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A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

nytimes.com

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Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#571

Post by olddustytrail »

skissane wrote: post #570
anon291 wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to excuse the church, but this was actually the civil punishment. The church just declared you an apostate or not, and civil authorities would punish you (BTW, most European countries still have similar laws with just lesser punishments and no church involvement... IIRC, blasphemy is still a prosecutable crime in Germany)

What about people executed for heresy in the Papal States? There are many examples, but the most famous would be Giordano Bruno, burnt at the stake for heresy in Rome in 1600. The whole "it was the civil authorities not the Church" line doesn't really work there, since the Pope was ultimately in charge of both, even if the two were still nominally distinct. Even in the case of the Spainish Inquisition, where the Chur…

If you can describe exactly what Bruno's heresy was and the effect it had, I'm happy to continue this conversation.

If you can't, then it's just a waste of my time.

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#572

Post by blip54321 »

maccolgan wrote: post #467
soraminazuki wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google cannot take action against religions (even cults) it disagrees with "Disagreement" is quite an euphemistic way of describing the situation. The said cult has documented history of sexual abuse.

I don't think Google has standing to prosecute sexual abuse. Isn't that the DA's job?

Precisely.

Google has standing for workplace sexual abuse. If I am a member of a religious / national / ethnic / etc. group with a track record of sexual abuse, I cannot be fired for that. That's discrimination.

There are many minefields here.

- I've seen many community members where I live boycott (unrelated) Russian businesses since Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

- I saw Muslims in the US persecuted after 9/11.

- I live in a Protestant/Atheist community which seems to hate Catholics.

- Etc.

Every large group has a bad component. There was sexual abuse in the Catholic church, 9/11 happened, the US did kill around a million Muslims in recent decades, and Russia shouldn't have invaded Ukraine. Laws are designed to protect individuals from generalization or stereotypes about from the group they're from, whether true or not.

Nepotism, for the most part, is legal in the US; it's just bad business beyond some scale. For a startup, the right strategy is often to hire people you know to be good personally. That's often friends and family. For a family business, the goals aren't purely economic, and again, it's fine practice. For large businesses, it tends to be bad business, but that doesn't make it illegal. Ditto for self-dealing.

There are restrictions for non-profits, public employees, etc. but those aren't general to private businesses like Google.

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#573

Post by rexpop »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #489
rexpop wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I am concerned, your employer takes it too far. What I do on my own time is none of my employer's business , as it were. If I am involved in a weekend nightclub drunken brawl, and no other company, customer, or vendor personnel are involved, and no subsequent legal or social fallout interferes with my working hours, than it's absolutely inappropriate for management to acknowledge these activities. The very…

But what if your brawl ends up in the news?

Then it's news. So what?

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#574

Post by shp0ngle »

mike00632 wrote: post #222
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Business Insider article is I think a clear demonstration of what concerns me about this kind of analysis. The author seems to see strict secularism as the only "normal" way to run a business, declining to recognize a distinction between businesses owned by a religion and businesses whose owners happen to be devout followers of a religion. When simply printing the text "John 3:16" on the bottom of your soda cups…

Bible verses on cups is one thing but Hobby lobby went to court to avoid paying women's insurance. Chick-fil-A is closed on Sundays and fights for the right to discriminate against groups it marginalizes for religious reasons. These practices are bad for profit, bad for customers, bad for society, and only good for the religious leaders who take from the earnings without even being a part of the business.

oh nooo, it closes on Sunday.

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#575

Post by anon291 »

incompatible wrote: post #560
anon291 wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tests the courts use is whether you can actually physically leave control of the organization. Having your name written down or having a spiritual belief that some ritual is permanent, etc, doesn't count as not being able to leave. Are you asking the court to make a judgement on theological matters (i.e., the state of your soul)? Surely you can see why they don't care.

Not being able to physically leave would be kidnapping, surely? That would make them a criminal organization, not just a "cult".

Cults are often criminal. The Catholic church doesn't harrass you for money or really reach out at all if you're on its roster. All it is is a record of your having come there, which is their record to keep. This is like saying elementary schools are cuts because they keep your transcripts on file -- a completely ridiculous assertion.

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#576

Post by anon291 »

skissane wrote: post #570
anon291 wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to excuse the church, but this was actually the civil punishment. The church just declared you an apostate or not, and civil authorities would punish you (BTW, most European countries still have similar laws with just lesser punishments and no church involvement... IIRC, blasphemy is still a prosecutable crime in Germany)

What about people executed for heresy in the Papal States? There are many examples, but the most famous would be Giordano Bruno, burnt at the stake for heresy in Rome in 1600. The whole "it was the civil authorities not the Church" line doesn't really work there, since the Pope was ultimately in charge of both, even if the two were still nominally distinct. Even in the case of the Spainish Inquisition, where the Chur…

> – you have to ask whether the Church encouraged or discouraged the civil authorities from imposing capital punishment on those it convicted of heresy

That's literally why I started off my comment with "I'm not going to excuse the church". You're absolutely right that there ought to have been a reckoning with the consequences.

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#577

Post by InefficientRed »

bradlys wrote: post #527
InefficientRed wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course, in many firms, employment is entirely "at will," and subject to employers' most capricious whims. This is not a good thing; the subjugation of one's employment to another's whim is an oppressive imbalance of power. This is an issue where I could imagine something actually getting done in US politics. Dems would have a hard time opposing a worker's rights issue and Republicans would have a hard time oppos…

The problem with this logic is that you assume Dems or Republicans want to help the working class. They don’t.

No, I just assume they are responsive to their constituents.

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#578

Post by trasz »

anon291 wrote: post #575
incompatible wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not being able to physically leave would be kidnapping, surely? That would make them a criminal organization, not just a "cult".

Cults are often criminal. The Catholic church doesn't harrass you for money or really reach out at all if you're on its roster. All it is is a record of your having come there, which is their record to keep. This is like saying elementary schools are cuts because they keep your transcripts on file -- a completely ridiculous assertion.

The Catholic Church rapes children in industrial quantities - but we don't consider it criminal because of the good PR it (still) has.

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#579

Post by reissbaker »

swat535 wrote: post #422
reissbaker wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Catholicism has certainly compelled people to behave "contrary to their own interests" — e.g. preventing LGBT members from pursuing love, preventing unhappily-married people from divorcing, preventing women with dangerous or difficult pregnancies from seeking abortion; and that's without even referencing the many documented instances of child abuse — so I'm not sure that distinction makes a huge difference.

No one is forced to be a Catholic. LGBTQ and Homosexuals are welcome to leave at any time. Those who join Catholicism, clearly understand the Catechesis (as they have to go through RCIA) and if they conclude that they don't fit, they can go to another denomination. I went through RCIA and we had people who literally decided to leave the night before Easter Vigil and no one harassed or bothered them. You are welcome t…

"No one is forced to be a Catholic."

Have you heard of the Spanish Inquisition? Hundreds of thousands of Jews and Muslims forcibly converted to Catholicism or faced with ethnic cleansing, with mass executions claiming thousands of victims. Or the Portugese inquisition? Or when Galileo was imprisoned for life for heresy against the Catholic Church?

Not to mention what Catholicism did to the Americas...

Or for more recent examples, how about when the Catholic Church took two Jewish children whose parents had been killed at Auschwitz, converted them to Catholicism, and refused to return them to their surviving relatives, resulting in a nearly decade-long post-war manhunt where the Church hid the children in a variety of monasteries under false names while refusing court orders to return the children, telling them that their entire family was dead — when in fact their sisters and aunt had survived — under the direct advice of the Pope? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finaly_Affair

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#580

Post by rendall »

ineedasername wrote: post #392
rendall wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sex trafficking & abuse... Did he observe sex trafficking? He did not. He read about 25 year old allegations. What he actually observed was ... wine. That Google managers already knew about.

Yes, which I mentioned, so thank you for restating my second point. Failure of immediate managers to act on employees giving themselves hundred of thousands of dollars in contracts seems a good issue to speak out about, especially when the author might have been fired in retaliation for bringing the issue up in the first place. Your attempt to minimize it as just "... wine" is a thin veil to cover such a casual dismi…

Ok, to recap:

> Seriously? Sex trafficking & abuse especially of underage people isn't a "live and let live" thing.

Definitely not. However, they were allegations made over 25 years ago, that led nowhere. So, to revive them as if they are a thing that actually is happening now is dishonest.

> Neither are co-workers assigning hundreds of thousands of dollars in vendor contracts to themselves or their organization.

Again, not a thing that happened. The winery in question is Grant Marie, which is not owned by the cult. It is, however, run by an ex-member - the one that used to run the cult's winery.

And, as to the nepotism, the hiring is done by the same outside firm as that which hired Lloyd himself, so, again, not under the control of the cult.

> I'm at a loss to understand your point of view here.

I despise fear-mongering and FUD on principle. Much evil has been done by self-righteous, frightened people who have convinced each other that monsters hide amongst the shadows. Hopefully, your rational skepticism has been triggered. But, if you're like most people, probably not.

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