vibevixen.com] sexy [ilbe.com] blasians [photobucket.com]--but we're talking about a world without that. We're talking about a world where biracial doesn't exist, because every race has mixed, until there are no more mixes but just one race.
You still have to do some work in showing that allowing mixed race couples would actually lead to a world without diversity, because every indication I have seen is that it wouldn't.
Maybe there wouldn't be "races" in the traditional sense, because people wouldn't fit into categories anymore. The fact that you couldn't look at someone and tell what race they are doesn't mean we are all the same. If anything it would mean we're all different. It is the society where we treat entire groups (e.g. asians) as homogenous that lacks diversity.
A world with 5 kinds of food is less diverse than a world with infinite types of food that defy categorization.
I am not arguing that 18 is some objectively significant number for the age of consent. It's probably different for every person, and 18 is just a crude approximation that causes some people to get away with exploitation, and others to be punished for essentially mutual sexual contact.
I am saying that what NAMBLA wants is going to hurt kids. It might not hurt every kid. Maybe some kids are mature enough to decide to have sex with adults, but I would venture to say that most of the kids NAMBLA folks want to have sex with are not mature enough (although they would certainly like us to believe they are).
Maybe there is some gray area with 40 year olds having sex with 16 year olds, and 17 year olds having sex with 13 year olds. That doesn;t mean everything is a gray area. To me it is pretty black and white that it is wrong when a 40 year old has sex with a 3 year old.
This idea that "We don't think homosexuals are bad, we just think homosexuality is bad", is bullshit.
You create a dangerous argument here. Good people do bad things, and people with destructive interests are functional in society. Sometimes those interests represent a tangible threat. Your argument is, effectively, that if we believe people who engage in a certain activity are not inherently bad, then society should seek to legitimize that activity.
That was actually not my argument at all. Obviously good (well intentioned) people can do bad things. I have stated that well intentioned people are often bigots, and I clearly think bigotry is bad.
P = a person is not inherently bad
Q = that person's actions are not inherently bad
My argument is not P implies Q. I am saying that Q is true regardless, and it's bullshit that people say "Q is false, but that doesn't make me a bigot because I think P is true". I am saying that they are being disingenuous.
According to Christianity, even murderers aren't inherently bad people people. They are just sinners like everyone else, and only need to ask for God's forgiveness. It is in this sense of hate the sin not the sinner that people think homosexuals are ok but homosexuality is not. And it is this equivalence of homosexuality to sin and putting homosexuals in the same category as murderers (e.g. people who are not inherently bad, but do bad things) that I object to. Murder is wrong, it creates a victim. Nobody is a victim of homosexuality.
Would Eich be just as wrong if he had donated to a campaign in Florida for the failed 2008 proposition to make sexual activity with animals a crime?
I don't think animals are people, so therefore I do not consider having sex with an animal to be depriving a human being of their rights. It is true that an animal can't consent, which is why you can't enter into a contract with an animal or children, but unlike children, animals aren't people. Children still have rights.
I would probably prefer animals be treated humanely. I don't know if people are typically humane when they have sex with animals, but ultimately we kill animals and turn them into hamburgers so I really don't consider anything you do to an animal to be anything close to the injustice caused by raping or killing a human. Obviously PETA would disagree.
So Eich votes to ban sex with animals. Should he step down as CEO for that?
I would like to point out that I didn't think Eich *should* have stepped down for supporting prop 8. *I* supported him being fired or demoted because some Mozilla employees supported it, and I supported them by proxy. If nobody under him wanted him removed and nobody above him wanted him removed, I don't think there is any reason to remove him. The problem is that a fairly large percentage of the population is homosexual, and this is what makes him less effeective as a leader.
Ultimately I think it matters why Eich voted to ban sex with animals. If he was an animal lover and f
Almost all the reasonable suggestions I've seen for internet-connected things (coffee in the morning, lights as I come in, etc) have already been solved with timers (coffee, thermostat, etc) or motion sensors (lights).
Timers only effectively control things that need to happen at the same time everyday. I don't want my heater to come on at the same time everyday. I want it to come on 30 minutes before I get home, which is different depending on what happens during the day.
I would actually much prefer an alert that goes over the internet to my phone than an actual phone call. For one thing, I don't actually have a landline. For another, I usually let phone calls go to voicemail.
I didn't say the cost of electricity should be raised. I said we should charge the true cost of electricity. *If* the true cost of electricity is higher than what is being charged, it could mean a few things.
It could mean that somewhere someone is getting subsidies or we are polluting the environment, and raising the price of electricity would offset the need for those subsidies.
It could also mean that producing the electricity involves some kind of externality like pollution/co2 that we as citizens of the earth are actually paying, and setting the price of electricity to the true cost would involve forcing the producers to mitigate the pollution and co2 and pass that cost on to consumers.
So no it doesn't have to be a tax. It can be removal of subsidies. It can be more strict pollution laws. It can be requiring carbon offsets (e.g. planting trees, etc) for energy producers.
And yet people are still willing to trade security for convenience... Driving to work will never be 100% secure.
Even if some people were actually killed by fires caused by smart appliances (which I am not aware of any), the convenience of being able to turn up my thermostat an half an hour before I come home outweighs the danger, in the sam way that the convenience of driving my car to work outweighs the danger.
Nothing is 100% safe. And this is an impossible standard to meet. Everything we do in life is a calculated risk. I think fixing safety issues as they are discovered is a perfectly reasonable course of action.
Yes connecting to the internet allows the possibility of my smoke detector to be hacked. It also allows me to be alerted if it goes off when I am not at home. I think the benefit of scenario 2 is worth the risk of scenario 1.
Nothing is preventing you from using old stuff, especially if you don't see the benefit of the new stuff. The ban on old light bulbs was stupid. The right way to get people to be more energy efficient is to charge people the true cost of energy, but that kind of talk doesn't win votes, even with supposed pro free market people.
It's reasonable to assume that he's a highly logical thinker (due to his career history) so why do you assume that he doesn't have a very logical reason for supporting prop 8, and that instead he's coming from a position of ignorance?
I am sure he's a very logical person if he was able to create the javascript language. I can appreciate this fact being a software engineer myself. This does not necessarily mean that he is a logical in all aspects of his life, and I would cite his support of prop 8 as evidence (not necessarily proof) of that.
I have literally never heard a logical and reasonable defense of prop 8. I have heard a bunch of religious justifications and appeals to "traditional family values". Lots of debates actually do have 2 (or more) legitimate sides with pros and cons for each side. This is in my opinion one of the few debates where it truly is one-sided. It's tolerance vs. superstition and bigotry.
Have you actually asked him why he supported it? Have you done anything more than react emotionally in an ignorant and prejudiced manner? Just who the fuck is the bigot here?
Well he won't return my phone calls, so no I haven;t been able to ask him. Had I ever heard a nuanced and intelligent reason to support banning gay marriage, I might be more open to the idea that some people support banning gay marriage for intelligent reasons. Undoubtedly it involves either a vague appeal to traditional family values, or a specific appeal to the authority of the Bible and it's condemnation of homosexuality.
I am open to hearing/considering a logical/rational reason to ban gay marriage. Do you have one?
Just who the fuck is the bigot here?
The person who supports denying some people their 14th amendment right to equal protection under the law.
Also everyone I know who has been "molested" has related the experience to me in a positive light--girls who gave their first BJ at 13 or dudes who screwed around with their babysitter when they were 9. I also know people who were "raped"--you know, by force, while protesting, under duress--and they are not happy about the experience
You are talking about kids having sexual experiences with other kids as if it is the same thing as an adult having sexual experiences with a kid. These are not the same precisely because an adult is in a position of power over a minor. This is the same reason why it is illegal for a sober person to have sex with someone who is passed out drunk. They are incapable of consenting. Children (e.g. 3 year olds) are not capable of consenting to sex with an adult.
I understand that differing opinions on what is good and bad in society is not "bigotry"; bigotry is differing opinions on who is good and bad.
This idea that "We don't think homosexuals are bad, we just think homosexuality is bad", is bullshit. The "evidence" for the harm created by homosexuality is always some vague abstract concept. And the harm created by homophobia is tangible and results in people being traumatized or physically attacked and sometimes killed.
Employment, criminalization, verbal personal attacks, and violence are the realm of bigotry.
And fighting to deny equal rights to a group of people is also bigotry.
Be glad you live in a world with beautiful asian women, oil-dark Jamaicans, and the occasional gorgeous mexican girl. These are finite resources and will eventually burn away like so much coal and oil.
And thank god there are no homogenous grey goo biracial people out there. I'm sure they would be ugly.
Also, the fact that there is mixing within asians, jamaicans, and mexicans, explains why all asian people look the same, and why all jamaican people look the same and why all mexicans look the same.
/s
Are you aware that Mexico right now are a result of the mixture of the spanish and native american cultures and genes?
If homosexuality and/or gay marriage harmed society, it would be similar to the example of NAMBLA.
Today, some people still feel this would damage society. It has tax implications.
Counting black people as human beings has tax implications too. That really shouldn't have a bearing on following the 14th amendment and giving equal protection under the law.
It has implications where we have to explain this shit to children--which many consider harmful to children.
Children that haven't been raised by bigots (and even some that have), don't seem to have any problems knowing about homosexuality any more than heterosexuality.
And we have male/female rest rooms instead of cosexual rest rooms for some reason; accepting homosexuality in society is partially equivalent to accepting cosexual rest rooms in public middle schools, as some 9th graders feel they're gay (your sexual preferences can float around a bit up around 20, 25, 35,... pretty much forever, so some people flip from one side to the other in college or so).
I don't see how this is related at all to allowing gay people to be married.
I think that the fact that you think homosexuality is harmful perfectly explains why you think comparison to NAMBLA is reasonable. I also think that it is pretty clear that you are wrong that homosexuality is harmful to society, and most people would agree with me.
There was a time when people thought race mixing was harmful to society. It probably did harm some people in some way. But ultimately it turned out the harm was blown completely out of proportion and the benefit if helping to eliminate racism and intolerance and allowing people more freedom to love who they wanted far outweighed any harm real or perceived by several orders of magnitude.
Maybe if I was born 1 generation earlier, I might be homophobic too. But I have literally seen zero harm caused by homosexuality. I've seen immense harm caused by homophobia. In fact most of the harm cited as being caused by homosexuality is actually caused by homophobia (e.g. the stigma children of homosexual parents must bear). Luckily that stigma is dying, and the children of homosexual parents aren't ostracized like they once were. That's a good thing.
We know that homosexuals are not the same as pedophiles, just like we know that black people aren't murderers. Some gay people are pedophiles and some black people are murderers.
Is it confusing to know which bathroom a transgender person should use? Yeah I guess, but it really doesn't seem like a big problem. The worst thing that could possibly happen is that someone who was born a different gender hears you peeing and/or pooping. Big deal. I would much prefer this world to one where homosexuality is so feared that it is not uncommon for people to be physically attacked for being gay.
I know people who have been raised by gay parents and I know people who have been molested. They are not comparable.
"Who is using coercion to get this guy fired? I have yet to hear of a single person using violence or a threat of violence as a means to have him fired."
Bullying is the threat of violence (which I mentioned).
Coercion as defined by google: 1. the practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats.
Using public media outlets demanding the business owner be fired as a punitive measure is not.
Why not? Seems fine to me. No one's rights are violated. The people in charge at mozilla can still do whatever they want. No one is trying to pass a law requiring Mozilla to fire Eich.
The only trying to get laws passed to deny people equal rights is Eich.
If someone that worked at a local business had the opinion that smoking should be banned would it be okay to try to force that company to fire them with your more populous opinion? How about if a local business employee thought that blacks should be able to drink at the same water fountain but the local community didn't like that idea so got the person fired?
No it's not ok to force people to do anything if it violates their rights. Luckily no one was forced to do anything. If the CEO didn't resign and Mozilla decided to fire him to appease their other employees, it would also be fine. Employment is a mutual agreement that either side can end through firing or quitting.
Forcing this CEO to be fired would be if a law was passed that forced companies to fire CEOs that were known bigots, or if someone threatened all the board members with violence if they didn't fire the CEO.
Applying social pressure is not the kind of force that violates anyone's rights.
Prop 8, on the other hand denies equal protection under the law for gay people.
No one's rights were violated, unless you believe in the right never to be criticized or fired.
No it's like claiming there is a hair in your food and getting the cook fired, because there was a hair in your food, because the cook has a sticker on his car saying "wearing a hairnet is a sin".
So it's only a problem when someone's rights are violated, and no one's rights were violated...
...Except for the rights of gay people when prop 8 was passed with the help of Brendan Eich.
I fully support the right of freedom of speech for everyone including Eich's. I fully support the right of everyone's right to donate to whatever political causes they want to. I also support the right of Mozilla to fire their own CEO if it turns out he is a bigot, and therefore unable to be an effective leader of a diverse group of people. I'm sure he would be fine as the CEO of a company that only employed homophobic people, as none of them would question his judgement.
Luckily he didn't need to be fired because he resigned under public pressure.
I think it's reasonable to fire someone because their personal opinions indicate to you as an employer that they will not do a good job. Given that large companies employ a diverse group of people, having a (now known) bigot as a CEO is problematic. If his judgement and sense of fairness is in question, it is not unreasonable to think he might not be an effective CEO.
For this same reason I would not want a CEO who privately believed black people were inferior, or that women are not as capable as men and deserved lower salaries, etc.
Political donations are publicised as a check against a few billionaires distorting the playing field. To see how much money influenced the election. It was not meant to be a tool for personal retribution.
It's not about retribution. It's about being able to do your job properly. It's that by supporting prop 8 you are showing yourself to be a bigot. There is no reason to doubt the software engineering abilities of a person if they are a bigot. There is a good reason to doubt the leadership abilities of a person if they are a bigot.
This is wrong. People must never be demoted because of political activism they do privatly, not using the company brand, and not related to the company mission.
If for example, it turns out that the president of the NRA has been secretly donating money to lobby for more strict gun control laws, do you think...
1. The private political opinions of this person affect his ability to do his job?
2. That this person has a right to never be demoted or fired?
3. If members of the NRA call for his resignation, are they being unreasonable?
The problem with NAMBLA is that they advocate a view that if adopted would harm children. NAMBLA basically wants to legalize child molestation (although they probably wouldn't refer to it as molestation, since their view is that it is not harmful).
Regardless of how disgusting you may find homosexual relationships to be, it is something that 2 adults have entered into voluntarily. No one is being harmed by homosexuality or same sex marriage.
You are still missing the point, which was: the hypocrisy of using coercion to try to get this guy fired.
Who is using coercion to get this guy fired? I have yet to hear of a single person using violence or a threat of violence as a means to have him fired.
If, as the other respondent said, this was a CEO who had pro-gay political views, and a conservative political movement tried to get him ousted (never forget this is about politics), those same liberals would be foaming at the mouth.
And that would not constitute coercion either.
Hypocrisy is hypocrisy. It isn't about whether Eich is a good guy. It's about what OKCupid decided to do about it.
OK cupid decided to ask people to switch to a different browser. This is also not coercion or violating anyone's rights.
So far the only thing violating anyone's rights in this discussion was Prop 8, and the only person advocating violating anyone's rights is Eich.
It may be argued, that government's interest in child-bearing (and -rearing!) unions is legitimate. Because heterosexual couples tend to have children eventually, some sort of justification for recognition of the traditional marriages exists. Possibly...
This is like imprisoning mexicans because they tend to be criminals. If you really wanted to stop crime, you would criminalize crime. Similarly if you want to affect how children are born or raised, you would make laws affecting reproduction and child rearing, not marriage. We already have recognized term for people who bear and raise children called "parents". There are single parents, homosexual parents, parents who adopt their children, as well as heterosexual parents. There are also plenty of married people that choose not to have children.
There is no reason to conflate parenthood with heterosexual marriage, and there is no reason to conflate homosexuality with non-parenthood. It may be true that most children have 2 heterosexual parents, this is not a good reason to exclude homosexuals from being considered "married". Most children are also not adopted. No one seems to be calling for couples who adopt to only be allowed to have a civil union. Unless you want to remove the term marriage from childless couples and couples who adopt children, removing the term marriage from gay people is a double standard.
Gays have the same right as the rest of us — to marry one person of the opposite gender. They just don't have the ability to exercise it.
If this is the technicality you want to go with, then it makes the ban on gay marriage discrimination based on gender. A woman has a right to marry a man, but a man does not.
It is the same sort of discrimination that a ban on interracial marriages would impose. You could argue that interracial marriages are not discriminatory because each person has the same right to marry a person of their own race. This is still discrimination because it grants a white person a right (to marry white people) that is not granted to a black person. The fact that white people are also discriminated against by forbidding them to marry black people doesn't make the situation better, it makes it worse.
Just as I would not change the rules of volleyball to allow paraplegics to play it, I would not change the definition of marriage to accommodate homosexuals.
Changing the rules of volleyball would change how everyone must play volleyball. Changing the rules of marriage to allow gay people to be married does not effect heterosexuals at all. Also, the definition of marriage has been changed many times already.
We once changed the definition of human beings to include black people. Do you agree with this decision?
There is also no reason to assume that the sole purpose of marriage is to produce children. Also, marriages don't produce children. The biology of producing children is in no way dependent on the institution of marriage. Gay people are also perfectly capable of producing children and many do.
I also share your view that marriage should be completely separate from government. Marriage even in the legal sense entails a lot of things involving inheritance, hospital visits, power of attorney, alimony, taxes, etc. All of this stuff applies just as well to same sex couples. It doesn't really have anything to do with children. (which same sex couples can also have). There is no law forcing people to get married if they have kids. There is no law forcing married people to have kids.
And there is a very good reason to use the same legal construct (i.e. calling both same sex and heterosexual unions, marriages), because despite the claims, civil unions (which each state defines it's own way, if at all) do not confer the same rights as marriage. In the same way that separate but equal laws lead to anything but equality in the south during segregation, separate legal definitions for civil unions for gay people and marriages for straight people, leaves the door wide open for differences in the rights offered by these 2 institutions.
I don't care if certain churches refuse to consider gay marriages legitimate. I would actually prefer if marriage was removed from government influence altogether. But what we can't have is the government offering a right to one group of people and not another.
Second, it's not like the man is a skin-head. He donated $1,000 to a Prop 8 fund. Maybe the guy is a Mormon. I dunno.
Why is being a skinhead different? If he was Mormon, why does that make it ok?
What if he was a communist party member? Shouldn't the 100s of millions of deaths directly attributable to the rise of communist party rule be a little more cause for concern then whether states should accept homosexual marriages?
No because that's a guilt by association. Communists shouldn't be blamed for the murders committed by other communists. There is nothing inherently murderous about communism. Yes communists have murdered lots of people. People with mustaches have murdered lots of people too.
Or, maybe, I dunno... supporting a political party or campaign doesn't mean your motives are nefarious and harmful (even though their effect might cause harm in actuality).
On the other hand, supporting prop 8 does make you in favor of stripping rights away from gay people, and therefore a bigot. Maybe you were hoping that stripping rights away from gay people wouldn't be harmful, and are therefore well intentioned, but that doesn't mean you're not a bigot. There are plenty of well intentioned people that are still bigots. And it is important to call out bigotry when we see it. Hopefully this will cause some well intentioned people to reflect on whether they really think denying equal protection under the law is the best path forward.
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There are biracial people here--like the amazingly [vibevixen.com] sexy [ilbe.com] blasians [photobucket.com]--but we're talking about a world without that. We're talking about a world where biracial doesn't exist, because every race has mixed, until there are no more mixes but just one race.
You still have to do some work in showing that allowing mixed race couples would actually lead to a world without diversity, because every indication I have seen is that it wouldn't.
Maybe there wouldn't be "races" in the traditional sense, because people wouldn't fit into categories anymore. The fact that you couldn't look at someone and tell what race they are doesn't mean we are all the same. If anything it would mean we're all different. It is the society where we treat entire groups (e.g. asians) as homogenous that lacks diversity.
A world with 5 kinds of food is less diverse than a world with infinite types of food that defy categorization.
I am not arguing that 18 is some objectively significant number for the age of consent. It's probably different for every person, and 18 is just a crude approximation that causes some people to get away with exploitation, and others to be punished for essentially mutual sexual contact.
I am saying that what NAMBLA wants is going to hurt kids. It might not hurt every kid. Maybe some kids are mature enough to decide to have sex with adults, but I would venture to say that most of the kids NAMBLA folks want to have sex with are not mature enough (although they would certainly like us to believe they are).
Maybe there is some gray area with 40 year olds having sex with 16 year olds, and 17 year olds having sex with 13 year olds. That doesn;t mean everything is a gray area. To me it is pretty black and white that it is wrong when a 40 year old has sex with a 3 year old.
This idea that "We don't think homosexuals are bad, we just think homosexuality is bad", is bullshit.
You create a dangerous argument here. Good people do bad things, and people with destructive interests are functional in society. Sometimes those interests represent a tangible threat. Your argument is, effectively, that if we believe people who engage in a certain activity are not inherently bad, then society should seek to legitimize that activity.
That was actually not my argument at all. Obviously good (well intentioned) people can do bad things. I have stated that well intentioned people are often bigots, and I clearly think bigotry is bad.
P = a person is not inherently bad
Q = that person's actions are not inherently bad
My argument is not P implies Q. I am saying that Q is true regardless, and it's bullshit that people say "Q is false, but that doesn't make me a bigot because I think P is true". I am saying that they are being disingenuous.
According to Christianity, even murderers aren't inherently bad people people. They are just sinners like everyone else, and only need to ask for God's forgiveness. It is in this sense of hate the sin not the sinner that people think homosexuals are ok but homosexuality is not. And it is this equivalence of homosexuality to sin and putting homosexuals in the same category as murderers (e.g. people who are not inherently bad, but do bad things) that I object to. Murder is wrong, it creates a victim. Nobody is a victim of homosexuality.
Would Eich be just as wrong if he had donated to a campaign in Florida for the failed 2008 proposition to make sexual activity with animals a crime?
I don't think animals are people, so therefore I do not consider having sex with an animal to be depriving a human being of their rights. It is true that an animal can't consent, which is why you can't enter into a contract with an animal or children, but unlike children, animals aren't people. Children still have rights.
I would probably prefer animals be treated humanely. I don't know if people are typically humane when they have sex with animals, but ultimately we kill animals and turn them into hamburgers so I really don't consider anything you do to an animal to be anything close to the injustice caused by raping or killing a human. Obviously PETA would disagree.
So Eich votes to ban sex with animals. Should he step down as CEO for that?
I would like to point out that I didn't think Eich *should* have stepped down for supporting prop 8. *I* supported him being fired or demoted because some Mozilla employees supported it, and I supported them by proxy. If nobody under him wanted him removed and nobody above him wanted him removed, I don't think there is any reason to remove him. The problem is that a fairly large percentage of the population is homosexual, and this is what makes him less effeective as a leader.
Ultimately I think it matters why Eich voted to ban sex with animals. If he was an animal lover and f
Almost all the reasonable suggestions I've seen for internet-connected things (coffee in the morning, lights as I come in, etc) have already been solved with timers (coffee, thermostat, etc) or motion sensors (lights).
Timers only effectively control things that need to happen at the same time everyday. I don't want my heater to come on at the same time everyday. I want it to come on 30 minutes before I get home, which is different depending on what happens during the day.
I would actually much prefer an alert that goes over the internet to my phone than an actual phone call. For one thing, I don't actually have a landline. For another, I usually let phone calls go to voicemail.
I didn't say the cost of electricity should be raised. I said we should charge the true cost of electricity. *If* the true cost of electricity is higher than what is being charged, it could mean a few things.
It could mean that somewhere someone is getting subsidies or we are polluting the environment, and raising the price of electricity would offset the need for those subsidies.
It could also mean that producing the electricity involves some kind of externality like pollution/co2 that we as citizens of the earth are actually paying, and setting the price of electricity to the true cost would involve forcing the producers to mitigate the pollution and co2 and pass that cost on to consumers.
So no it doesn't have to be a tax. It can be removal of subsidies. It can be more strict pollution laws. It can be requiring carbon offsets (e.g. planting trees, etc) for energy producers.
I think POTS is probably more reliable than wifi, but one nice thing about wifi is that rodents can't chew through wires that aren't there.
And yet people are still willing to trade security for convenience... Driving to work will never be 100% secure.
Even if some people were actually killed by fires caused by smart appliances (which I am not aware of any), the convenience of being able to turn up my thermostat an half an hour before I come home outweighs the danger, in the sam way that the convenience of driving my car to work outweighs the danger.
Nothing is 100% safe. And this is an impossible standard to meet. Everything we do in life is a calculated risk. I think fixing safety issues as they are discovered is a perfectly reasonable course of action.
Yes connecting to the internet allows the possibility of my smoke detector to be hacked. It also allows me to be alerted if it goes off when I am not at home. I think the benefit of scenario 2 is worth the risk of scenario 1.
Nothing is preventing you from using old stuff, especially if you don't see the benefit of the new stuff. The ban on old light bulbs was stupid. The right way to get people to be more energy efficient is to charge people the true cost of energy, but that kind of talk doesn't win votes, even with supposed pro free market people.
It's reasonable to assume that he's a highly logical thinker (due to his career history) so why do you assume that he doesn't have a very logical reason for supporting prop 8, and that instead he's coming from a position of ignorance?
I am sure he's a very logical person if he was able to create the javascript language. I can appreciate this fact being a software engineer myself. This does not necessarily mean that he is a logical in all aspects of his life, and I would cite his support of prop 8 as evidence (not necessarily proof) of that.
I have literally never heard a logical and reasonable defense of prop 8. I have heard a bunch of religious justifications and appeals to "traditional family values". Lots of debates actually do have 2 (or more) legitimate sides with pros and cons for each side. This is in my opinion one of the few debates where it truly is one-sided. It's tolerance vs. superstition and bigotry.
Have you actually asked him why he supported it? Have you done anything more than react emotionally in an ignorant and prejudiced manner? Just who the fuck is the bigot here?
Well he won't return my phone calls, so no I haven;t been able to ask him. Had I ever heard a nuanced and intelligent reason to support banning gay marriage, I might be more open to the idea that some people support banning gay marriage for intelligent reasons. Undoubtedly it involves either a vague appeal to traditional family values, or a specific appeal to the authority of the Bible and it's condemnation of homosexuality.
I am open to hearing/considering a logical/rational reason to ban gay marriage. Do you have one?
Just who the fuck is the bigot here?
The person who supports denying some people their 14th amendment right to equal protection under the law.
Also everyone I know who has been "molested" has related the experience to me in a positive light--girls who gave their first BJ at 13 or dudes who screwed around with their babysitter when they were 9. I also know people who were "raped"--you know, by force, while protesting, under duress--and they are not happy about the experience
You are talking about kids having sexual experiences with other kids as if it is the same thing as an adult having sexual experiences with a kid. These are not the same precisely because an adult is in a position of power over a minor. This is the same reason why it is illegal for a sober person to have sex with someone who is passed out drunk. They are incapable of consenting. Children (e.g. 3 year olds) are not capable of consenting to sex with an adult.
I understand that differing opinions on what is good and bad in society is not "bigotry"; bigotry is differing opinions on who is good and bad.
This idea that "We don't think homosexuals are bad, we just think homosexuality is bad", is bullshit. The "evidence" for the harm created by homosexuality is always some vague abstract concept. And the harm created by homophobia is tangible and results in people being traumatized or physically attacked and sometimes killed.
Employment, criminalization, verbal personal attacks, and violence are the realm of bigotry.
And fighting to deny equal rights to a group of people is also bigotry.
Be glad you live in a world with beautiful asian women, oil-dark Jamaicans, and the occasional gorgeous mexican girl. These are finite resources and will eventually burn away like so much coal and oil.
And thank god there are no homogenous grey goo biracial people out there. I'm sure they would be ugly.
Also, the fact that there is mixing within asians, jamaicans, and mexicans, explains why all asian people look the same, and why all jamaican people look the same and why all mexicans look the same.
/s
Are you aware that Mexico right now are a result of the mixture of the spanish and native american cultures and genes?
If homosexuality and/or gay marriage harmed society, it would be similar to the example of NAMBLA.
Today, some people still feel this would damage society. It has tax implications.
Counting black people as human beings has tax implications too. That really shouldn't have a bearing on following the 14th amendment and giving equal protection under the law.
It has implications where we have to explain this shit to children--which many consider harmful to children.
Children that haven't been raised by bigots (and even some that have), don't seem to have any problems knowing about homosexuality any more than heterosexuality.
And we have male/female rest rooms instead of cosexual rest rooms for some reason; accepting homosexuality in society is partially equivalent to accepting cosexual rest rooms in public middle schools, as some 9th graders feel they're gay (your sexual preferences can float around a bit up around 20, 25, 35, ... pretty much forever, so some people flip from one side to the other in college or so).
I don't see how this is related at all to allowing gay people to be married.
I think that the fact that you think homosexuality is harmful perfectly explains why you think comparison to NAMBLA is reasonable. I also think that it is pretty clear that you are wrong that homosexuality is harmful to society, and most people would agree with me.
There was a time when people thought race mixing was harmful to society. It probably did harm some people in some way. But ultimately it turned out the harm was blown completely out of proportion and the benefit if helping to eliminate racism and intolerance and allowing people more freedom to love who they wanted far outweighed any harm real or perceived by several orders of magnitude.
Maybe if I was born 1 generation earlier, I might be homophobic too. But I have literally seen zero harm caused by homosexuality. I've seen immense harm caused by homophobia. In fact most of the harm cited as being caused by homosexuality is actually caused by homophobia (e.g. the stigma children of homosexual parents must bear). Luckily that stigma is dying, and the children of homosexual parents aren't ostracized like they once were. That's a good thing.
We know that homosexuals are not the same as pedophiles, just like we know that black people aren't murderers. Some gay people are pedophiles and some black people are murderers.
Is it confusing to know which bathroom a transgender person should use? Yeah I guess, but it really doesn't seem like a big problem. The worst thing that could possibly happen is that someone who was born a different gender hears you peeing and/or pooping. Big deal. I would much prefer this world to one where homosexuality is so feared that it is not uncommon for people to be physically attacked for being gay.
I know people who have been raised by gay parents and I know people who have been molested. They are not comparable.
"Who is using coercion to get this guy fired? I have yet to hear of a single person using violence or a threat of violence as a means to have him fired."
Bullying is the threat of violence (which I mentioned).
Coercion as defined by google: 1. the practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats.
Using public media outlets demanding the business owner be fired as a punitive measure is not.
Why not? Seems fine to me. No one's rights are violated. The people in charge at mozilla can still do whatever they want. No one is trying to pass a law requiring Mozilla to fire Eich.
The only trying to get laws passed to deny people equal rights is Eich.
If someone that worked at a local business had the opinion that smoking should be banned would it be okay to try to force that company to fire them with your more populous opinion? How about if a local business employee thought that blacks should be able to drink at the same water fountain but the local community didn't like that idea so got the person fired?
No it's not ok to force people to do anything if it violates their rights. Luckily no one was forced to do anything. If the CEO didn't resign and Mozilla decided to fire him to appease their other employees, it would also be fine. Employment is a mutual agreement that either side can end through firing or quitting.
Forcing this CEO to be fired would be if a law was passed that forced companies to fire CEOs that were known bigots, or if someone threatened all the board members with violence if they didn't fire the CEO.
Applying social pressure is not the kind of force that violates anyone's rights.
Prop 8, on the other hand denies equal protection under the law for gay people.
No one's rights were violated, unless you believe in the right never to be criticized or fired.
No it's like claiming there is a hair in your food and getting the cook fired, because there was a hair in your food, because the cook has a sticker on his car saying "wearing a hairnet is a sin".
Exactly.
So it's only a problem when someone's rights are violated, and no one's rights were violated...
...Except for the rights of gay people when prop 8 was passed with the help of Brendan Eich.
I fully support the right of freedom of speech for everyone including Eich's. I fully support the right of everyone's right to donate to whatever political causes they want to. I also support the right of Mozilla to fire their own CEO if it turns out he is a bigot, and therefore unable to be an effective leader of a diverse group of people. I'm sure he would be fine as the CEO of a company that only employed homophobic people, as none of them would question his judgement.
Luckily he didn't need to be fired because he resigned under public pressure.
For this same reason I would not want a CEO who privately believed black people were inferior, or that women are not as capable as men and deserved lower salaries, etc.
It doesn't make it unethical either.
Political donations are publicised as a check against a few billionaires distorting the playing field. To see how much money influenced the election. It was not meant to be a tool for personal retribution.
It's not about retribution. It's about being able to do your job properly. It's that by supporting prop 8 you are showing yourself to be a bigot. There is no reason to doubt the software engineering abilities of a person if they are a bigot. There is a good reason to doubt the leadership abilities of a person if they are a bigot.
This is wrong. People must never be demoted because of political activism they do privatly, not using the company brand, and not related to the company mission.
If for example, it turns out that the president of the NRA has been secretly donating money to lobby for more strict gun control laws, do you think...
1. The private political opinions of this person affect his ability to do his job?
2. That this person has a right to never be demoted or fired?
3. If members of the NRA call for his resignation, are they being unreasonable?
The problem with NAMBLA is that they advocate a view that if adopted would harm children. NAMBLA basically wants to legalize child molestation (although they probably wouldn't refer to it as molestation, since their view is that it is not harmful).
Regardless of how disgusting you may find homosexual relationships to be, it is something that 2 adults have entered into voluntarily. No one is being harmed by homosexuality or same sex marriage.
You are still missing the point, which was: the hypocrisy of using coercion to try to get this guy fired.
Who is using coercion to get this guy fired? I have yet to hear of a single person using violence or a threat of violence as a means to have him fired.
If, as the other respondent said, this was a CEO who had pro-gay political views, and a conservative political movement tried to get him ousted (never forget this is about politics), those same liberals would be foaming at the mouth.
And that would not constitute coercion either.
Hypocrisy is hypocrisy. It isn't about whether Eich is a good guy. It's about what OKCupid decided to do about it.
OK cupid decided to ask people to switch to a different browser. This is also not coercion or violating anyone's rights.
So far the only thing violating anyone's rights in this discussion was Prop 8, and the only person advocating violating anyone's rights is Eich.
It may be argued, that government's interest in child-bearing (and -rearing!) unions is legitimate. Because heterosexual couples tend to have children eventually, some sort of justification for recognition of the traditional marriages exists. Possibly...
This is like imprisoning mexicans because they tend to be criminals. If you really wanted to stop crime, you would criminalize crime. Similarly if you want to affect how children are born or raised, you would make laws affecting reproduction and child rearing, not marriage. We already have recognized term for people who bear and raise children called "parents". There are single parents, homosexual parents, parents who adopt their children, as well as heterosexual parents. There are also plenty of married people that choose not to have children.
There is no reason to conflate parenthood with heterosexual marriage, and there is no reason to conflate homosexuality with non-parenthood. It may be true that most children have 2 heterosexual parents, this is not a good reason to exclude homosexuals from being considered "married". Most children are also not adopted. No one seems to be calling for couples who adopt to only be allowed to have a civil union. Unless you want to remove the term marriage from childless couples and couples who adopt children, removing the term marriage from gay people is a double standard.
Gays have the same right as the rest of us — to marry one person of the opposite gender. They just don't have the ability to exercise it.
If this is the technicality you want to go with, then it makes the ban on gay marriage discrimination based on gender. A woman has a right to marry a man, but a man does not.
It is the same sort of discrimination that a ban on interracial marriages would impose. You could argue that interracial marriages are not discriminatory because each person has the same right to marry a person of their own race. This is still discrimination because it grants a white person a right (to marry white people) that is not granted to a black person. The fact that white people are also discriminated against by forbidding them to marry black people doesn't make the situation better, it makes it worse.
Just as I would not change the rules of volleyball to allow paraplegics to play it, I would not change the definition of marriage to accommodate homosexuals.
Changing the rules of volleyball would change how everyone must play volleyball. Changing the rules of marriage to allow gay people to be married does not effect heterosexuals at all. Also, the definition of marriage has been changed many times already.
We once changed the definition of human beings to include black people. Do you agree with this decision?
There is also no reason to assume that the sole purpose of marriage is to produce children. Also, marriages don't produce children. The biology of producing children is in no way dependent on the institution of marriage. Gay people are also perfectly capable of producing children and many do.
I also share your view that marriage should be completely separate from government. Marriage even in the legal sense entails a lot of things involving inheritance, hospital visits, power of attorney, alimony, taxes, etc. All of this stuff applies just as well to same sex couples. It doesn't really have anything to do with children. (which same sex couples can also have). There is no law forcing people to get married if they have kids. There is no law forcing married people to have kids.
And there is a very good reason to use the same legal construct (i.e. calling both same sex and heterosexual unions, marriages), because despite the claims, civil unions (which each state defines it's own way, if at all) do not confer the same rights as marriage. In the same way that separate but equal laws lead to anything but equality in the south during segregation, separate legal definitions for civil unions for gay people and marriages for straight people, leaves the door wide open for differences in the rights offered by these 2 institutions.
I don't care if certain churches refuse to consider gay marriages legitimate. I would actually prefer if marriage was removed from government influence altogether. But what we can't have is the government offering a right to one group of people and not another.
What is deeply flawed about the term "marriage rights"?
Second, it's not like the man is a skin-head. He donated $1,000 to a Prop 8 fund. Maybe the guy is a Mormon. I dunno.
Why is being a skinhead different? If he was Mormon, why does that make it ok?
What if he was a communist party member? Shouldn't the 100s of millions of deaths directly attributable to the rise of communist party rule be a little more cause for concern then whether states should accept homosexual marriages?
No because that's a guilt by association. Communists shouldn't be blamed for the murders committed by other communists. There is nothing inherently murderous about communism. Yes communists have murdered lots of people. People with mustaches have murdered lots of people too.
Or, maybe, I dunno... supporting a political party or campaign doesn't mean your motives are nefarious and harmful (even though their effect might cause harm in actuality).
On the other hand, supporting prop 8 does make you in favor of stripping rights away from gay people, and therefore a bigot. Maybe you were hoping that stripping rights away from gay people wouldn't be harmful, and are therefore well intentioned, but that doesn't mean you're not a bigot. There are plenty of well intentioned people that are still bigots. And it is important to call out bigotry when we see it. Hopefully this will cause some well intentioned people to reflect on whether they really think denying equal protection under the law is the best path forward.