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Tim Cook Speaks Up

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Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up

#321

Post by goatforce5 »

s_q_b wrote: post #299
goatforce5 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You subscription to Out magazine must have lapsed. He was their #1 most powerful gay man or woman in American last year: http://www.out.com/out-exclusives/power-50/2013/04/10/power-... I think it was one of those things where everyone knew it, but no one talked about it because it just wasn't that big a deal.

Because it isn't a big deal! I'm glad we're coming around to the reaction to a major public figure coming out is "meh." Injustice won't be over the day little black boys and girls and little white boys play together. It will be over the day anyone even thinks anything of it. Unfortunately, we have both overt and covert (even accidental) discrimination still to deal with. But our grandparents faced firehouses and dogs…

> Because it isn't a big deal!

Agreed.

But I think his message is aimed at younger people. "I'm a mellow kinda guy who is respected in the world of business. And i'm gay." You don't have to fit the stereotype of being flamboyant , out, loud and proud to be gay.

You and I know that. Any functioning adult in a largish city knows that. Maybe some kids in isolated communities without personal role models (family, family friends, teachers, etc., who are gay and run-of-the-mill kinda people) don't know that.

Edit: The top comment says it better than I can: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8532962

Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up

#322

Post by dwild »

colinramsay wrote: post #18

Strangely enough I'd see pictures of him at some gay pride thing and it never even occurred to me he might be gay. I think, more accurately, it didn't trigger anything in my brain that thought it mattered either way. Obviously this is the way it should be! It seems like Tim Cook isn't under any pressure to publicly announce this, so it seems he's doing it as a way of leveraging his position to help others who are exp…

Yeah at first I though it was another stunt for Apple because seriously how is his sexual orientation is important? Then I though how actually we still need public figure like him, that there's still way too much people who doesn't want to accept other sexual orientations.

Let's hope that this will help many more people understands that there's nothing abnormal with having another sexual orientation.

Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up

#323

Post by k-mcgrady »

netcan wrote: post #74
Jedd wrote: post #20

I wonder how carefully crafted this line was: ... I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me. It seems a particularly odd thing to slip in, on so many levels.

That jarred me too. I recently spoke to some gay religious people and it struck me as very odd. I'm biased, of course. I tend to think religion gets far more forgiveness than it deserves in a huge number of contexts. It was interesting though, in a bunch of ways. When I hear a statement like this it makes me think of Africans converting to Mormonism or Jews joining European far right movements. I realize that there a…

I would agree with you but only when you look at religion from a broad perspective. If you actually speak to people who are religious you will quickly find that there are a lot of things they don't believe or follow in their religion. Eventually religions catch up, although that takes too long (similar to how laws often take too long to catch up to what most people do and think should be legal).

I think the key is that the 'fundamental' people you often hear about that think 'homosexuality is an abomination' are a small minority. The people who are fine with it usually aren't seen on the news because their opinion isn't inflammatory.

Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up

#324

Post by JoeAltmaier »

facepalm wrote: post #282
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a cool view, but not how it works. The 'side issue' you dismiss is really the center of it: the government denies full participation to a class of people based on a questionable moral stance. Anything less that recognition is a 'back of the bus' argument: if the bus goes to the same place, why do you care if you have to sit in the back?

Well married homosexuals get the right to adopt children (I assume). I don't think it's just a moral stance. Maybe some people really are convinced that having two dads is bad for children psychologically. They would probably be wrong, but it's not a question of morals (unless you dismiss the protection of children's wellbeing as a goal). I am not sure if science has really shown it's not bad for children. I personal…

All that is government meddling in someone else's affairs in the most egregious way possible. Its not as far as taking kids from single parents etc. because they don't fit someone's model of a perfect family, but nearly there.

My cousin has 4 kids, and is married to the love of her life Lisa. Their kids are certifiably the kindest, most considerate kids I know. There's been no psychological damage, at least not at their hands. Ignorant outsiders may say mean things but to blame that on these excellent parents would be twisted logic.

Anywho, the decision about adoption is so far down the road from marriage as to be a red herring.

Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up

#325

Post by super_mario »

cconcepts wrote: post #245
super_mario wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know I don't really care if people are literalist fundamentalist bible thumpers or unitarians, muslims or even deists. They are all wrong, and they all believe in things unsupported by evidence or completely debunked lies. I only care about what is true, and I don't have any reservations about telling people what they believe isn't true, esp. when they bring it out to the open and implicitly invite the discussion…

As someone who was raised in an intellectual atheist family, spent my younger years believing as such and has since converted to Christianity, I find the tone of this kind of "Anyone who believes in anything is stupid.....but I'm all inclusive and caring" rhetoric to be a contradiction in terms. I have personally only experienced it from people who have been wounded by Christians in some way. I think that sucks and I…

I don't say anyone who believes anything. That would be stupid. I say anyone who believes things unsupported by evidence. We don't have to search the entire universe to find Christian god absent, we just have to look at the evidence put forward by Christians to be inadequate. You presumably don't believe in Zeus or Thor, or Mythras or Isis or Horus or any of the other gods that died with the civilizations that created them, and this is presumably because you find the evidence for these inadequate.

> On another note, the argument that you know the method therefore the agency doesn't exist has always seemed illogical to me. I know how Toyota puts its cars together, that doesn't mean that Toyota doesn't exist.

This is because people have used gods in the past as necessities needed for explanation of natural phenomena. Of course these explanations are not such thing at all, because you now have an ever bigger problem, by positing an intelligent being you are making bigger assumption than the phenomena you are trying to explain and now have a larger problem to solve, possibly leading to infinite regresses. All the above paragraph is saying is we don't need the hypothesis of deistic god ether. The evidence against theistic gods is much stronger though, and the idea can be dismissed completely.

Let me put it this way. You speak of god, but did you invent the concept, or did you hear about it from someone else? And if you heard about it from someone else, what evidence did they show you that convinced you with absolute certainty that there had to be such a thing.

Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up

#326

Post by jkaunisv1 »

easytiger wrote: post #166
nandemo wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does that have to do with being American? Do you realize the majority of the world's population believes in $deity?

being part of a tradition doesn't imply belief or participation.

Being part of pretty literally implies participation. But I get what you mean :)

Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up

#327

Post by stephencanon »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #316
stephencanon wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The amount of American pro-athletes who are religious is astounding. Many athletes will seriously thank God after doing something well in a sporting event. This is just a very clever thought pattern to confirm the American mythos of the self-made man and avoid giving credit to teammates, coaches, etc. "God made me great" is a way to take credit for yourself while maintaining the appearance of humility (no one can r…

Is it necessary to dismiss belief as somehow self-serving? A bragging athlete is arrogant; a humble one is secretly scheming to take credit. How do you win in that world-view?

If they were truly humble, they'd be thanking their teammates, not a man in the sky. It's offensive to thank god for your touchdown instead of the offensive line. The hand of god didn't descend from the heavens to open that hole you ran through.

Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up

#328

Post by linguafranca »

This is the culture I was brought up in. This kind of article is the reason I grew up believing there was nothing wrong with homosexuality.

Since every single other comment here is inevitably going to be some kind of applause and praise, let me briefly offer the perspective of some who have been silenced on HN and in the general tech world.

We know that homosexuality is a destructive force in society. While we love Tim Cook as a fellow human being and wish the best for him, this news deeply saddens us. It's yet another small victory for the evil one, and it will create a very deep distortion in the minds of so many impressionable young people who will now have a very wrong idea of what "normal" sexuality is.

I'm aware this comment will be down-voted to [dead] status very quickly, since tech culture silences any dissent or deviance from their own progressive thinking. But it's my duty to speak the truth even when it's uncomfortable or inconvenient. At the end of my life, at least I'll be able to say that I acted with integrity.

Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up

#329

Post by untog »

wefarrell wrote: post #300
ForrestN wrote: post #235

I am incredibly grateful to Cook for this, not least because of how it will affect young gay people. When I was a child, I felt generally good about myself. I was reasonably smart, well-spoken, curious, and so on, and I wanted to do something important with my life. Some nagging part of me suspected I was gay from very early on, but I resisted it intensely. I wasn't really afraid of being mistreated, although I proba…

"There hasn't been a gay President" http://www.salon.com/2012/05/14/our_real_first_gay_president...

Shrug. There hasn't been a publicly gay President, which is what would in the context the OP is discussing.

Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up

#330

Post by ionforce »

lmedinas wrote: post #291
mattzito wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a difference without a distinction - if he believes that only marriage between a man and a woman should be valid or recognized in California, then by extension he believes that a marriage between two men, or two women, should not be valid in california. Which is advocating for not providing that right to same-sex indviduals. Which is anti-gay. If the ballot measure said, "Only votes cast by a white pe…

Dude, he expressed his opinion about the gay marriage like Tim Cook did about his beliefs in God and society. What's the difference ? It's just opinions! And people have to respect both! Also anti means that you are against something, and Brendan never expressed that he was against gays or even hated gays. He was just against gay marriage. Suddenly being "gay" is cool and being "hetero" is not cool ?

You have to respect people's /right/ to an opinion, but you don't have to respect the opinions themselves.
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