5 ms·
Private companies can discriminate against non-protected classes and you are correct political reasons or position on abortion is not a protected class. The pr
by elmerfud 5y ago
Private companies can discriminate against non-protected classes and you are correct political reasons or position on abortion is not a protected class. The problem is in allowing this behavior to continue by companies unchecked eventually the law will come in and start assigning new protected classes.
People have forgotten their history and why certain attributes have become protected classes for which discrimination is not allowed. This was not done due to some moral altruism by the laws and courts. These were assigned protective class status because private companies began to exclude people and eventually all or most private companies in an area started excluding people of a certain race or gender etc... This results in people not being able to participate in society. While they remain free people and the businesses have their freedom to choose it is not real freedom when you cannot participate in the society that you are part of. This is why we now have enforced protected classes.
When we do not stand up as reasonable people and participate in the process to indicate the companies we do not want them to be the moral arbiters of our lives we are effectively letting them determine who can participate in the online society and who cannot. The idea that just because of company can do something does not mean it should and does not mean that we should allow it. If we get to the point that we have to make laws to protect someone's race or sex or now what's coming is political affiliation or opinion then we as a society have failed in our duty to each other. Creating a new law and codifying the fact that people should be allowed to participate in society even with opinions that we do not like should cause everyone to take a hard look in the mirror and realize they are the problem. Whatever happened to the idea that I do not agree with what you say but I will defend your right to say it.
- minikites 5y ago>started excluding people of a certain race or gender Race and gender is about something you are, political opinions are not something you are.
- elmerfud 5y agoAmong the protected classes is religion. That is not something that you are that is something that you choose. The point being that when we start excluding people from participating in the society based on things we do not like ,be they opinions that we can change or be they features about who we are, we place ourselves in a bad position as a society.
- krapp 5y agoNo one is being excluded from society by virtue of their website not being hosted by Godaddy. Hosting services are a dime a dozen, and some of them exist specifically for "Conservative" content like this.
- elmerfud 5y agoNot now and not yet, but why wait until something becomes a problem before it's addressed? This is very short term thinking of look only one step ahead instead of viewing where this path will take us. I have no love for these anti-abortion people but I also see that this idea of companies controlling the content of the online community will eventually lead to the suppression of things I do care about.
- krapp 5y ago>Not now and not yet, but why wait until something becomes a problem before it's addressed? Because the proposed solution - having government take control of speech on the internet and replacing free speech and association rights with compelled speech on the grounds that being able to choose with whom you do business and under what terms is too dangerous to allow - is even worse for society than the problem. Were the problem to exist. Which it doesn't.
- watwut 5y agoThe people who are subject to these retaliatory tactics don't care about whether you like anti-abortion groups or not. They to care that their info is collected by groups set put to harass them to the maximum. And the actual impact on real world people is way larger then what you worry in the post. You really don't get to talk about freedom while making sure this law is enabled. It is not freedom, it is frankly insane level of control and pitching of people to hunt others for money.
- Ancapistani 5y agoI propose that you prove it - change a long-held, core belief that you hold, and earnestly adopt its antithesis. Religion is a protected class, based on exactly this sort of “mutable” attribute. Oh, and the prevailing opinion in the US seems to be that gender is in fact similarly mutable.
- papito 5y agoYou do not have the choice to be Asian. You do have the choice to be an asshole.