Freedom of speech means "My words will not have any consequences from the government (with a few exceptions)". Freedoms usually do absolve you of consequences, but the freedom of speech as defined by the constitution does not extend to to protecting you in every imaginable situation (e.g. it doesn't prevent your wife from divorcing you for calling her a whore), nor is it meant to. It has a very limited scope.
Freedom of speech protects you from punishment by the government for your speech.
If you argue that free speech should only be protected against the government and not against employers, then you are in effect saying that a majority of people shouldn't have any free speech protections at all.
This is just false. The fact that you can be fired for saying something stupid, does not in any way diminish the fact that you can not be imprisoned for saying something stupid.
Freedom of speech only protects you from punishment by the government for your speech. It doesn't prevent people from criticizing your views or expressing their desire for you not to hold a leadership position, nor does it prevent you from being fired.
Your right to tell your boss to go fuck himself is protected by the first amendment. This means you can't be fined or jailed by the government for doing this. Your boss can still fire you without violating your constitutional right to freedom of speech.
Expressing racist, homophobic, or sexist ideologies, in my opinion disqualifies you from a leadership position at a large companies that no doubt employs multiple races, genders, and sexual preferences. Being a leader requires that you are respected by your subordinates and that your judgement is trusted. Voting for prop 8 does not give me confidence in someone's judgement when it comes to the topic of fairness. Maybe that's OK for some employees. I don't think it's OK for a CEO to lack judgement in this area.
In my experience, I would say 95% of the time you are programming, you aren't using your CS degree. You are banging out code. That last 5% is important though. You might not even necessarily need to write some complicated algorithm, but you at least need to fully understand things like time/space complexity, graph theory, or concurrency, in order to pick the right classes from a library and properly design software.
And I realize in the real world, people who don't have CS degrees write a lot of software. It is also the case that most software sucks, and I don;t think these 2 things are unrelated.
I suggest that there has been no proof that his personal belief taints his ability to be a good leader. The burden is on groups calling for his resignation or dismissal
The group calling for his resignation are some of his subordinates. I support the employees calling for his resignation, as I also would not want to work for a company whose CEO was a bigot. It think it reflects poorly on the company to have a chief executive who is intolerant.
In order for a leader to do his job properly, he requires the respect from his subordinates, and confidence from his subordinates in his judgement. It seems he has lost that respect and confidence. I don't think tolerance is a requirement for every job, but I CEO of a large company is one of them.
I think the idea that your personally held belief's have no bearing on your job performance is wrong. I think it's reasonable to assume that a manager who thinks black people are inferior to white people is not going to be a good manager of a team of black and white people.
In fact, he was already an employee and there was insufficient evidence to prevent his promotion. Calling for his ouster is simply a witch hunt.
Of all the types of entitlements that one might be opposed to, being entitled to a promotion to CEO of a company seems pretty high on the list.
Or firing someone for being Jewish or not. In all three cases, it has only to do with their personal held belief system. The only difference is that one will get you a lawsuit and the others will not. See my previous post about protected class and recognize the arbitrary definition thereof.
I support the right of employers to fire someone for being jewish. I think the benefit gained by enforcing these sorts of rules is minimal and the burden of proving *why* someone decided to fire an employee is so big, it just wastes money on lawyers. I would much prefer social pressure in the form of boycotts, etc, rather than laws to police discrimination and other forms of bad behavior in the workplace.
I would also like to point out that "Calling for someone to be fired" still falls under freedom of speech. It doesn't actually violate anyone's rights. Getting fired doesn't violate your rights either. Proposition 8 actually removed rights from a certain group of people, in violation of the California constitution and the 14th amendment of the US constitution guaranteeing equal protection under the law.
Calling for someone to be fired by a private company is different than calling for the government to strip rights from a select group of it's citizens. Both calls are protected by the constitution, but only one actually advocates violating the constitution.
I am definitely part of the "I'm right" crowd on a lot of issues. I don't think telling other people to shut up really serves any good purpose. If anything letting stupid people talk usually helps in revealing their stupidity. I say lets have a discussion where no subjects or ideas are sacred and may the best ideas win.
I would say that whenever there is a discrepancy between the rights given to groups in society, it makes one group privileged and the other group oppressed relative to each other. I don't think there is a default level of rights that would allow you to say "It's not that group A is privileged, it's that group B is oppressed", because this assumes an agreed upon or obvious default set of rights that I don't think exists. For something to be "special" there must be agreement on what is normal. I also don't think the sizes of the groups matter.
This is a semantic debate, and I don't really have a vested interest in what the words privileged and oppressed mean other than I want the usage of words to be simple, consistent, and useful. I feel like my usage of these words satisfies that and it also happens to be consistent with Webster's dictionary whatever that's worth.
I don't see how acceptance of homosexuals would make you not able to be a leader, especially since there are no doubt some homosexuals working in every company of reasonable size. The difference between accepting homosexuals and not accepting them is that one is is good and one is bad. I don't see them as two sides of the same coin. To me this is like the difference between firing someone for being racist and firing someone for not being racist.
I actually would not support a law making it illegal to fire someone for any reason. I believe in the right to free association, which includes being able to fire people for whatever reason you want. I would personally not agree with the decision to fire someone for being tolerant, as I don't see how this can make you anything but better at doing almost every job, but I think that should be their right.
I don't really care what the left thinks, because I don't identify with being left or right. I am not a democrat or a republican. The fact that "the left would be up in arms" doesn't really concern me.
I guess it depends on your definition of "shouting down". But I have always espoused the view that the answer to "bad speech" is "good speech" rather than suppression of speech. I don't tell people to shut up, although I defend the right of people to "say" people should shut up (because of free speech), but would fight any actions to actually limit free speech.
I took "shouting down bigotry" to mean being very vocal about calling out examples of bigotry until people are too ashamed to voice their bigotry, even thought hey still have the right to.
As an aside, the majority cannot have "privilege". That's not what the word means (the word "oppressed" would serve you better than "privileged" in making the same point). The majority cannot have "private law", as when it's the majority it's just "law".
I don't see anything wrong with the way I used "privilege" (a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people). I don't see why "heterosexuals" should be excluded from being the "particular" group but I don't really care to debate semantics.
You believe society is best served by "equal treatment" as you define it. Your opponent believes that society is best served by giving special social accord to those who live a certain, traditional way.
I agree this is a difference of opinion. And I can't do anything to sway people's opinions on this matter. All I can do is try to highlight the fact that supporting prop 8 is in opposition to equal rights should one happen to have the opinion that equal rights are more important than tradition.
IMO, proposition 8 should satisfy you both, granting civil union but not the specific word "marriage". But I don't really have a dog in this fight, I'm just dismayed by the incivility.
I suppose civility is subjective, but I would define it first and foremost as the ability to keep disputes in the verbal arena as opposed to the use of coercion. I also consider some speech is rather uncivil, but I would say that the most uncivil speech is preferable to even the most modest violation of someone's rights.
In theory I think it doesn't matter, but in practice separate but equal doesn't really work. It didn't work with drinking fountains in the south, and it hasn't worked in practice with marriage. Civil unions in California did not confer the same rights as marriage, along with most other states. Treating both same sex and heterosexual marriage under the same title would do much more to remove any legal differences and keep any from creeping back in.
I would be equally appalled, if there was legislation to issue separate but equal driver's licenses to black people. Everyone else could gets traditional drivers licenses, and black people get "Black driver cards" with no legal differences. Even such a system happened to start out equal, I would be very skeptical that it would remain equal, especially that there is no good reason to make them separate.
If I was going to support a compromise it would be to give both same sex and heterosexual couples legal "civil unions". I actually don't care what it's called. I just feel it is important that it's truly equal (i.e. including being called the same thing).
I see one side refusing to work with people from the other side. Would you prefer the other side unable to work at all, or do you support "separate but equal" companies?
I would be ok working at the same company as a bigot, and in fact I do. I have coworkers who think mexicans are inferior and I have coworkers who delight in the idea that our military kills muslim people. Our company is a large enough size that I sort of expect these sorts of people to be a part of the team. I don;t have to like them, to cooperate with them for the good of the company. I would however have a pretty big problem if one of these big
Try presenting an argument for your point of view. "I'm right because SHUT UP!" is not an argument, except in a Monty Python sketch sort of way.
I have never told anyone to shut up.
You have only your opinion here, and the strength of your belief. Your opponent also believes strongly, and, guess what, is also an intelligent, rational human being deserving of basic respect.
Yes I have an opinion that I want to live in a society that treats people equally under the law. I understand that some people may not share this opinion. It might actually be considered rather clever to try to assume a position of legal privilege if you can get away with it, however my sense of fairness and justice will not allow me to accept this.
And yes I believe people deserve respect, however I don't think think this includes pretending that people are not bigots when they are. Maybe someone can come up with a good euphemism for bigotry like "fairness challenged", but this would be like how the people who supported segregation of whites and blacks in the South were "fairness challenged".
When you can both express your views in public, and attempt to convince others, without fear of retaliation, then we have a functional society.
I was not aware that any kind of injustice like retaliation was occurring other than when prop 8 was actually in effect and denying people equal rights. But if it is, I definitely oppose it.
OTOH, the Civil War killed more Americans than all other wars combined, and created hardships that lasted years. Perhaps it was the only way, but any other way that would have worked would have been a better way.
Yeah it would have been nice if some of that violence was prevented. I am not sure what this has to do with anything. I certainly don't blame abolitionists for the deaths resulting from the civil war.
That's just BS. Accept that those who disagree with you are people too, just trying to find their own path to happiness.
I never said that they weren't people.
Very few people are just hurting others for the joy of doing so (though sadly they do exist, and sometimes come to power).
It is possible to hurt people without intending to. I am sure many people who opposed civil rights did not intend to hurt anyone, however the societal manifestation of this opposition to civil rights actually did hurt many people, and it needed to be abolished in order to have a more just society.
You don't have to accept the views of your opponents, but you should tolerate them, and accept the people holding those views as people, just like you.
Like I said. At no point did I ever claim that any people are not people. I tolerate people, that doesn't mean we must tolerate intolerance (e.g. different legal rights given to different groups). In fact I think such institutional intolerance must *not* be tolerated (i.e. it should be changed). I am not concerned about intolerant views people might hold as long as it does not creep it's way into law.
Do you really think they see their own views as intolerant?
No I don't. That's doesn't mean they aren't. I would venture to guess that most people throughout history who exhibited intolerance (even by your definition), did not consider themselves to be doing anythign wrong. This is human nature.
Do you really think they're trying to harm others, instead of trying to shape society the way they see as best for all
I don't doubt that people generally don't want to harm others. There were people who supported slavery and believed that it was necessary for the economy of white people and that black people were happier as slaves in the civilized world rather than living as savages in Africa. There were people who believed both white people an
I agree punishing the mozilla project for the new CEO doesn't make a whole lot of sense. A lot of people worked very hard on this open source software.
I also agree that the CEO has a right to his personal beliefs and even has a right to donate to support prop 8.
What he doesn't (or shouldn't) have a right to, is his job as CEO of a diverse company. These relationships should be government by the right of free association, meaning that the committee that hired him should have the right to terminate their employer/employee relationship with him. Even if you believe in the anti-discrimination laws, I think you could easily make the case that he is as unable to perform his duties effectively as a leader, as a CEO who was known to be a white supremacist. It seems reasonable to fire leaders who are incapable of leading due to lack of confidence in their judgement.
And more importantly prop 8 should never have been allowed to become law because despite everyone's personal belief's, this proposition actually violates both the California constitution and the US constitution. It took a while for California courts to come to this conclusion, and it will take a while for the US supreme court to decide that it is unconstitutional for states to ban same-sex marriage, but it is already on that path with the repeal of DOMA on constitutional grounds.
Shouting down bigotry is the best way to deal with bigotry. It doesn't violate anyone's rights. Laws which deny people equal protection under the law actually do violate people's rights.
So yes shouting down bigotry and opposing civil rights are the same thing in the sense that they are both shouting, except that one is shouting in support of bigotry and the other in opposition to it, which is in my view, a big enough of a difference to make supporting one and not the other perfectly reasonable.
To me this is like claiming that the slavery abolitionists were just as intolerant as the slave owners because they were intolerant of slavery. Yes you can look at it this way, but I don't think it serves any real purpose other than to confuse the issue.
I don't think it's profound at all to claim that those opposed to intolerance are intolerant of intolerance. This just seems like an obvious and necessary exception to the concept of intolerance.
I would like to see that constitution, actually.
I think you are mistaken.
It is the 14th amendment is the part of the constitution that guarantees equal protection under the law, and a series of supreme court rulings decided that the bill of rights is also enforceable on the states.
DOMA has been deemed unconstitutional, effectively banning the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman at the federal level.
The last step (which may take a few years) is for the supreme court to declare state bans on same sex marriage unconstitutional (most obviously because it violates the 14th amendment, but it probably violates other sections as well).
If we define marriage as a bond between man and weterosexual guys are no more legible to enter marriage than homosexual guys. So there is no discrimination at all.
And if we define marriage as between people of the same race, you could say that there is no discrimination because white people are no more eligible to enter marriage as black people, they just need to marry their own kind. This is a very narrow view of discrimination. For one thing this is still discriminatory because it makes it so that a white person can marry another white person, but a black person can not. This is discrimination based on race. By the same token, a ban on gay marriage is a form of gender discrimination. It makes it so that a woman has the right to marry a man, but a man does not.
I, for example, cannot work for CIA. I am Russian. I am OK with that, even understanding that such work would create many opportunities for me. But to drive my point, I'd like to ask you to stop your jihad on ban to gay marriage and fight for my right to work as the top officer of CIA and NSA.
You actually can work for the CIA and NSA if you become a US citizen and get a security clearance.
And I would like to reiterate my question of whether you think it is ok to ban marriage between black people? If not, why not?
I think that marriage is a bond between man and women just by definition of it. So I see at least one reason to ban marriage between gay people.
And you are free to think that. However, it is actually unconstitutional for the legal definition of marriage to apply differently to different people. The 14th amendment's equal protection clause does not allow the government to give different groups of people different rights.
Call it differently, I (and many others) will have no reason to oppose. Like, for example, civil union. E.g., marriage assumes civil union, but civil union can be between gay people, triples, teams of eight and so on.
This is the same argument made for "separate but equal" during the times when we had Jim Crow laws in this country. It became very apparent that when things are separate, it can be almost taken for granted that they will not be equal. And in practice, now where states provide civil unions (each defining their own rules), there are differences between marriage and civil union.
As there is mostly heterosexual couples in the world, I think we have very valid reason to call this very common case of civil union by using special term. Let's use the term marriage. I think that provides you with the reason to stick with this term for this specific case and other terms for other cases.
Most marriages are not mixed race either. Maybe we should have a special legal term for mixed race marriages. Maybe we should have a special term for marriages between blind people. Maybe we should have a special term for marriages between atheists. The only reason I have ever heard that people wanted seek a special term for marriage between homosexuals, is because they feel this type of "marriage" is somehow less than a marriage between a man and a woman, and they don't want this type of inferior relationship to pollute the term they use for their own marriage. This same argument could be made in the same way for marriages between people of other races. It is your right to feel this way, but it is not something that a nation with a guarantee of equal protection under the law can foster in good conscience.
Government discriminates people from top to bottom for various reasons, from age to the gender, to the wealth to the height. I do not see the reason to discriminate gay people in their discrimination by government.
So by this logic, do you think it would be ok to ban marriage for black people? After all, the government discriminates against lots of different groups based on age, wealth and height, it is only fair that black people are also discriminated against.
I was referring to discrimination against gay people by the government. Even if this one study turns out to be true, a higher incidence of mental health problems in a group is not a reasonable reason to ban marriage for that group. You could test levels of mental illness in different races and I guarantee there will be differences. This does not mean we should ban marriage or any other rights to groups that score lower.
The fact that insurance companies use these sorts of statistics to determine insurance premiums, is not comparable to discrimination when it comes from the government, and when it affects your rights as a citizen.
It's not just about having more kids after one generation. It's about having kids that will have more kids. One of the autistic people I am friends with has had 5 kids, and one of them is an actress. Maybe the children of autistic people are more attractive.
Plenty of species are not social, and do just fine. Furthermore, autistic people are not anti-social, they just seem weird to non-autistic people and we seem weird to them. I have a few friends that are autistic. They seem a bit weird at first, but when you get to know them and they feel more comfortable around you, it's fine. One thing I've noticed at least among my autistic friends is that they are very intelligent and often have jobs that require very high demand skills. One of them has been married 3 times and has 5 kids. Maybe I wouldn't want to be married to him, but he's doing just fine from an evolutionary standpoint.
I would say you are suffering from what Dan Dennet calls Philosophers' Syndrome: mistaking a failure of the imagination for an insight into necessity.
In a political debate, you may accuse the other side to fit the definition of "bigot" or "immoral" or "rearded" or "dork" or whatever, but that doesnt change a simple fact: rational political debates are about debating ideas, not name-calling people.
If someone supports banning marriage for black people because they think marriage is only between 2 white people, then they hold a racist position and are therefore racist. Someone who supports banning marriage between gay people is not racist because the basis for the discrimination is not based on race. There is a general term for intolerance towards other groups and it is called bigotry, and the people who practice bigotry are bigots. These are the English definitions of these words. I'm sure bigots don;t like being called bigots. I'm sure racists don't like being called racists. This does not change the fact that their actions are consistent with the English definitions of those words.
You don't get to say "I think marriage should only be between white people, but I'm not a racist" and be taken seriously. For some reason this hasn't completely caught on with giving equal rights to gay people, but it is gradually getting there. One of the ways to get there is to call people bigots when they are practicing bigotry. People should be made to feel uncomfortable for supporting unequal rights for different people, and people should feel uncomfortable defending those people for the same reason that people should be made uncomfortable for supporting slavery or defending people who supported slavery. One way to enact social change is through social pressure. One way to apply social pressure is to start labeling things (like racism, sexism, and bigotry) correctly as opposed to pretending that certain people are not racists, sexist, or bigots, etc when in fact they are.
No one if denying the legal right to free association. We are saying that demoting someone based on his personal, private political activity is anti-ethical.
What I am saying is that when you are in a leadership position, your "political activity" if it implies you are racist or bigoted, actually hinders your ability to be a good leader since now, many of the people you're responsible for leading, know that you advocated denying them equal protection under the law which is a constitutional right. One of your jobs as CEO is to lead people, and you can't effectively lead people if they don't trust your judgement.
If someone got a job as the CEO of a holocaust survivor support organization, but then it turned out this person is actually privately a Neo-Nazi, I am saying that this person's privately held views (now that they are public) are a detriment to him doing his job well, even if he was qualified and would have done a good job otherwise. The case of the Mozilla CEO is a less extreme example.
One thing is to have a legal right, another thing is to be correct. You have the legal right to deny the Holocaust, or to claim that a person should be demoted from an technological organization because of his private political views. That doen't make it ethical.
I am not advocating that "a person be demoted from a technological organization because of his private political views". I am advocating that the CEO of an organization be removed from his leadership position because of his now public political views.
Ad hominem attacks don't help your case. Politics is supposed to be about which ideas make sense; its is not supposed to be about which side is better at name-calling.
Supporting prop 8 (i.e. supporting legislation that would remove equal rights from a particular group of people), is perfectly consistent with the definition of a bigot. It's name calling, but it's accurate name calling.
By the same token, supporting a ban on marriage for black people would also make you a bigot. This is similar. The only difference is that the discrimination is based on sexual preference rather than skin color.
It is not an ad hominem attack. An ad hominem attack is not simply name calling. It is an attack on an a logical argument based on the person that is making the argument. An ad hominem attack would be like "This person's argument is wrong because he's a priest".
I, on the other hand, prefer that political, philosophical and religious speech should be free from punishment.
It is free from punishment by the government. This does not mean that individuals in the private sector are not allowed to deem you as unfit to be a leader of a diverse group of people if you happen to be racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.
I support the right of free association, which includes the ability to willingly enter into an terminate relationships, including the freedom to choose who you employ and fire. These mozilla employees are simply making it known that they do not approve of their new leader, and the committee that is in charge of hiring the CEO is free to make a decision of whether they value their new CEO or this other group of employees more.
No rights are being violated by calling for this CEO's resignation. Unlike prop 8, which did strip people from their right to equal protection under the law.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Furthermore, the thing about "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" has no bearing on being entitled to a job at a private (i.e. not affiliated with any government) company. Nor does it obligate anyone to respect your idiotic religious beliefs. It just means that congress (and the states due to Gitlow v. New York) can't pass a law discriminating based on religion.
It may actually be illegal to fire or not hire people based on their retarded religious beliefs, but it's because of anti-discrimination laws, not because of the 1st amendment or anything else in the constitution.
The only thing in the first amendment that is relevant to this discussion is that it affirms my right to accuse people of having retarded religious views, and for those people to say whatever they want in defense and accuse me of whatever they want.
I don't think any politician in the current US climate would push this, and I'm not asking you if you would support it disingenuously. But if you had the power to take away the right of blacks to marry, and this was not going to affect of other races to marry, would you do it? Or is destroying marriage one piece at a time more important than fairness to people of different colors for you?
I just realized the repeat argument you're making is also a false equivalence: you're comparing what people are (black, white) with how people behave (heterosexual, homosexual). NAMBLA argues for pedophile rights; I haven't seen a rights movement for horse fuckers, but I could theorize one.
Being homosexual is not just how you behave. It is who you are attracted to (something not under ones control). I didn't decide to be attracted to women. I don't
know if people are born that way, but I am pretty sure it is not under people's control either way.
And yes I do think pedophiles should have rights too. They shouldn't have the right to marry or molest kids (because they are minors and under the age of consent). And I think we definitely need to prevent them from exercising their preferences as it harms other people. For the same reason that people are not allowed to marry people against their will. Gay adults who get married are both willing participants and legally able to consent and enter into a contract and no one is harmed. I think it is much more fair to equate gay marriage with straight marriage than with pedophilia or child marriage.
Also you take a default favorable position: society has decided that blacks get rights. At the time, this was controversial. We also have animal rights movements, which are whacko: they're food and we kill them, but there are people who demand we make it illegal to murder animals. In some countries, it's illegal to murder cows for roughly the same reason it's illegal to murder blacks here. Elephants, as well, in societies which believe elephants are of sapient-level intelligence and thus have the rights of people.
I agree that animals aren't entitled to the same rights because they are not people. Even someone from the past who doesn't believe blacks are people would probably agree with me that all people deserve the same rights, we just disagree on whether certain things count as people. Are you really taking the position that gays are not real people? Or are you taking the position that not all people deserve equal rights? My position is that all people deserve equal rights under the law and that gays are people and animals are not.
You also seem to argue that the rights gap created by marriage itself is wrong. Therefor, we should not be allowing people to get married. At all.
I agree that the definitely rights gap created by marriage itself is wrong (and I just got married). And I support removing the government sanction from marriage. I don't mind if people conduct their own private marriage ceremonies.
Legalizing gay marriage is, in your own broken analogy, like legalizing blacks to murder other blacks in the 1920s: whites had the right to hang blacks at will, so making it okay for blacks to hang other blacks would make their rights equal
Obviously not. Whites having the right to life and blacks not having this right is clearly not equal, especially considering that being black or white is not a choice.
I support having equal rights for everybody. Prop 8 is a law *making* it illegal for gays to marry. I don't support government endorsed marriage. This doesn't mean that Prop 8 is a good step in that direction. If I wanted to make marijuana legal, making it only legal for white people is not a good step in that direction because it both violates the constitution's equal protection clause and I also find it morally reprehensible. I would rather marijuana be illegal for everyone than to have it be only legal to a particular group (even though I support marijuana legalization).
Being married is a choice. While I dislike the idea of married people being in a privileged class above single people, it's not as if people have no control over whether they are married or single. People really do not have a choice over whether their own sexual preference. So I would list my priorities this way.
It's more like white people are taxed 20%, black people are taxed 50%, chinese people are taxed 50%, and we make black people pay 20% taxes. Well, now instead of paying 50/120 of every tax dollar collected, chinese people are paying 50/90. Thus we've raised the taxes on chinese people.
Even if you feel this is a more accurate analogy, why support any inequality at all? (even if it helps some other discriminated class)
And this is where you expose yourself as having the analytical mind of a goldfish, since you responded to the exact opposite assertion above.
Or you just don't understand what I'm saying
The argument is simple: we've "corrected" inequality by being more equal to one group, and less equal to another. We're putting gays into an expanding privileged group, and making the other unprivileged group pay for that. (Everyone else is paying for it, really, but the unprivileged are paying the most, proportionally)
So why not remove privileged groups entirely rather than just making them smaller by unfairly disqualifying one particular group?
That's exactly backwards. We're making a situation worse instead of better. We should make the situation better.
We should make things better not worse? I agree with that. I don't see how making it so gay people can't get married achieves that more than making it so black people can't get married.
As far as technicalities go, by the way, people have always argued that gays have always had the right to get all the same protections under law by getting a "civil union". The entire dispute is over whether the legal structure is called by one word or two.
Civil unions are defined differently by each state. In many, if not most or all, states civil unions only offer some of the same legal rights as marriage not all of them. The fact that they are different titles leaves the door open for there to be differences, in the same way that having separate drinking fountains leaves the door open for them to be different.
If I were to try to say black people were not human, but rather "humanoid", and promised that "humanoids" would have all the same rights and protections as traditional humans, should black people be OK with this?
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Freedom of speech means "My words will not have any consequences from the government (with a few exceptions)". Freedoms usually do absolve you of consequences, but the freedom of speech as defined by the constitution does not extend to to protecting you in every imaginable situation (e.g. it doesn't prevent your wife from divorcing you for calling her a whore), nor is it meant to. It has a very limited scope.
Freedom of speech protects you from punishment by the government for your speech.
If you argue that free speech should only be protected against the government and not against employers, then you are in effect saying that a majority of people shouldn't have any free speech protections at all.
This is just false. The fact that you can be fired for saying something stupid, does not in any way diminish the fact that you can not be imprisoned for saying something stupid.
Freedom of speech only protects you from punishment by the government for your speech. It doesn't prevent people from criticizing your views or expressing their desire for you not to hold a leadership position, nor does it prevent you from being fired.
Your right to tell your boss to go fuck himself is protected by the first amendment. This means you can't be fined or jailed by the government for doing this. Your boss can still fire you without violating your constitutional right to freedom of speech.
Expressing racist, homophobic, or sexist ideologies, in my opinion disqualifies you from a leadership position at a large companies that no doubt employs multiple races, genders, and sexual preferences. Being a leader requires that you are respected by your subordinates and that your judgement is trusted. Voting for prop 8 does not give me confidence in someone's judgement when it comes to the topic of fairness. Maybe that's OK for some employees. I don't think it's OK for a CEO to lack judgement in this area.
In my experience, I would say 95% of the time you are programming, you aren't using your CS degree. You are banging out code. That last 5% is important though. You might not even necessarily need to write some complicated algorithm, but you at least need to fully understand things like time/space complexity, graph theory, or concurrency, in order to pick the right classes from a library and properly design software.
And I realize in the real world, people who don't have CS degrees write a lot of software. It is also the case that most software sucks, and I don;t think these 2 things are unrelated.
I suggest that there has been no proof that his personal belief taints his ability to be a good leader. The burden is on groups calling for his resignation or dismissal
The group calling for his resignation are some of his subordinates. I support the employees calling for his resignation, as I also would not want to work for a company whose CEO was a bigot. It think it reflects poorly on the company to have a chief executive who is intolerant.
In order for a leader to do his job properly, he requires the respect from his subordinates, and confidence from his subordinates in his judgement. It seems he has lost that respect and confidence. I don't think tolerance is a requirement for every job, but I CEO of a large company is one of them.
I think the idea that your personally held belief's have no bearing on your job performance is wrong. I think it's reasonable to assume that a manager who thinks black people are inferior to white people is not going to be a good manager of a team of black and white people.
In fact, he was already an employee and there was insufficient evidence to prevent his promotion. Calling for his ouster is simply a witch hunt.
Of all the types of entitlements that one might be opposed to, being entitled to a promotion to CEO of a company seems pretty high on the list.
Or firing someone for being Jewish or not. In all three cases, it has only to do with their personal held belief system. The only difference is that one will get you a lawsuit and the others will not. See my previous post about protected class and recognize the arbitrary definition thereof.
I support the right of employers to fire someone for being jewish. I think the benefit gained by enforcing these sorts of rules is minimal and the burden of proving *why* someone decided to fire an employee is so big, it just wastes money on lawyers. I would much prefer social pressure in the form of boycotts, etc, rather than laws to police discrimination and other forms of bad behavior in the workplace.
I would also like to point out that "Calling for someone to be fired" still falls under freedom of speech. It doesn't actually violate anyone's rights. Getting fired doesn't violate your rights either. Proposition 8 actually removed rights from a certain group of people, in violation of the California constitution and the 14th amendment of the US constitution guaranteeing equal protection under the law.
Calling for someone to be fired by a private company is different than calling for the government to strip rights from a select group of it's citizens. Both calls are protected by the constitution, but only one actually advocates violating the constitution.
I am definitely part of the "I'm right" crowd on a lot of issues. I don't think telling other people to shut up really serves any good purpose. If anything letting stupid people talk usually helps in revealing their stupidity. I say lets have a discussion where no subjects or ideas are sacred and may the best ideas win.
I would say that whenever there is a discrepancy between the rights given to groups in society, it makes one group privileged and the other group oppressed relative to each other. I don't think there is a default level of rights that would allow you to say "It's not that group A is privileged, it's that group B is oppressed", because this assumes an agreed upon or obvious default set of rights that I don't think exists. For something to be "special" there must be agreement on what is normal. I also don't think the sizes of the groups matter.
This is a semantic debate, and I don't really have a vested interest in what the words privileged and oppressed mean other than I want the usage of words to be simple, consistent, and useful. I feel like my usage of these words satisfies that and it also happens to be consistent with Webster's dictionary whatever that's worth.
I don't see how acceptance of homosexuals would make you not able to be a leader, especially since there are no doubt some homosexuals working in every company of reasonable size. The difference between accepting homosexuals and not accepting them is that one is is good and one is bad. I don't see them as two sides of the same coin. To me this is like the difference between firing someone for being racist and firing someone for not being racist.
I actually would not support a law making it illegal to fire someone for any reason. I believe in the right to free association, which includes being able to fire people for whatever reason you want. I would personally not agree with the decision to fire someone for being tolerant, as I don't see how this can make you anything but better at doing almost every job, but I think that should be their right.
I don't really care what the left thinks, because I don't identify with being left or right. I am not a democrat or a republican. The fact that "the left would be up in arms" doesn't really concern me.
How very enlightened of you. Legally forcing employers to hire employees they don't want to.
Every right comes at the expense of another right.
Uh huh.
I guess it depends on your definition of "shouting down". But I have always espoused the view that the answer to "bad speech" is "good speech" rather than suppression of speech. I don't tell people to shut up, although I defend the right of people to "say" people should shut up (because of free speech), but would fight any actions to actually limit free speech.
I took "shouting down bigotry" to mean being very vocal about calling out examples of bigotry until people are too ashamed to voice their bigotry, even thought hey still have the right to.
As an aside, the majority cannot have "privilege". That's not what the word means (the word "oppressed" would serve you better than "privileged" in making the same point). The majority cannot have "private law", as when it's the majority it's just "law".
I don't see anything wrong with the way I used "privilege" (a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people). I don't see why "heterosexuals" should be excluded from being the "particular" group but I don't really care to debate semantics.
You believe society is best served by "equal treatment" as you define it. Your opponent believes that society is best served by giving special social accord to those who live a certain, traditional way.
I agree this is a difference of opinion. And I can't do anything to sway people's opinions on this matter. All I can do is try to highlight the fact that supporting prop 8 is in opposition to equal rights should one happen to have the opinion that equal rights are more important than tradition.
IMO, proposition 8 should satisfy you both, granting civil union but not the specific word "marriage". But I don't really have a dog in this fight, I'm just dismayed by the incivility.
I suppose civility is subjective, but I would define it first and foremost as the ability to keep disputes in the verbal arena as opposed to the use of coercion. I also consider some speech is rather uncivil, but I would say that the most uncivil speech is preferable to even the most modest violation of someone's rights.
In theory I think it doesn't matter, but in practice separate but equal doesn't really work. It didn't work with drinking fountains in the south, and it hasn't worked in practice with marriage. Civil unions in California did not confer the same rights as marriage, along with most other states. Treating both same sex and heterosexual marriage under the same title would do much more to remove any legal differences and keep any from creeping back in.
I would be equally appalled, if there was legislation to issue separate but equal driver's licenses to black people. Everyone else could gets traditional drivers licenses, and black people get "Black driver cards" with no legal differences. Even such a system happened to start out equal, I would be very skeptical that it would remain equal, especially that there is no good reason to make them separate.
If I was going to support a compromise it would be to give both same sex and heterosexual couples legal "civil unions". I actually don't care what it's called. I just feel it is important that it's truly equal (i.e. including being called the same thing).
I see one side refusing to work with people from the other side. Would you prefer the other side unable to work at all, or do you support "separate but equal" companies?
I would be ok working at the same company as a bigot, and in fact I do. I have coworkers who think mexicans are inferior and I have coworkers who delight in the idea that our military kills muslim people. Our company is a large enough size that I sort of expect these sorts of people to be a part of the team. I don;t have to like them, to cooperate with them for the good of the company. I would however have a pretty big problem if one of these big
Try presenting an argument for your point of view. "I'm right because SHUT UP!" is not an argument, except in a Monty Python sketch sort of way.
I have never told anyone to shut up.
You have only your opinion here, and the strength of your belief. Your opponent also believes strongly, and, guess what, is also an intelligent, rational human being deserving of basic respect.
Yes I have an opinion that I want to live in a society that treats people equally under the law. I understand that some people may not share this opinion. It might actually be considered rather clever to try to assume a position of legal privilege if you can get away with it, however my sense of fairness and justice will not allow me to accept this.
And yes I believe people deserve respect, however I don't think think this includes pretending that people are not bigots when they are. Maybe someone can come up with a good euphemism for bigotry like "fairness challenged", but this would be like how the people who supported segregation of whites and blacks in the South were "fairness challenged".
When you can both express your views in public, and attempt to convince others, without fear of retaliation, then we have a functional society.
I was not aware that any kind of injustice like retaliation was occurring other than when prop 8 was actually in effect and denying people equal rights. But if it is, I definitely oppose it.
OTOH, the Civil War killed more Americans than all other wars combined, and created hardships that lasted years. Perhaps it was the only way, but any other way that would have worked would have been a better way.
Yeah it would have been nice if some of that violence was prevented. I am not sure what this has to do with anything. I certainly don't blame abolitionists for the deaths resulting from the civil war.
That's just BS. Accept that those who disagree with you are people too, just trying to find their own path to happiness.
I never said that they weren't people.
Very few people are just hurting others for the joy of doing so (though sadly they do exist, and sometimes come to power).
It is possible to hurt people without intending to. I am sure many people who opposed civil rights did not intend to hurt anyone, however the societal manifestation of this opposition to civil rights actually did hurt many people, and it needed to be abolished in order to have a more just society.
You don't have to accept the views of your opponents, but you should tolerate them, and accept the people holding those views as people, just like you.
Like I said. At no point did I ever claim that any people are not people. I tolerate people, that doesn't mean we must tolerate intolerance (e.g. different legal rights given to different groups). In fact I think such institutional intolerance must *not* be tolerated (i.e. it should be changed). I am not concerned about intolerant views people might hold as long as it does not creep it's way into law.
Do you really think they see their own views as intolerant?
No I don't. That's doesn't mean they aren't. I would venture to guess that most people throughout history who exhibited intolerance (even by your definition), did not consider themselves to be doing anythign wrong. This is human nature.
Do you really think they're trying to harm others, instead of trying to shape society the way they see as best for all
I don't doubt that people generally don't want to harm others. There were people who supported slavery and believed that it was necessary for the economy of white people and that black people were happier as slaves in the civilized world rather than living as savages in Africa. There were people who believed both white people an
I agree punishing the mozilla project for the new CEO doesn't make a whole lot of sense. A lot of people worked very hard on this open source software.
I also agree that the CEO has a right to his personal beliefs and even has a right to donate to support prop 8.
What he doesn't (or shouldn't) have a right to, is his job as CEO of a diverse company. These relationships should be government by the right of free association, meaning that the committee that hired him should have the right to terminate their employer/employee relationship with him. Even if you believe in the anti-discrimination laws, I think you could easily make the case that he is as unable to perform his duties effectively as a leader, as a CEO who was known to be a white supremacist. It seems reasonable to fire leaders who are incapable of leading due to lack of confidence in their judgement.
And more importantly prop 8 should never have been allowed to become law because despite everyone's personal belief's, this proposition actually violates both the California constitution and the US constitution. It took a while for California courts to come to this conclusion, and it will take a while for the US supreme court to decide that it is unconstitutional for states to ban same-sex marriage, but it is already on that path with the repeal of DOMA on constitutional grounds.
Shouting down bigotry is the best way to deal with bigotry. It doesn't violate anyone's rights. Laws which deny people equal protection under the law actually do violate people's rights.
So yes shouting down bigotry and opposing civil rights are the same thing in the sense that they are both shouting, except that one is shouting in support of bigotry and the other in opposition to it, which is in my view, a big enough of a difference to make supporting one and not the other perfectly reasonable.
To me this is like claiming that the slavery abolitionists were just as intolerant as the slave owners because they were intolerant of slavery. Yes you can look at it this way, but I don't think it serves any real purpose other than to confuse the issue.
I don't think it's profound at all to claim that those opposed to intolerance are intolerant of intolerance. This just seems like an obvious and necessary exception to the concept of intolerance.
I would like to see that constitution, actually.
I think you are mistaken.
It is the 14th amendment is the part of the constitution that guarantees equal protection under the law, and a series of supreme court rulings decided that the bill of rights is also enforceable on the states.
DOMA has been deemed unconstitutional, effectively banning the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman at the federal level.
The last step (which may take a few years) is for the supreme court to declare state bans on same sex marriage unconstitutional (most obviously because it violates the 14th amendment, but it probably violates other sections as well).
If we define marriage as a bond between man and weterosexual guys are no more legible to enter marriage than homosexual guys. So there is no discrimination at all.
And if we define marriage as between people of the same race, you could say that there is no discrimination because white people are no more eligible to enter marriage as black people, they just need to marry their own kind. This is a very narrow view of discrimination. For one thing this is still discriminatory because it makes it so that a white person can marry another white person, but a black person can not. This is discrimination based on race. By the same token, a ban on gay marriage is a form of gender discrimination. It makes it so that a woman has the right to marry a man, but a man does not.
I, for example, cannot work for CIA. I am Russian. I am OK with that, even understanding that such work would create many opportunities for me. But to drive my point, I'd like to ask you to stop your jihad on ban to gay marriage and fight for my right to work as the top officer of CIA and NSA.
You actually can work for the CIA and NSA if you become a US citizen and get a security clearance.
And I would like to reiterate my question of whether you think it is ok to ban marriage between black people? If not, why not?
I think that marriage is a bond between man and women just by definition of it. So I see at least one reason to ban marriage between gay people.
And you are free to think that. However, it is actually unconstitutional for the legal definition of marriage to apply differently to different people. The 14th amendment's equal protection clause does not allow the government to give different groups of people different rights.
Call it differently, I (and many others) will have no reason to oppose. Like, for example, civil union. E.g., marriage assumes civil union, but civil union can be between gay people, triples, teams of eight and so on.
This is the same argument made for "separate but equal" during the times when we had Jim Crow laws in this country. It became very apparent that when things are separate, it can be almost taken for granted that they will not be equal. And in practice, now where states provide civil unions (each defining their own rules), there are differences between marriage and civil union.
As there is mostly heterosexual couples in the world, I think we have very valid reason to call this very common case of civil union by using special term. Let's use the term marriage. I think that provides you with the reason to stick with this term for this specific case and other terms for other cases.
Most marriages are not mixed race either. Maybe we should have a special legal term for mixed race marriages. Maybe we should have a special term for marriages between blind people. Maybe we should have a special term for marriages between atheists. The only reason I have ever heard that people wanted seek a special term for marriage between homosexuals, is because they feel this type of "marriage" is somehow less than a marriage between a man and a woman, and they don't want this type of inferior relationship to pollute the term they use for their own marriage. This same argument could be made in the same way for marriages between people of other races. It is your right to feel this way, but it is not something that a nation with a guarantee of equal protection under the law can foster in good conscience.
Government discriminates people from top to bottom for various reasons, from age to the gender, to the wealth to the height. I do not see the reason to discriminate gay people in their discrimination by government.
So by this logic, do you think it would be ok to ban marriage for black people? After all, the government discriminates against lots of different groups based on age, wealth and height, it is only fair that black people are also discriminated against.
I was referring to discrimination against gay people by the government. Even if this one study turns out to be true, a higher incidence of mental health problems in a group is not a reasonable reason to ban marriage for that group. You could test levels of mental illness in different races and I guarantee there will be differences. This does not mean we should ban marriage or any other rights to groups that score lower.
The fact that insurance companies use these sorts of statistics to determine insurance premiums, is not comparable to discrimination when it comes from the government, and when it affects your rights as a citizen.
It's not just about having more kids after one generation. It's about having kids that will have more kids. One of the autistic people I am friends with has had 5 kids, and one of them is an actress. Maybe the children of autistic people are more attractive.
Plenty of species are not social, and do just fine. Furthermore, autistic people are not anti-social, they just seem weird to non-autistic people and we seem weird to them. I have a few friends that are autistic. They seem a bit weird at first, but when you get to know them and they feel more comfortable around you, it's fine. One thing I've noticed at least among my autistic friends is that they are very intelligent and often have jobs that require very high demand skills. One of them has been married 3 times and has 5 kids. Maybe I wouldn't want to be married to him, but he's doing just fine from an evolutionary standpoint.
I would say you are suffering from what Dan Dennet calls Philosophers' Syndrome: mistaking a failure of the imagination for an insight into necessity.
In a political debate, you may accuse the other side to fit the definition of "bigot" or "immoral" or "rearded" or "dork" or whatever, but that doesnt change a simple fact: rational political debates are about debating ideas, not name-calling people.
If someone supports banning marriage for black people because they think marriage is only between 2 white people, then they hold a racist position and are therefore racist. Someone who supports banning marriage between gay people is not racist because the basis for the discrimination is not based on race. There is a general term for intolerance towards other groups and it is called bigotry, and the people who practice bigotry are bigots. These are the English definitions of these words. I'm sure bigots don;t like being called bigots. I'm sure racists don't like being called racists. This does not change the fact that their actions are consistent with the English definitions of those words.
You don't get to say "I think marriage should only be between white people, but I'm not a racist" and be taken seriously. For some reason this hasn't completely caught on with giving equal rights to gay people, but it is gradually getting there. One of the ways to get there is to call people bigots when they are practicing bigotry. People should be made to feel uncomfortable for supporting unequal rights for different people, and people should feel uncomfortable defending those people for the same reason that people should be made uncomfortable for supporting slavery or defending people who supported slavery. One way to enact social change is through social pressure. One way to apply social pressure is to start labeling things (like racism, sexism, and bigotry) correctly as opposed to pretending that certain people are not racists, sexist, or bigots, etc when in fact they are.
No one if denying the legal right to free association. We are saying that demoting someone based on his personal, private political activity is anti-ethical.
What I am saying is that when you are in a leadership position, your "political activity" if it implies you are racist or bigoted, actually hinders your ability to be a good leader since now, many of the people you're responsible for leading, know that you advocated denying them equal protection under the law which is a constitutional right. One of your jobs as CEO is to lead people, and you can't effectively lead people if they don't trust your judgement.
If someone got a job as the CEO of a holocaust survivor support organization, but then it turned out this person is actually privately a Neo-Nazi, I am saying that this person's privately held views (now that they are public) are a detriment to him doing his job well, even if he was qualified and would have done a good job otherwise. The case of the Mozilla CEO is a less extreme example.
One thing is to have a legal right, another thing is to be correct. You have the legal right to deny the Holocaust, or to claim that a person should be demoted from an technological organization because of his private political views. That doen't make it ethical.
I am not advocating that "a person be demoted from a technological organization because of his private political views". I am advocating that the CEO of an organization be removed from his leadership position because of his now public political views.
It doesn't make it unethical either.
Beyond that, one word cannot have two different meanings.
Clearly you have never looked through a dictionary. If you had, you'd see that most words actually have several definitions.
Trying to have marriage mean two different things as any scientist will tell you is simply stupid and selfish.
If you knew anything about science, you'd know that science does not have any bearing on marriage nor etymology.
Ad hominem attacks don't help your case. Politics is supposed to be about which ideas make sense; its is not supposed to be about which side is better at name-calling.
Supporting prop 8 (i.e. supporting legislation that would remove equal rights from a particular group of people), is perfectly consistent with the definition of a bigot. It's name calling, but it's accurate name calling.
By the same token, supporting a ban on marriage for black people would also make you a bigot. This is similar. The only difference is that the discrimination is based on sexual preference rather than skin color.
It is not an ad hominem attack. An ad hominem attack is not simply name calling. It is an attack on an a logical argument based on the person that is making the argument. An ad hominem attack would be like "This person's argument is wrong because he's a priest".
I, on the other hand, prefer that political, philosophical and religious speech should be free from punishment.
It is free from punishment by the government. This does not mean that individuals in the private sector are not allowed to deem you as unfit to be a leader of a diverse group of people if you happen to be racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.
I support the right of free association, which includes the ability to willingly enter into an terminate relationships, including the freedom to choose who you employ and fire. These mozilla employees are simply making it known that they do not approve of their new leader, and the committee that is in charge of hiring the CEO is free to make a decision of whether they value their new CEO or this other group of employees more.
No rights are being violated by calling for this CEO's resignation. Unlike prop 8, which did strip people from their right to equal protection under the law.
In the very same text you cited...
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Furthermore, the thing about "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" has no bearing on being entitled to a job at a private (i.e. not affiliated with any government) company. Nor does it obligate anyone to respect your idiotic religious beliefs. It just means that congress (and the states due to Gitlow v. New York) can't pass a law discriminating based on religion.
It may actually be illegal to fire or not hire people based on their retarded religious beliefs, but it's because of anti-discrimination laws, not because of the 1st amendment or anything else in the constitution.
The only thing in the first amendment that is relevant to this discussion is that it affirms my right to accuse people of having retarded religious views, and for those people to say whatever they want in defense and accuse me of whatever they want.
I don't think any politician in the current US climate would push this, and I'm not asking you if you would support it disingenuously. But if you had the power to take away the right of blacks to marry, and this was not going to affect of other races to marry, would you do it? Or is destroying marriage one piece at a time more important than fairness to people of different colors for you?
So if a bill came up banning marriage for black people, would you support it? It does shrink the institution of marriage.
I just realized the repeat argument you're making is also a false equivalence: you're comparing what people are (black, white) with how people behave (heterosexual, homosexual). NAMBLA argues for pedophile rights; I haven't seen a rights movement for horse fuckers, but I could theorize one.
Being homosexual is not just how you behave. It is who you are attracted to (something not under ones control). I didn't decide to be attracted to women. I don't know if people are born that way, but I am pretty sure it is not under people's control either way.
And yes I do think pedophiles should have rights too. They shouldn't have the right to marry or molest kids (because they are minors and under the age of consent). And I think we definitely need to prevent them from exercising their preferences as it harms other people. For the same reason that people are not allowed to marry people against their will. Gay adults who get married are both willing participants and legally able to consent and enter into a contract and no one is harmed. I think it is much more fair to equate gay marriage with straight marriage than with pedophilia or child marriage.
Also you take a default favorable position: society has decided that blacks get rights. At the time, this was controversial. We also have animal rights movements, which are whacko: they're food and we kill them, but there are people who demand we make it illegal to murder animals. In some countries, it's illegal to murder cows for roughly the same reason it's illegal to murder blacks here. Elephants, as well, in societies which believe elephants are of sapient-level intelligence and thus have the rights of people.
I agree that animals aren't entitled to the same rights because they are not people. Even someone from the past who doesn't believe blacks are people would probably agree with me that all people deserve the same rights, we just disagree on whether certain things count as people. Are you really taking the position that gays are not real people? Or are you taking the position that not all people deserve equal rights? My position is that all people deserve equal rights under the law and that gays are people and animals are not.
You also seem to argue that the rights gap created by marriage itself is wrong. Therefor, we should not be allowing people to get married. At all.
I agree that the definitely rights gap created by marriage itself is wrong (and I just got married). And I support removing the government sanction from marriage. I don't mind if people conduct their own private marriage ceremonies.
Legalizing gay marriage is, in your own broken analogy, like legalizing blacks to murder other blacks in the 1920s: whites had the right to hang blacks at will, so making it okay for blacks to hang other blacks would make their rights equal
Obviously not. Whites having the right to life and blacks not having this right is clearly not equal, especially considering that being black or white is not a choice.
I support having equal rights for everybody. Prop 8 is a law *making* it illegal for gays to marry. I don't support government endorsed marriage. This doesn't mean that Prop 8 is a good step in that direction. If I wanted to make marijuana legal, making it only legal for white people is not a good step in that direction because it both violates the constitution's equal protection clause and I also find it morally reprehensible. I would rather marijuana be illegal for everyone than to have it be only legal to a particular group (even though I support marijuana legalization).
Being married is a choice. While I dislike the idea of married people being in a privileged class above single people, it's not as if people have no control over whether they are married or single. People really do not have a choice over whether their own sexual preference. So I would list my priorities this way.
It's more like white people are taxed 20%, black people are taxed 50%, chinese people are taxed 50%, and we make black people pay 20% taxes. Well, now instead of paying 50/120 of every tax dollar collected, chinese people are paying 50/90. Thus we've raised the taxes on chinese people.
Even if you feel this is a more accurate analogy, why support any inequality at all? (even if it helps some other discriminated class)
And this is where you expose yourself as having the analytical mind of a goldfish, since you responded to the exact opposite assertion above.
Or you just don't understand what I'm saying
The argument is simple: we've "corrected" inequality by being more equal to one group, and less equal to another. We're putting gays into an expanding privileged group, and making the other unprivileged group pay for that. (Everyone else is paying for it, really, but the unprivileged are paying the most, proportionally)
So why not remove privileged groups entirely rather than just making them smaller by unfairly disqualifying one particular group?
That's exactly backwards. We're making a situation worse instead of better. We should make the situation better.
We should make things better not worse? I agree with that. I don't see how making it so gay people can't get married achieves that more than making it so black people can't get married.
As far as technicalities go, by the way, people have always argued that gays have always had the right to get all the same protections under law by getting a "civil union". The entire dispute is over whether the legal structure is called by one word or two.
Civil unions are defined differently by each state. In many, if not most or all, states civil unions only offer some of the same legal rights as marriage not all of them. The fact that they are different titles leaves the door open for there to be differences, in the same way that having separate drinking fountains leaves the door open for them to be different.
If I were to try to say black people were not human, but rather "humanoid", and promised that "humanoids" would have all the same rights and protections as traditional humans, should black people be OK with this?