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It depends on the severity of "your cause". I don't think you will get many complaints if your cause is lower taxes or increase minimum wage. If your cause is

by slg 6y ago

It depends on the severity of "your cause". I don't think you will get many complaints if your cause is lower taxes or increase minimum wage. If your cause is to to take away rights of a coworker, you can't really stay neutral. I wouldn't accept my employer being neutral on gay marriage for example if I was a gay person. As the culture war has become a bigger part of politics, like the grandfather comment suggest, more of these issues fall into that second bucket in which it is tough to accept neutrality.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rayiner 6y ago
What is it about “culture issues” that makes it particularly “tough to accept neutrality?” Hundreds of thousands of people died as a result of the the Iraq War—is that sufficiently weighty to warrant people demanding employers to take a position?
- slg 6y ago
  Something like the Iraq War is a much more complicated and nuanced issue in which people can reasonably disagree. Many people aren't going to be willing to debate or compromise on issues like civil rights. You are either on their side or not.
  - SamReidHughes 6y ago
    Gay marriage is a question of, among other things, mundane issues like taxation, upon which people can very reasonably disagree. Should Alan Turing have been able to put himself in a lower tax bracket by filing jointly with his 19-year-old roommate? It is a nuanced question; your answer might depend on what regime of divorce laws you're operating under (e.g. are you in a community property state or not).
    - slg 6y ago
      >Should Alan Turing have been able to put himself in a lower tax bracket by filing jointly with his 19-year-old roommate? If he could do that with a female roommate why shouldn't he be allowed do that with his male roommate? It isn't reasonable to object to gay marriage on a technicality like that while also being fine with the laws regarding straight marriage.
      - sudosysgen 6y ago
        An argument that is cogent, but that I disagree with, is that those fiscal elements are intended to incentivize childbirth and raising a child under wedlock. I personally think that this is outdated, and that we should incentivize such things in more direct ways if we should at all, but this is a reasonable point of disagreement prima facie.
        slg 6y ago
        This argument also relies on an unstated bias against gay couples. Straight couples can get married without any plans to have a child. Why is is different for gay couples? Gay couples can also have a child either through adoption or biologically with a surrogate or sperm donor.
        sudosysgen 6y ago
        Heterosexual couples can indeed get married without any plans to have a child, I agree. And at the same time, it is true that a gay couple can have children through adoption, or biologically. It is for both of these reasons that I disagree with the argument. That being said, at the time when the argument was relevant, the overwhelming majority of married heterosexual couples did have children, and gay adoption as well as IVF were not really a thing. But nowadays, of course, anyone making this argument would be making it from bias. In the framing of the thread, which was the 1940s, it is more reasonable.
        rayiner 6y ago
  - rayiner 6y ago
    Okay, but before you talked about the “severity” of the issue. Now it seems like something more along the lines of issues that have some sort of “moral clarity.” Apart from moving the goalposts, politics is a process for getting different stakeholders to agree through debate and compromise. If there is no room for debate and compromise, you’re not talking about a political issue, but a moral crusade. And moral crusades are great, but they’re different from “politics.” Also, what is the scope of what people can “reasonably disagree” about? You mention same-sex marriage, but that’s illegal in most countries, including Switzerland. Are people in Switzerland, and India, and every single Muslim country in the world, for the most part not “reasonable?” And even in countries where it is legal, laws on related issues like surrogacy or religious exemptions vary. I’m talking about very socially liberal countries like France and Germany, where surrogacy is banned.
    - tptacek 6y ago
      You didn't ask me, but: (1) Yes, bigotry against LGBT people makes Switzerland, India, and Indonesia less reasonable. (2) The United States is generally underrated when it comes to moral clarity. We get a lot of stuff distinctively right and should pat ourselves on the back more often than we do. (3) There clearly is a threshold past which we can refer directly to moral clarity, and can't hide behind the ambiguity of politics. It's been 73 years, and a lot of people on this thread don't have to Google "IG Farben", or, for that matter, to consult Wikipedia to know what I mean when I allude to IBM's complicity in the early 20th century. Some issues just are clear.
      - rayiner 6y ago
        I think the US is better because we have legalized same-sex marriage, and I’ve always supported it. But it’s hard for me to say that an issue is such that “reasonable people can’t disagree” with policies that differ between the US and Switzerland. I agree there are some issues that are beyond politics. But there is an impulse to expand that category beyond what fairly fits in it. The debate and compromise attendant in politics is how societies achieve consensus, and prematurely stifling it creates problems.

by slg 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

rayiner 6y ago

What is it about “culture issues” that makes it particularly “tough to accept neutrality?” Hundreds of thousands of people died as a result of the the Iraq War—is that sufficiently weighty to warrant people demanding employers to take a position?

slg 6y ago
Something like the Iraq War is a much more complicated and nuanced issue in which people can reasonably disagree. Many people aren't going to be willing to debate or compromise on issues like civil rights. You are either on their side or not.
- SamReidHughes 6y ago
  Gay marriage is a question of, among other things, mundane issues like taxation, upon which people can very reasonably disagree. Should Alan Turing have been able to put himself in a lower tax bracket by filing jointly with his 19-year-old roommate? It is a nuanced question; your answer might depend on what regime of divorce laws you're operating under (e.g. are you in a community property state or not).
  - slg 6y ago
    >Should Alan Turing have been able to put himself in a lower tax bracket by filing jointly with his 19-year-old roommate? If he could do that with a female roommate why shouldn't he be allowed do that with his male roommate? It isn't reasonable to object to gay marriage on a technicality like that while also being fine with the laws regarding straight marriage.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      An argument that is cogent, but that I disagree with, is that those fiscal elements are intended to incentivize childbirth and raising a child under wedlock. I personally think that this is outdated, and that we should incentivize such things in more direct ways if we should at all, but this is a reasonable point of disagreement prima facie.
      - slg 6y ago
        This argument also relies on an unstated bias against gay couples. Straight couples can get married without any plans to have a child. Why is is different for gay couples? Gay couples can also have a child either through adoption or biologically with a surrogate or sperm donor.
        sudosysgen 6y ago
        Heterosexual couples can indeed get married without any plans to have a child, I agree. And at the same time, it is true that a gay couple can have children through adoption, or biologically. It is for both of these reasons that I disagree with the argument. That being said, at the time when the argument was relevant, the overwhelming majority of married heterosexual couples did have children, and gay adoption as well as IVF were not really a thing. But nowadays, of course, anyone making this argument would be making it from bias. In the framing of the thread, which was the 1940s, it is more reasonable.
        rayiner 6y ago
- rayiner 6y ago
  Okay, but before you talked about the “severity” of the issue. Now it seems like something more along the lines of issues that have some sort of “moral clarity.” Apart from moving the goalposts, politics is a process for getting different stakeholders to agree through debate and compromise. If there is no room for debate and compromise, you’re not talking about a political issue, but a moral crusade. And moral crusades are great, but they’re different from “politics.” Also, what is the scope of what people can “reasonably disagree” about? You mention same-sex marriage, but that’s illegal in most countries, including Switzerland. Are people in Switzerland, and India, and every single Muslim country in the world, for the most part not “reasonable?” And even in countries where it is legal, laws on related issues like surrogacy or religious exemptions vary. I’m talking about very socially liberal countries like France and Germany, where surrogacy is banned.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    You didn't ask me, but: (1) Yes, bigotry against LGBT people makes Switzerland, India, and Indonesia less reasonable. (2) The United States is generally underrated when it comes to moral clarity. We get a lot of stuff distinctively right and should pat ourselves on the back more often than we do. (3) There clearly is a threshold past which we can refer directly to moral clarity, and can't hide behind the ambiguity of politics. It's been 73 years, and a lot of people on this thread don't have to Google "IG Farben", or, for that matter, to consult Wikipedia to know what I mean when I allude to IBM's complicity in the early 20th century. Some issues just are clear.
    - rayiner 6y ago
      I think the US is better because we have legalized same-sex marriage, and I’ve always supported it. But it’s hard for me to say that an issue is such that “reasonable people can’t disagree” with policies that differ between the US and Switzerland. I agree there are some issues that are beyond politics. But there is an impulse to expand that category beyond what fairly fits in it. The debate and compromise attendant in politics is how societies achieve consensus, and prematurely stifling it creates problems.