The Hypocrisy Of Sam Yagan and OkCupid • Hacker News Board

Re: The Hypocrisy Of Sam Yagan and OkCupid

#101

Post by mkr-hn » Sun, Apr 06, 2014, 6:56 PM UTC

bluntly_said wrote: post #58

Karunamon wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>religious significance to many people, and by forcing the definition to change, pro-gay rights groups are also codifying personal belief into law. The establishment clause to the constitution says that religious beliefs do not get to be encoded in law. And considering I have not seen one single anti-equality argument that wasn't either religiously motivated or a gigantic mass of "appeal to tradition" fallacies, I su…

There already was a suitable band-aid, it was called domestic partnerships, and had the full legal rights of marriage in California. Co-opting the word marriage in law, rather than asking for it to be removed was actively choosing to force religions to accept your personal beliefs. That's bullying. -- That said, I generally fall much closer on the scale to you than to the supporters of prop 8, but you have to be able…

Prop 8 was part of a long-running--to this day--national campaign to create and maintain this separation across many jurisdictions with different takes on marriage and civil union. The campaign has employed every negative tactic imaginable. You have to look at it in that context to understand why it's still an issue, even if it seems okay on the level of one state.

The trouble is, it's easy to give one class new things that the other doesn't get, making them unequal again. Making marriage equal ensures everyone acts fairly when modifying the legal institution of marriage.

edit: Since HN won't let me reply to bluntly_said --

Trouble is, the fight to move those rights to civil unions and properly separate church and state is a decades-longer fight. I would like to be able to get those essential legal protections within my lifetime. We can finish the job in a few years when marriage equality is universal.

Re: The Hypocrisy Of Sam Yagan and OkCupid

#102

Post by briantakita » Sun, Apr 06, 2014, 6:56 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #85

briantakita wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eich said he supported equality. He supported taking care of domestic partners. If you have issue with his "support" then have a respectful dialog. If he is wrong, then that will become obvious. Instead, the movement acted like a bully & does not have the moral high ground anymore. You are conflating the state not recognizing gay marriage with a human rights issue. Not everyone agrees. Besides, the notion of marriage…

>Eich said he supported equality. His actions show otherwise. I've said this before here, but I have much less problem with the (small) donation (to a failed cause) than I do his subsequent behavior. His subsequent hypocrisy proves beyond any reasonable doubt that those views are still very personal and very real to him, regardless of what comes out of his mouth. One does not abdicate a CEO position, something of gre…

> His actions show otherwise.

Those who know him say he treated everybody equally. He set policy & a supported a system in Mozilla that promoted equality. His heart is in a decent place. We all have moral blind spots. He has his past. We all need to grow in some areas.

Painting Eich as some "extremist" is disingenuous.

> How well do you think a CEO would do if it came out that they were donators to Stormfront?

Prop 8 had 52% of the vote. It is a mainstream opinion. Stormfront is a fringe group. Eich does not seem to belong to any other extreme group. He just supported a Proposition.

Numbers does not mean morality, however it does indicate that someone is relatively in line with the rest of the population.

I struggle with this because there are things that most people are ok with that suppress rights of those who don't have a voice right now.

Whenever I bring up those issue, I face the risk of ostricization. That is why I oppose ostracizing Eich. That behavior opposes equality & tolerance. It make it "ok" to be kneejerk judgmental.

If there's one thing that we learned from gay rights, black rights, & woman rights, it's we need to be more tolerant as a society. We need to treat everybody with respect.

> He was asked, multiple times by multiple people what his true thoughts were and declined to elaborate.

Over a period of a few days? He did apologize for hurting people.

He obviously felt strongly about this issue. It's coercive to make him change his mind from social pressure. Actually, it probably meant he would have to lie. He chose to not talk about it, as it would have cause more emotional distress. Given his position, he acted in a respectful manner.

> I have skin in this game.

We all do brother or sister :-)

> I see the behavior of people like Eich as a personal affront to me and people close to me

I see public shaming and bullying as a personal affront to me. I've been unfairly bullied online (and offline). The problem with online bullying is the target's motive & the truth does not matter. Only perception matters.

When you damage someone publicly, you are assaulting them. Especially today where things online stick with you forever. There are also emotional consequences to being bullied.

I have some opinions that are not mainstream. I want to be heard without being disrespected.

I want tolerance. Seeing people act like bullies makes be nauseous.

You can't deny how I feel about your opinion, just like I cannot deny how you feel about my opinion. However, if I don't like your opinion about something, it is not right for me to label you as a bigot or some other loaded term.

Let's not hate people. Let's understand that people live within a context. Let's change the context.

Re: The Hypocrisy Of Sam Yagan and OkCupid

#103

Post by baddox » Sun, Apr 06, 2014, 6:57 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #45

dubfan wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd say a fundamental portion of respect is not encoding your personal beliefs of other people's personal lives into law. I keep seeing this line from gay marriage supporters. I always have to ask, what exactly is the pro-gay-marriage movement about then? It sounds to me like it's exactly what you're describing here. Disclaimer: I support same-sex marriage.

There's a fundamental difference between recognizing that what people do with their lives is their business, and attempting to force them to stop through legislative fiat. Nobody's forcing you to do or not do anything by allowing marriage equality. The same cannot be said of its opponents.

There's a fundamental difference between supporting the government's authority in the realm of marriage, and supporting the government's authority to ban homosexuality itself. One can, for example, easily oppose laws which ban homosexual cohabitation, while also opposing government having any role in marriage.

Re: The Hypocrisy Of Sam Yagan and OkCupid

#104

Post by anonbanker » Sun, Apr 06, 2014, 6:57 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #42

briantakita wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eich's behavior impacted a hell of a lot more people than the backlash did The backlash affects everybody. It creates a hostile environment where your opinion can cost you your job. That coupled with ever growing levels of transparency means everybody needs to have a politically correct opinion or face consequences. The ends do not justify the means. Also, what does firing Eich achieve for the gay rights movement?…

>It creates a hostile environment where your opinion can cost you your job. It would probably already cost you your job to publicly declare (let alone financially support) similar non-equality views of both blacks and women. Why is this so much worse? Oh no, one more particular flavor of bigotry becomes socially unacceptable. However will I cope. >Also, what does firing Eich achieve for the gay rights movement? An ob…

I'd say the lesson is that, Despite evidence of overwhelming hypocricy amongst one of the biggest and most vocal supporters, LGBTQ's in the valley will form a mob and start boycotts that prove to be just as damaging and counter-productive as anything the conservatives and white power idiots can do.

Another lesson is that if I started a company in the Silicon Valley, released a combination AIDS/Cancer vaccine for free, and used the South Park Redefinition of "Faggot" (referring to insensitive harley motorcycle riders), I would destroy my company and people would boycott the cure for AIDS and Cancer.

Another lesson is that Silicon Valley is just as socially intolerant as Utah, but like most geographically-distinct cases of bigotry, the "lower class" is different. in Mississippi, it's African American crack users. in SV's case, it's anyone not 100% in-step with GLAAD. one is no better than the other.

(disclosure: I'm an lgBtq that thinks that marriage should not be a government institution. if you want tax breaks, incorporate.)

Re: The Hypocrisy Of Sam Yagan and OkCupid

#105

Post by Xdes » Sun, Apr 06, 2014, 6:57 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #85

briantakita wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eich said he supported equality. He supported taking care of domestic partners. If you have issue with his "support" then have a respectful dialog. If he is wrong, then that will become obvious. Instead, the movement acted like a bully & does not have the moral high ground anymore. You are conflating the state not recognizing gay marriage with a human rights issue. Not everyone agrees. Besides, the notion of marriage…

>Eich said he supported equality. His actions show otherwise. I've said this before here, but I have much less problem with the (small) donation (to a failed cause) than I do his subsequent behavior. His subsequent hypocrisy proves beyond any reasonable doubt that those views are still very personal and very real to him, regardless of what comes out of his mouth. One does not abdicate a CEO position, something of gre…

>I see the behavior of people like Eich as a personal affront to me and people close to me.

Yet you aren't going to get fired for having expressed those views five years ago. How would you feel if your boss decided to fire you over your personal beliefs, overlooking your professional merits? Do you really want McCarthyism again?

Re: The Hypocrisy Of Sam Yagan and OkCupid

#106

Post by hk__2 » Sun, Apr 06, 2014, 6:58 PM UTC

patrickg_zill wrote: post #65

There are 7 billion people in the world. Those posters who make the assumption in their posts, that "of course" everyone agrees with their position that Prop 8 was wrong, might want to reflect that probably less than 500 million, or less than 8%, agree with them. The debate that such posters believe has already been settled, will be going on for a long time.

A lot of people didn’t agree with slavery abolition, too. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good thing.

Re: The Hypocrisy Of Sam Yagan and OkCupid

#107

Post by 001sky » Sun, Apr 06, 2014, 6:59 PM UTC

The IAC senior leadership has no (0/13) people of colour, and only one woman (thats 1/13). And in fact, they don't even have anyone who wears glasses. IAC is the owner of OK cupid, and Sam Yagan is on the parent company's wesite here:

http://iac.com/about/leadership

Google at least has a much more diverse company leadership teams. Ya know, men and women and people who wear glasses and hair color other than "middle brown".

For Yagan to take on his own Board as a subordinate, calling them a bunch of "racist bigots" --not for their private beliefs, but for their "public" actions-- as witnessed by their hiring policy, would be quite a stunt.

Re: The Hypocrisy Of Sam Yagan and OkCupid

#108

Post by baddox » Sun, Apr 06, 2014, 6:59 PM UTC

AlexMax wrote: post #61

bluntly_said wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other side of this coin is that marriage has religious significance to many people, and by forcing the definition to change, pro-gay rights groups are also codifying personal belief into law. Both sides fucked it up. The only proper response should have been to remove all legal rights associated with marriage, and force all couples to get a civil union. Tax that instead. Churches are welcome to marry people all t…

Sorry, but I find it incredulous that the only reason that some folks are unwilling to give LGBT folks the right to marry is because of what the state happens to call the practice.

Why is that hard to believe? A lot of people demonstrably oppose calling it marriage, even when homosexual couples already have the same legal rights and benefits as heterosexual couples.

Re: The Hypocrisy Of Sam Yagan and OkCupid

#109

Post by Karunamon » Sun, Apr 06, 2014, 7:00 PM UTC

bluntly_said wrote: post #76

Karunamon wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm stating that a social environment where a man loses a job Mozilla thought he was qualified for because of private personal beliefs Private "personal beliefs" that he reached into his wallet and tried to force into law. This is the one thing that people don't seem to understand. Eich didn't just think gays were second class citizens. This isn't a "thoughtcrime" he's being pilloried for. It was the action. The do…

No, I think you've decided that when democracy doesn't cater exactly to your personal morals, it must be wrong. Making a donation based on private, personal beliefs is ENTIRELY the point of a democracy. The correct action is to speak out in support of your ideas, not to cast hatred on those who disagree. Instead of sitting here arguing, you could have gone and made a 10 dollar donation to a pro-lbgt group, and done a…

>No, I think you've decided that when democracy doesn't cater exactly to your personal morals, it must be wrong.

Which is what every loser in a democracy thinks. At least every time it's a wedge issue like this.

>cast hatred

Huh, saying someone has no business running an equality-focused company is "hatred" now? Saying someone is a bigot is "hatred"? Yeah right.

Re: The Hypocrisy Of Sam Yagan and OkCupid

#110

Post by Ygg2 » Sun, Apr 06, 2014, 7:00 PM UTC

briantakita wrote: post #43

Karunamon wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not qualified to tell the other side of the story. What a cop out. You're, like everyone else who disagrees with this, downplaying Eich's behavior and trying to turn activists into the "real" monsters for speaking out. Why the double standard? Why does one man, Eich, get a pass on speaking out for his personal political beliefs (with cash), but you demonize the the (hundreds? thousands? more?) people who did noth…

> trying to turn activists into the "real" monsters for speaking out If the activists act like monsters, then that needs to be called out as well. Power corrupts. Do you think the activists are immune?

Nope. Not one bit. Shitstorm like this just reinforces my people that all people are equally capable of evil and good. This time with emphasis on evil.

I don't get what does his private belief have to do with making Firefox? Seriously, what?

Also replace this scandal with person X becoming CEO and then media discovering he fucked a cat once. Do you think he'd really rise to top ranks and suddenly turn the firm into a place for cat orgies?