811–820 of 1001 posts
Well, now, since we've got this all straightened out, let's just do it right the next time. Reply below with your suggestions on what political views will be litmus tests for CEO positions in the future. We can compile a list, and then dig into the next candidate's background to make sure that all of her or his views are within the realm of acceptability. A lot of people just want to apply this to the CEO position, b…
A CEO should be a woman.
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Not to minimize the issue, but receiving death threats is rapidly becoming part of being a public figure on the Internet. Columnists, reporters, celebrities, and many others receive them all the time. It's definitely unacceptable, but it's not like we have shown an ability to control it, and I can't think of any assassinations of high-profile Internet figures. I'm surprised you're surprised at people, though! Death t…
> Not to minimize the issue, but receiving death threats is rapidly becoming part of being a public figure on the Internet. Indeed, I've gotten quite a few death threats myself over the years for my radical cause of trying to improve the quality of video game emulators. The problem with the internet is that you can't really judge a person's mental state from a text post. Quite often the person on the other end making…
I love your work by the way.
Really sad about and disappointed in the way the whole internet reacted to Mozilla choice of CEO. To the homophobic it's wrong to be gay and to the gay it's wrong to be homophobic. If we accept LGBTQ as a circuitry of the mind, why don't we treat homophobia the same? And if it's ok to publicly admit to being gay why isn't it the same for homophobic? Where's the tolerance of political views?
Are you telling me that you think some people are biologically predisposed towards homophobia?
Just because people have the right to exercise free speech does not indemnify them from the consequences. Drawing broad strokes about how we should respect people's rights to express opinions while not judging them for those opinions is not practical. It's all shades of gray.
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>there are people who simply have hangups about the word "marriage" vs "civil unions." And this 'hangup' is simply idiotic. Christians that speak of 'civil unions' are trying to hold homosexuals' rights hostage so they can pretend that they have carved out a small victory. Christianity invented neither the concept nor the terminology for marriage. Most of us at HN rave all day long about how stupid it is when a compa…
Please don't paint all Christians with a broad brush. I, for one, support gay marriage, as do many others. Just say'n. On the other hand, I also think it'd be completely valid to say that the government shouldn't be in the 'marriage' business at all (gay or straight) and it should only handle contracts -- aka civil unions. One could then parse "marriage" to be something reserved for whatever church/belief system/pers…
A "marriage" is a multifaceted social institution that has civil/economic implications (first and foremost) and cultural implications as varied as the number of people on the planet. To state that it is only a religious institution is incredibly myopic to it's history and evolution in human society.
That all said, we pretty much have the same view, but I propose a slightly different solution: drop one of the terms entirely. There is no reason to differentiate between civil unions and marriage. They are legally the exact same thing - no reason to have two terms for it.
I would say we drop "civil unions" and stick with "marriage", but that's just my opinion.
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I generally agree with you but I think the problem here is that being against gay marriage is more than just a "political view." Being for low taxes is a political view. Being for smaller government is a political view. Believing a certain group of people don't deserve to live their lives like other simply because of who they love is not a political view. It reads as extremely hateful and that makes people uncomforta…
So Barack Obama, the President of the US, was against gay marriage in 2008; I'm confused as to why he gets a pass here, but the head of Mozilla doesn't?
(1) Barack Obama didn't contribute money to Prop. 8, and in fact specifically spoke out against it and similar measures in 2008, e.g., "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage. But when you start playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that’s not what America's about." [1] (2) Barack Obama's wasn't appointed CEO of Mozilla Corporation, so the people that think that Eich made a bad head of Mozilla because of that don't have that basis to object, and (3) Barack Obama's position on gay marriage has changed since 2008, and he has spoken on that evolution at length.
[1] http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2008/11/obama-on-mtv-i/
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The problem is that support for Prop 8 has been misrepresented as "hate" of gays, and that gullible young people have been tricked to support the gay agenda in the first place, and also to believe anyone who disagrees with that agenda is a "reprehensible bigot". If "gay rights" are really so self-evident, let's confront the haters and explain in a clear, concise manner why their beliefs are invalid. The thing is that…
> let's confront the haters and explain in a clear, concise manner why their beliefs are invalid. It's actually pretty easy. Any number of court opinions on the issue are readily available and generally easy to read. These represent the best-of arguments from both sides. Once the issue was raised as a legal issue, it became subject to constitutional scrutiny and the U.S. Constitution simply doesn't allow for that kin…
This is actually completely backwards. It only became tenable to approach as a legal issue after gay marriage had become culturally acceptable.
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The problem is that support for Prop 8 has been misrepresented as "hate" of gays, and that gullible young people have been tricked to support the gay agenda in the first place, and also to believe anyone who disagrees with that agenda is a "reprehensible bigot". If "gay rights" are really so self-evident, let's confront the haters and explain in a clear, concise manner why their beliefs are invalid. The thing is that…
> let's confront the haters and explain in a clear, concise manner why their beliefs are invalid. It's actually pretty easy. Any number of court opinions on the issue are readily available and generally easy to read. These represent the best-of arguments from both sides. Once the issue was raised as a legal issue, it became subject to constitutional scrutiny and the U.S. Constitution simply doesn't allow for that kin…
Nationally binding case law on relevant marriage topics didn't exist until Windsor last year, and even that stopped short of claiming that all bans on gay marriage were unconstitutional, and 4 sitting Supreme Court justices disagree even with the narrow logic by which sections of DOMA were invalidated, which essentially punted the issue back to states and said that the Feds were obliged to honor marriages granted by states.
Should we all go boycott the Supreme Court as long as John Roberts is Chief Justice?
It's completely misleading to pretend that reasonable, non-bigoted people can't oppose gay marriage and/or can't believe that bans on gay marriage are constitutional and fair.
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He didn't get a pass. A lot of people made a huge issue out of it from the day he announced to the day he changed his views. He also didn't stand in the way of the advancing equality movement while he mulled it over. Brendan Eich did, to the tune of $1000.
Actually, with respect to civil rights, acts of omission matter >= acts of commission. Therefore the POTUS withholding support is a far, far greater impact than some dude contributing $1000. Yet I imagine a super-majority of the people pitchforking Eich also voted for Obama. Whatever justifications they had -- "lesser of two evils", "he's right about most other things" -- should apply to both people. But of course th…
No, I think actually using (or advocating using) power of government to discriminate is a bigger problem than merely failing to oppose such abuses, though both are bad. But, in any case, this is irrelevant because:
> Therefore the POTUS withholding support
On Prop. 8, the President didn't withhold support from the side that Eich spent money opposing -- Obama opposed Prop. 8 specifically and measures to entrench prohibition of same-sex marriage in Constitutions generally in 2008.