I don't know what it is about gay marriage that draws people in to this ridiculous witch hunt. I'm neutral on the issue because I feel it's complicated like every other polarizing topic, but to a lot of folks it's solid black-and-white, good-vs-evil. But the pro-gay-marriage crowd seems to go beyond that. To them, it's so black-and-white that one's not even allowed to hold the other view. These people don't even acknowledge the legitimacy of any other beliefs but their own and refuse to stoop to the level of debating the other side on intellectual grounds.
> It’s not a witch hunt.
You bet your ass it is. It's another in a string of incidents, including boycotting chick fil a for it's owner's beliefs, boycotting duck dynasty for that one guy's beliefs, boycotting starbucks for it's owner's beliefs, the list goes own.
Now this is not to take a particular stance on the issue. It's to say that dismissing the legitimacy of other's beliefs besides your own shows a pretty absurd level of intellectual hubris (not unheard of around these parts).
Why would anyone "acknowledge the legitimacy" of beliefs that would e.g. prevent them from visiting their spouse on their deathbed? There's no middle ground here.
Also, it's worth trying not to use the term "witch hunt" to describe attacks on a group which has held an oppressive majority for hundreds of years and which is actively continuing to attempt to deny the rights of a minority. The analogy does not hold.
A general word of warning. (Disclaimer I'm for gay marriage, but that is not the point of the following text.)
I have been subscribed to the main mailing list of the German Pirate party for four years now and from this very rich data set I can give you the following piece of insight:
Discussions about LGBT issues will invariably degenerate into pure horribleness. It might not be obvious to most people why this should be the case, but believe me, if there is only one single troll that knows one of the big red buttons to push, the whole thing goes off the rails.
I'm reeeally uncertain if I should do this, but to illustrate my point, I'm now going to describe one of those buttons: Many of the LG and B people are not really comfortable with the T people (and some are quite T-phobic!). A troll that identifies one of those anti-T LGB posters can "craft" a post that destroys any room that might have been there for meaningful discussion.
At least this has been my experience on that particular mailing list. While the conversational level of the HN community is fortunately well above that of said list, I already see some pre-pathologies which indicate that HN might not be immune to the LGBT-shitstorm-effect.
My personal feelings about this particular instance, without knowing any details are this: Guy I've never heared of before with anti gay-marriage history becomes head of Mozilla? Dude, show some heart-felt sensibility for the issue, tell everybody that either you've changed your views or that at least your professional actions in this regard will follow the broader community attitude, and then let's move ahead to other issues.
The majority / minority argument does not hold. Oppressed minorities are not always in the right. Arguments around gay marriage / politics / Brendan need to step back and argue the issues, not the size or relative social power of the groups involved.
I happen to agree with your side of the issue, but let's talk about the issue, not make it a David and Goliath straw man debate. The term "witch hunt" may or may not apply. As an example, we might say that during the French Revolution, the proletariat (oppressed majority, wat?) went on a witch hunt against aristocracy (minority holding majority power) and members of the royal court, regardless of their fault.
We can call this a witch hunt when same-sex-marriage proponents start guillotining the opposition in public squares, then ;)
More to the point, the David/Goliath straw man occurs at the point that someone says "witch hunt", invoking ideas of a prosecutorial mob hunting an innocent scapegoat down. Addressing the inappropriateness of the term directly is not a strawman (and additionally, I specifically addressed the content of the OP's argument in the first part of my post).
No you nitwit, I was talking about the absurdity of calling the campaign against him a with hunt.
But now that you mention it, the organization - in overlooking this particular view - sent a clear signal that it takes the issue a good deal less seriously that a significant number of its stakeholders. That's starting to look like a major mistake.
"Nitwit". I guess Hacker News discourse devolves in a slightly more civilised fashion. To really show me I'm wrong, or have asked a particularly stupid question, next time consider stronger language.
Nobody boycotted duck dynasty because of someone's beliefs. A television network decided that it was probably bad for their bottom line to be seen to support someone who believes that black people were happier pre-civil rights.
Nobody boycotted chick-fil-a because of the owner's beliefs, they stopped giving the company money because they were made aware of the fact that some of that money would almost certainly support a cause they didn't want to support.
There are bright, shining lines between right and wrong. This isn't a fad, it isn't a witch hunt. When there is a minority being refused a right that the majority has, something needs to be done. This isn't hard.
> I don't know what it is about gay marriage that draws people in to this ridiculous witch hunt.
> But the pro-gay-marriage crowd seems to go beyond that... These people don't even acknowledge the legitimacy of any other beliefs but their own and refuse to stoop to the level of debating the other side on intellectual grounds.
I reject your implication that because I am pro-gay marriage, I have refused to give other viewpoints any sort of legitimacy. I have, in the past, and have come to the decision that pro-gay marriage is the correct moral stance. You may disagree with me, but I am not ignorant or blind.
> It's to say that dismissing the legitimacy of other's beliefs besides your own shows a pretty absurd level of intellectual hubris
Why is Brendan donating $1000 to Prop 8 not "dismissing the legitimacy of other's beliefs", but a boycott is? Where do you think that money goes?
Neutral, eh? Good for you. What a bold stance. Are you also neutral on the topic of interracial marriage? Because the saga of gay marriage is basically replaying that story 50 years later: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia
Eich isn't in hot water for his personal beliefs. Indeed, as far as I know, he's never stated them. People are holding him accountable for his action, which was trying to keep gay people from their right to equality before the law.
Equality before the law is a right. It is established in the constitution. For more, see the Michigan Marriage Amendment decision I've linked in several places in this thread; the judge explains things thoroughly and clearly. Many, myself included, view the legal enumerated rights as an expression of something deeper, but that's not universal.
We don't know what BE's point of view is, because he has refused to explain. But we certainly know what gay people believed, and what gay marriage proponents believed. And we know the effect of BE's actions on gay people which was to help keep them from their civil rights for a little while longer.
> including boycotting chick fil-a for it's owner's beliefs
Comparing Brendan to Chick fil-A is actually totally absurd comparison.
1) It wasn't the owner in the Chick Fil-A case, it was actually the Chick-fil-A organization itself that was taking anti-gay marriage actions. Those actions also went well beyond simple donations.
2) Even if it was simply the owner, the owner gets his money from customers. If he then spends than money in ways that negatively impact you then it is perfectly rational to take that into account in your purchasing decisions (eg, it seems perfectly rational to think "for $3 I get a chicken sandwich and $0.05 towards a cause that I don't like"). Brendan donated $1000 of his own money: the marginal success of Mozilla is extremely unlikely to have significant impact on gay rights. There was strong evidence to think that the marginal success of Chick-fil-A was going to have significant impact on gay rights going foward.
3) Chick-fil-A also used to force it's employees to Christian prayers before working (and it isn't clear whether they still discriminate likewise for Franchise owners: it settled out of court for large sums with several non-Christians who were treated negatively in this way). Chick-fil-A have taken actual hate-group actions as an institution, which seems completely unlike a single man giving a fairly small donation of his own money to a cause.
"I feel it's complicated like every other polarizing topic"
What's complicated about allowing people to do what they want as long they are not hurting others?
By saying "it's complicated" you are saying that you have some complicated thoughts about something that is absolutely none of your business, Why? I seriously want to know, I don't understand this obsession with what others do if it has no effect on you what so ever.
You are saying that you yourself should also not be free to marry who ever you want, do you propose to set up a jury to judge who can and cannot marry?
Please help me understand what's complicated about this issue.
Bingo. There's nothing complicated about this. Moreover, it's idiotic and / or ignorant to suggest otherwise.
Assuring basic equality under the law was the whole point of the 14th Amendment. And on this point, the law is absolutely, perfectly clear. People treat it in black and white terms because those are the terms that actually apply.
Indeed, it's no more complicated than "Should black people be allowed to vote?" or "Can we buy and sell women like slaves?"
Thought experiment: imagine a law that severely limited the power and abilities of straight white men, white men, or even just men. Imagine that law severely impacted your ability to participate in some major institution or process. Maybe you couldn't start a business. Maybe you couldn't pee standing up. Hell, pick anything. Imagine there were people who felt so threatened by your starting a business or pissing standing up, even if neither affected them. Imagine if another group of people criticized the businesses you started, held you to a different standard, said that some omnipotent being claimed that you had no business doing whatever this rule claimed you couldn't. Your inability to do this thing vastly and adversely limits participation in broader society.
Would you argue with every idiot who presented an objection? If you didn't believe in the omnipotent sky being, would you waste time debating? If someone wasn't in the oppressed group of straight white men, wasn't affected by your choice but decided that their moral code made them feel threatened, would you waste time with them? Or would you expect them to own their own issues? After all, we all have enough to deal with in our lives. We can't be expected to pander to every idiot who feels threatened by choices that don't even affect them (I assure you, no LGBTQ person is going to marry you without your consent. :P )
My minority group isn't as persecuted (visible disability) but I get _so sick and tired_ of being expected to debate with those who feel threatened or confused by my existence. At least my struggles are only employment/social-related. It'd suck if laws prevented me from marrying and having kids, and you'd better believe I'd waste no time arguing with any who oppose me.
> Would you argue with every idiot who presented an objection?
They don't even have to argue. Just ask questions. Questions that are meaningless. Or pose hypotheticals. Or pick at that one sentence and one word in that sentence that can be interpreted in multiple ways.
Or they'll just reply with your question with a lie...
> Would you argue with every idiot who presented an objection?
Why of course I would. Because I am right, because by answering this question in the affirmative, I've proven you wrong, which makes me right.
I'm a vaguely left-libertarian-ish person, so my view on gay marriage is that I cannot see a reason why it should not be allowed and, beyond that, it's pretty much none of my business. But I do find it difficult to draw a line at which marriage should not be allowed. People like to raise the issue of polygamy, and I can't honestly think of a good reason why polygamous marriage shouldn't be allowed either. The examples after that get more troublesome: should a man be allowed to marry his own daughter? How about siblings marrying each other? In the realms of absurdity, we might consider marriage to non-humans, to dead people, to inanimate objects or to imaginary beings (and, since this is HN, we should probably give serious thought to people marrying their devices, or at least the AIs that may inhabit them in the future).
Part of me doesn't really care - I have no particular interest in "protecting the sanctity of marriage" because I think that personal relationships are personal and don't require anyone else's validation. But I can't imagine that society as a whole would agree with me on that. For better or worse, we need some way of delineating what is considered to be acceptable marriage and what isn't, and this is largely an arbitrary choice. You can probably ground it in the notion of consent, which would rule out marriage to dead people, imaginary beings, non-humans (that we've encountered so far) and inanimate objects. It would still leave polygamous and incestuous marriage open, but maybe that's OK (and rare enough that nobody really needs to care).
So, as a disinterested party I can kinda see where the anti-gay-marriage people are coming from, in an anthropological observation sense - they're aware that an arbitrary choice must be made somewhere, they've made their choice and they don't see why they should change. If you truly believe that marriage is something that can only happen between a man and a woman, that it's sanctified by tradition and some ineffable spiritual wisdom, then you won't think of yourself as denying homosexual couples the right to marry. You'll be utterly perplexed by the fact that they want to - you'd see it as a doomed enterprise, people pretending to be what they cannot. The thing is, this has really nothing to do with what you think of homosexual people in general, you just believe that they can't marry, in much the same sense that they can't fly, shape-shift or shoot lightning from their fingertips. It just doesn't work! Weirdly, civil partnerships can still make perfect sense because there's an obvious reason for them to exist (people can still love each other and spend their lives together even if they're not, or can't become, married).
I'm probably being overly-charitable here. Some anti-gay-marriage people are probably homophobic bigots who just enjoy telling people what to do and punishing those who aren't exactly like them. Even the ones who have some internally-consistent reasoning behind their position and don't otherwise dislike or discriminate against gay people can be faulted for their sheer lack of empathy. In the end there is no point in trying to argue the specifics because everything hinges on whether you believe marriage between two people of the same sex is a legitimate concept. I'm a little bit ambivalent about this, because I don't really see a reason why there couldn't be some special club for straight people who want to commit to each other, and traditionally that's what marriage has been. I suspect, however, that there will be no great call for such an institution to be created, now that "marriage" is open to everyone.
Now, on the actual matter-in-hand, I don't think Brendan Eich deserves to be vilified. Not because I think he's right about gay marriage (I don't), but because I believe that people are entitled to think and act how they like when in private, and they should conversely be held to rigorous standards in their public conduct. We're all adults and we're all capable of putting our private beliefs aside when conducting a public role. The fact that Eich's views are public should actually make it easier to hold him to account for his public actions as Mozilla CEO. Debates about gay marriage are good for our society, but it's the debate about the issues that is healthy, not the attacks on particular individuals.
I must admit that his stance makes me think less of him as a person. But it doesn't really make me think less of him as a technologist, advocate for Mozilla, or CEO. If he uses his position to advance an exclusionary political agenda then I would think very much less of him as a CEO, and that's where the distinction between private beliefs and public actions is relevant for me.
For me, it boils down to the fact that we as a society grant or deny rights and privileges based on whom we place in category Married vs. !Married. As long as that category includes unrestricted hospital visitation, financial/insurance benefits, etc. then we have no business legislating it, and saying "Persons X and Y (and, hell, Z, Q and P) who truly love each other and consent to marriage are denied these things because they don't meet our definition of what marriage means" strikes me as no different than "Person X is denied the right to vote because their skin color is not the one we associate with sound mind and ability to vote." I'm sure there are a number of institutions that any group wouldn't consider marriage, and that's up to each individual to decide. But as soon as the state and institutions tangled marriage with equal treatment, they set themselves up for this struggle and have to address the inevitable inequity.
Anyhow, I realize you probably agree with this. My point is that the individual lines we draw aren't relevant when people's lives, health and financial livelihood hinge on whether or not society determines them married. This is a civil rights issue, nothing less, and it's hard to see support for an anti-gay-marriage organization as anything less than funding an organization that fights against equality. I wonder how we'd feel if the donation was instead for, say, a proposition that would bring back some aspects of Separate but Equal, and how the rhetoric would change.
For me, gay marriage is on a level of fundamental human rights and equality. That everyone should have the same rights under the law is literally one of the central beliefs that the United States was founded on. If we're giving benefits to couples who are married, gay couples should be entitled to those same benefits. [1] I don't see how anyone can say anything to the contrary. If I heard something remotely convincing then I would probably accept it, but I haven't. Largely the opposition of gay marriage is just bigotry because it makes someone uncomfortable. [2] The issue here is that those beliefs aren't legitimate, they just deny another human being rights that they should have.
[1] I'm not sure whether we should give benefits to married couples at all, but if we are then all couples should be eligible for them if they desire.
[2] Besides the opinion of a single person on HN, I've never seen anyone against gay marriage because they are against marriage as a whole. Its always that it offends them in some way.
Boycotting is a perfectly legitimate means of expressing one's opinion, in a manner that is in no way 'dismissing the legitimacy of other's beliefs'. If you believe it matters to an oil company where you pump gas, go for it; if they agree with you, then maybe they'll do something to win back your business. Hard to see that as a witch hunt...
For comparison purposes, it's analogous to those who spoke out against and worked against interracial marriage. If Mozilla were to promote someone to CEO that donated money to a group attempting to outlaw interracial marriage in California, you'd hear no end of it (and rightly so). Those who support equality in marriage laws see someone opposing equality in marriage laws as just as bigoted as someone opposing interracial marriage.
Going after opponents wallets is the only weapon they have left to get institutions to change their policies.
The owner of Chick-Fil-A is quite a wealthy man. He's not likely to notice twenty or thirty protesters in any way other than simple recognition. But, if you hit back at his wallet, he's more likely to notice. Not because he's a pompous jerk or anything, but because other people within and without the organization will notice.
This witch hunt you speak of cuts both ways. People on the left want to "out" every anti-gay person of any note. People on the far right want to out all the gay people and get biblical on them. Personally, I think we can all live with an outed billionaire or two. I'm pretty sure that a properly biblically punished gay man or woman wouldn't live long enough to see the headline about it.
Finally, there's not much reason for reason when someone is calling for your death or the death of your child or parent simply because they aren't heterosexual.
It's not intellectual hubris. It's not intellectual at all, and it has nothing to do with beliefs. It's emotional, because love is emotional. When someone tells a gay person that they can't marry the person they love, they are telling them that their love is not the same as straight people's love, that it's lesser. It doesn't matter if that's not what they meant to say, or if they have statistics and graphs to make some point about the effects on greater society. The inevitable conclusion of any position other than full marriage equality is that same-sex love is something different. To those that feel it, the statement is an insult pointed directly at one of the strongest emotions that any human can feel. It hurts tremendously.
Are you surprised by the way people react after someone insults one of the most precious and important parts of their lives?
> It’s not a witch hunt.
You bet your ass it is. It's another in a string of incidents, including boycotting chick fil a for it's owner's beliefs, boycotting duck dynasty for that one guy's beliefs, boycotting starbucks for it's owner's beliefs, the list goes own.
Now this is not to take a particular stance on the issue. It's to say that dismissing the legitimacy of other's beliefs besides your own shows a pretty absurd level of intellectual hubris (not unheard of around these parts).