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Personally I believe there's a place for CoCs in any large organization or group but I think the content of CoCs should never include any political ideological

Personally I believe there's a place for CoCs in any large organization or group but I think the content of CoCs should never include any political ideological opinions. If professionalism, respect, and separation of one's political and/or religious beliefs from a project/event is impossible for some then they shouldn't be part of it. Honestly, I wouldn't know or care if one programmer was a devout Mormon that donated to Prop 8 if all my interactions with said person (obviously mentioning Brenden Eich here) were purely within the confines of a project or convention regarding programming of some sort. Nor would that person ever have to know that I'm a Christian Gnostic, Georgist, bisexual, trans woman (the last part would probably be obvious but immaterial still) in the same context. We're two programmers coming together in common cause to produce something cool (I hope). Yet it seems there are those on the left (and to some extent on the right) that demand ideological purity in all things. "You must be the right kind of [ideological stance/trait], lest you offend someone..." Seriously, I've seen flaps over Laura Jane Grace's book being titled Tranny (she's trans) over the last week. It's just as bad when you look at how fellow libertarians go at each other (see Jeffrey Tucker's essay on Libertarian Brutalism and the resulting fallout). It's absurd how bad things have gotten in this regard and I honestly am concerned we'll see ideological puritanism infect various F/LOSS projects and events. Just keep the CoC to the absolute essentials (don't be a perv/jerk/stalker/etc and don't have sensitive topics in conversations...).

KirinDave 11y ago
> Personally I believe there's a place for CoCs in any large organization or group but I think the content of CoCs should never include any political ideological opinions. Which has no bearing on the conversation, as you cannot deny that the person in question is anything but a vehement and devout racist. We're not mad he's a christian. I'm not even mad he thinks trans sexuality and non-binarism is an illness. At least there is some idea I am human there. He genuinely thinks non-white people are a sub-species. Please, please, please don't try and equate this to a "political" view. There is no political view worth entertaining that denies people's essential humanity.
- deleted 11y ago
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- norea-armozel 11y ago
  >At least there is some idea I am human there. He genuinely thinks non-white people are a sub-species. Does this even matter if he never speaks to people face-to-face on a FL/OSS project? A commit is a commit and unless he's dropping Daily Stormer in IRC or the mailing list it shouldn't matter. If they're not harassing someone who's African-American or any other non-white ethnicity I don't think it should come up. More likely such people who are devout in their racism won't contribute to projects which have PoC heading or contributing to them on a regular basis. If your CoC goes outside the scope of handling harassment and incivility I'm not gonna support your project with donations or code submissions, ever. So, I guess that makes me one of the 'baddies' then.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  I'm late to this conversation, but your CoC is problematic. To participate in LambdaConf, participants must pledge their allegiance to your Code of Conduct. That's fine, except for the following part of the CoC that mandates the following: "That I shall embrace and celebrate the abundant diversity in the human species, and refuse to feel threatened by those different from me;" This is a highly problematic statement. By diversity, you mean diversity in sexuality, race, religion and politics. Why is this a problem? Because nobody should be made to "embrace and celebrate" all the diverse facets of humanity. It's patently absurd: I'm not going to celebrate and endorse the views of paedophiles, I'm not going to embrace and celebrate the views of the doomsday Aum Sum cult, nor any of dozens of even more innocuous views such as open source is a cancer on society. Nor should a gay person have to celebrate and embrace the views of those who believe marriage should only be between a man and a woman. And in fact, you don't. You've excluded a racist, which FWIW I don't have a problem with. But you are hardly celebrating the diversity of humanity, which includes those whose views deny people's essential humanity. There is a big difference from politely and civilly disagreeing with the opinion of another, and asking someone to embrace and celebrate the fact that there are views held by others that they find fundamentally objectionable. All you should be asking for is that you respect their right to hold their views, but not impose them on others at a conference that is about functional programming! This Code of Conduct goes too far. As I've said, if you applied reductio ad absurdum then it would mean that it celebrates and embraces those who - like myself and evidently the conference organisers - don't believe that you should celebrate and embrace all aspects of the abundant diversity of humanity. The reason this argument reduces to the absurd is that because of my view, I am specifically excluded from your event, which means that your own CoC doesn't embrace and celebrate all diversity within humanity. I'd suggest you dump that clause. It's self-contradictory and a ridiculous condition you are imposing on participants. In fact, it's a straight-jacket for conference organisers because when you do exclude someone you can, unfortunately rightly, be accused of violating your own CoC!

KirinDave 11y ago

> Personally I believe there's a place for CoCs in any large organization or group but I think the content of CoCs should never include any political ideological opinions. Which has no bearing on the conversation, as you cannot deny that the person in question is anything but a vehement and devout racist. We're not mad he's a christian. I'm not even mad he thinks trans sexuality and non-binarism is an illness. At least there is some idea I am human there. He genuinely thinks non-white people are a sub-species. Please, please, please don't try and equate this to a "political" view. There is no political view worth entertaining that denies people's essential humanity.

deleted 11y ago
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norea-armozel 11y ago
>At least there is some idea I am human there. He genuinely thinks non-white people are a sub-species. Does this even matter if he never speaks to people face-to-face on a FL/OSS project? A commit is a commit and unless he's dropping Daily Stormer in IRC or the mailing list it shouldn't matter. If they're not harassing someone who's African-American or any other non-white ethnicity I don't think it should come up. More likely such people who are devout in their racism won't contribute to projects which have PoC heading or contributing to them on a regular basis. If your CoC goes outside the scope of handling harassment and incivility I'm not gonna support your project with donations or code submissions, ever. So, I guess that makes me one of the 'baddies' then.
chris_wot 11y ago
I'm late to this conversation, but your CoC is problematic. To participate in LambdaConf, participants must pledge their allegiance to your Code of Conduct. That's fine, except for the following part of the CoC that mandates the following: "That I shall embrace and celebrate the abundant diversity in the human species, and refuse to feel threatened by those different from me;" This is a highly problematic statement. By diversity, you mean diversity in sexuality, race, religion and politics. Why is this a problem? Because nobody should be made to "embrace and celebrate" all the diverse facets of humanity. It's patently absurd: I'm not going to celebrate and endorse the views of paedophiles, I'm not going to embrace and celebrate the views of the doomsday Aum Sum cult, nor any of dozens of even more innocuous views such as open source is a cancer on society. Nor should a gay person have to celebrate and embrace the views of those who believe marriage should only be between a man and a woman. And in fact, you don't. You've excluded a racist, which FWIW I don't have a problem with. But you are hardly celebrating the diversity of humanity, which includes those whose views deny people's essential humanity. There is a big difference from politely and civilly disagreeing with the opinion of another, and asking someone to embrace and celebrate the fact that there are views held by others that they find fundamentally objectionable. All you should be asking for is that you respect their right to hold their views, but not impose them on others at a conference that is about functional programming! This Code of Conduct goes too far. As I've said, if you applied reductio ad absurdum then it would mean that it celebrates and embraces those who - like myself and evidently the conference organisers - don't believe that you should celebrate and embrace all aspects of the abundant diversity of humanity. The reason this argument reduces to the absurd is that because of my view, I am specifically excluded from your event, which means that your own CoC doesn't embrace and celebrate all diversity within humanity. I'd suggest you dump that clause. It's self-contradictory and a ridiculous condition you are imposing on participants. In fact, it's a straight-jacket for conference organisers because when you do exclude someone you can, unfortunately rightly, be accused of violating your own CoC!