4 ms·

I am a big supporter of gay rights (and am myself bisexual), but I oppose this sort of thing, for reasons explained very well by the venerable Scott Alexander:

I am a big supporter of gay rights (and am myself bisexual), but I oppose this sort of thing, for reasons explained very well by the venerable Scott Alexander: "Constitutional freedom-of-speech is a necessary but not sufficient condition to have a “marketplace of ideas” and avoid de facto censorship. But people also have to understand that the correct response to “idea I disagree with” is “counterargument”, not “find some way to punish or financially ruin the person who expresses it.” If you respond with counterargument, then there’s a debate and eventually the people with better ideas win (as is very clearly happening right now with gay marriage). If there’s a norm of trying to punish the people with opposing views, then it doesn’t really matter whether you’re doing it with threats of political oppression, of financial ruin, or of social ostracism, the end result is the same – the group with the most money and popularity wins, any disagreeing ideas never get expressed. Atheists may one day be the group with the most money and popularity, but that day isn’t today and right now it’s neither moral nor in our self-interest to encourage using greater resources to steamroll opponents. It’s certainly not in gay people’s self-interest either. Why shouldn’t companies owned by Christians fire all gay people on the grounds that they are promoting sin? Right now it’s because we have a mutual truce in which we agree businesses should employ people based on their skills and merit rather than to reward their political allies and punish their political opponents. Once you undermine that, gay people are in a pretty precarious position. So I would turn your own hypothetical scenario in Part 2 of your post back on you. Suppose Robertson had indeed, been a gay rights supporter – or a gay person! – who said on national news he thought everyone should stand up for gay rights. But his company was going for the fundie demographic and decided to fire him for his statement. Would you be so quick to attack everyone who was disappointed in this action, so eager to stand up for the right of companies to fire anyone they disagree with?" http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/28/a-comment-i-posted-on-what-would-jt-do/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/28/a-comment-i-posted-on-w...

stormbrew 13y ago
There are two problems with this: - Everyone's voice (when it comes to money) is not equal. CEOs and corporations defacto have a greater voice in the public sphere than other people. The primary way for average people to counteract this is through controlling where, what, and who they spend their money on. By painting this as unethical you remove the voice of everyone who can't spend $1000 on a political campaign, which is usually a group that aligns with groups that are disproportionately harmed by policies like Prop8. It is not my responsibility to support a bigot with my money (or eyes that turn into money) in the name of some higher ideal of clean discourse the other side doesn't even play by. - No argument of moral equivalence can survive that rests on one side having real and practical harm done to it and the other none at all. No one's rights are infringed by gay marriage existing and many many people's rights are infringed by prop8. It's inherently oppressive to say that those people harmed by it should sit idly by and wait for the people picking up their hand, smacking it into their face, and saying "why are you hitting yourself?" to have a change of heart when there are no consequences for their public effort to harm them. One side gets to hit, the other side has no right to hit back? That's wrong. And on a somewhat tangent, I have not seen anyone call for him to be fired. Him being an employee of Mozilla is not a problem. Even being a founder or the creator of javascript. Being a CEO is not the same as being an employee, though, and carries with it a connection to the ethical core of a business. This has far more to do with him being appointed than with his political views directly.
- apsec112 13y ago
  Right now, the United States is about evenly divided between people who support and oppose gay marriage. If everyone on the gay-marriage side "refuses to support bigots", and everyone on the anti-gay-marriage side "refuses to support sinners", then we wind up with two totally separate economies and social groups that don't talk to each other at all. This is very bad. You really, really don't want to live in a country where Blues can only eat in Blue restaurants and live in Blue apartments and wear Blue clothing, and Greens can only eat in Green restaurants and live in Green apartments and wear Green clothing. See: Northern Ireland, Iraq, Syria... "I am a pro-choice atheist. When I lived in Ireland, one of my friends was a pro-life Christian. I thought she was responsible for the unnecessary suffering of millions of women. She thought I was responsible for killing millions of babies. And yet she invited me over to her house for dinner without poisoning the food. And I ate it, and thanked her, and sent her a nice card, without smashing all her china. Please try not to be insufficiently surprised by this. Every time a Republican and a Democrat break bread together with good will, it is a miracle. It is an equilibrium as beneficial as civilization or liberalism, which developed in the total absence of any central enforcing authority." http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-community-and-civilization/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-co...
  - stormbrew 13y ago
    And welcome to reductio ad absurdum. If we boycott this one thing we will boycott all the things and then we will live in a 70s dystopic film where the people who wear KFC shirts can't talk to the people who wear McDonalds shirts! Somehow we've gotten along just fine so far with the existence of boycotts without turning into a world where half the people are boycotting half the other people. Again, no one is saying boycott Mozilla because they hired a bigot. They're boycotting Mozilla because they chose a bigot as their chief executive knowing full well this blowback might happen (since it happened on a smaller scale with the CTO appointment in 2012). That means it doesn't matter to them, and for people to whom this issue matters a great deal that is unacceptable. Nor, incidentally, is anyone saying you should poison the guy's food. It is not "mean" to choose what you spend your money on.
- 13y ago

stormbrew 13y ago

There are two problems with this: - Everyone's voice (when it comes to money) is not equal. CEOs and corporations defacto have a greater voice in the public sphere than other people. The primary way for average people to counteract this is through controlling where, what, and who they spend their money on. By painting this as unethical you remove the voice of everyone who can't spend $1000 on a political campaign, which is usually a group that aligns with groups that are disproportionately harmed by policies like Prop8. It is not my responsibility to support a bigot with my money (or eyes that turn into money) in the name of some higher ideal of clean discourse the other side doesn't even play by. - No argument of moral equivalence can survive that rests on one side having real and practical harm done to it and the other none at all. No one's rights are infringed by gay marriage existing and many many people's rights are infringed by prop8. It's inherently oppressive to say that those people harmed by it should sit idly by and wait for the people picking up their hand, smacking it into their face, and saying "why are you hitting yourself?" to have a change of heart when there are no consequences for their public effort to harm them. One side gets to hit, the other side has no right to hit back? That's wrong. And on a somewhat tangent, I have not seen anyone call for him to be fired. Him being an employee of Mozilla is not a problem. Even being a founder or the creator of javascript. Being a CEO is not the same as being an employee, though, and carries with it a connection to the ethical core of a business. This has far more to do with him being appointed than with his political views directly.

apsec112 13y ago
Right now, the United States is about evenly divided between people who support and oppose gay marriage. If everyone on the gay-marriage side "refuses to support bigots", and everyone on the anti-gay-marriage side "refuses to support sinners", then we wind up with two totally separate economies and social groups that don't talk to each other at all. This is very bad. You really, really don't want to live in a country where Blues can only eat in Blue restaurants and live in Blue apartments and wear Blue clothing, and Greens can only eat in Green restaurants and live in Green apartments and wear Green clothing. See: Northern Ireland, Iraq, Syria... "I am a pro-choice atheist. When I lived in Ireland, one of my friends was a pro-life Christian. I thought she was responsible for the unnecessary suffering of millions of women. She thought I was responsible for killing millions of babies. And yet she invited me over to her house for dinner without poisoning the food. And I ate it, and thanked her, and sent her a nice card, without smashing all her china. Please try not to be insufficiently surprised by this. Every time a Republican and a Democrat break bread together with good will, it is a miracle. It is an equilibrium as beneficial as civilization or liberalism, which developed in the total absence of any central enforcing authority." http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-community-and-civilization/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-co...
- stormbrew 13y ago
  And welcome to reductio ad absurdum. If we boycott this one thing we will boycott all the things and then we will live in a 70s dystopic film where the people who wear KFC shirts can't talk to the people who wear McDonalds shirts! Somehow we've gotten along just fine so far with the existence of boycotts without turning into a world where half the people are boycotting half the other people. Again, no one is saying boycott Mozilla because they hired a bigot. They're boycotting Mozilla because they chose a bigot as their chief executive knowing full well this blowback might happen (since it happened on a smaller scale with the CTO appointment in 2012). That means it doesn't matter to them, and for people to whom this issue matters a great deal that is unacceptable. Nor, incidentally, is anyone saying you should poison the guy's food. It is not "mean" to choose what you spend your money on.
13y ago