Tim Cook Speaks Up

'Preposterous'? Really? It's - what - 6 years since Prop 8 went through; evidently a debate on this matter was not preposterous to Californians then. And it's only 18 years since DOMA, which made this tortuous state-by-state guerrilla war necessary. And it's only 28 years since homosexuality was removed from the DSM. That's just the States - see elsewhere in this thread re India; in Britain we had Section 28 on the books until recently, and got equal marriage (sort of) last year.

The trouble with declaring something, as an individual in a HN thread, beyond the bounds of reasonable discussion is that it does not actually make it so - the bounds of reasonable discussion are set by what people in general are prepared to reasonably discuss. The obvious takeaway from the Eich affair - the best corporate diversity record in the world will not stop individuals from holding to the beliefs that they do. They will just hold them more quietly.

Finally - Eich being drilled out of the CEO position is not directly a suppression of his free speech or whatever; he is not being sent to jail for his views. The board of a company has the right to ditch a CEO for being 'embarrassing'. The trouble is that this is not somehow a radical blow for gay rights: indeed, closeted gay people not too long ago would find their positions untenable for exactly the same reason if their sexuality was discovered (it was embarrassing, etc).

In order to get to a situation where they could go about their business relatively unmolested, gay people had to fight against, among other things, exactly this sort of kneejerk corporate small-c conservatism. The progress we've made on this issue was not made one non-profit CEO at a time; nor was it through individual gays having great individual 'role models' (sorry Tim), but through prolonged political fights. I have little sympathy for Eich in this matter, but the idea that his being Mozilla CEO was a serious obstacle to gay rights was risible, and remains so.

Obligatory Godwin: Hitler probably thought he was doing The Right Thing, too.

Mother Theresa believed that suffering brings you closer to god. Sure, she were courageous and tried their best to help people, but that was probably more inspired by actively seeking suffering (and helping other people suffer) than altruism.

But it's absolutely on par for Catholicism (or guilt-based Christianity in general). Declaring her a saint was perfectly reasonable.

This is a very gross misrepresentation of India. The article 377 is a British law which is continued like 1000 other laws. One law for example is that each lodging facility should keep its toilets open for public. Which basically means all the 5 star hotels need to keep their toilets open for public use.

India might have archaic and North Korea like laws but it also has a non-functional government and police force which is mostly busy with other trivialities so even though article 377 exists, I am not aware of any people being harassed for being gay by government or authorities. Gay parties are common and have known several gay couples who have lived safely together.

Even though 200 people are prosecuted under this it is less because for they being gay and more because of other reasons. For example it is very common of Indian politicians to put you in jail for any random reason. In most cases, 377 is applied along with rape, domestic violence or divorce cases as the opponent seem fit.

Of course, India is not SF either. I think Indian liberal in their zeal to simply prove themselves "liberal" they are beating up the homosexuality drum needlessly in India. I think this is going to be counter productive and various political factions especially the Islam leaning parties might see an advantage in making life of Gays a bit more difficult.

The Soviet Union wasn't and China isn't really communist or socialist by most sane definitions of those terms, but good luck disassociating yourself from them if you label yourself a communist today.

Feminism was about seeking equal rights and equal opportunities for women. In the West it largely achieved that goal (we're not there yet, but consider where we started). Thanks to tumblr, twitter and the blogosphere echo-chamber, the feminism most people become aware of online is very different from that.

Worse yet, there is no such thing as "the feminist movement" (anymore) by a long shot. It's become a broad term that encompasses everything from egalitarians to misandrists. And any criticism of the later group is always portrayed as a criticism of the former (which is why we end up with this entirely pointless MRA/SJW shitstorm-on-demand situation we have now).

Nobody is forcing egalitarians to call themselves feminists. But clinging to that label and pretending it hasn't changed its meaning is no different from trying to distance your communism from Stalin or your nationalist socialism from the Nazi party.

Practically everybody knew that Tim Cook is gay, that's why they said that Apple users are faggot and only faggot use Apple products.