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Tim Cook Speaks Up

businessweek.com

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Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up

#751

Post by hox »

netcan wrote: post #195
hox wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is to say that one's definition of "God" must conform to what a church teaches?

If we get into this sort of semantic aerobics, we are just talking about words. The context of the statement is a message to the general public, in America. The language he used has a particular meaning in the context.

I'm not trying to get into semantics. I attend Catholic mass every Sunday and identify as part of the Catholic community, but that doesn't mean I let centuries old teachings dictate my own personal beliefs. That is the difference between church and faith. If I were to make the same statement Tim made, I would be making it from my viewpoint, not that of you or anyone else.

Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up

#752

Post by _kst_ »

silencio wrote: post #421
jzymbaluk wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>that's sad that we're still at this point That said, public opinion is changing very rapidly. XKCD 1431 ( http://xkcd.com/1431/ ) offers an interesting visualization and comparison between gay marriage and interracial marriage. According to XKCD's source, interracial marriage didn't reach majority approval until 1995, while gay marriage already reached majority approval in 2011. Now obviously this rift could be the…

Majority opinion may change but there are still so many holdouts. Which is why I'm glad to see things like this. I'm Asian and I married a white guy. It's only been seven months. I lost count of the number of people that raised their eyebrows because of my new European last name (less than the people surprised that he also changed his name!) and also lost count of how many people assumed my husband was Asian ~not~ a…

After re-reading this a couple of times, it's not 100% clear to me whether you're male or female. That seems to be causing some confusion in some of the followup comments. (Congratulations on your marriage either way.)

Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up

#753

Post by dragonwriter »

wtbob wrote: post #267
king_jester wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being opposed to gay marriage does not imply being against homosexuals. How is that even possible? How is enforcing legal restrictions against a minority class of people not inherently discriminatory?

> How is enforcing legal restrictions against a minority class of people not inherently discriminatory? That's begging the question: you're assuming that failure to recognise a homosexual relationship is a legal restriction, which really doesn't make sense. I can declare myself King of England, no-one in America will recognise me as such, but that doesn't impose any legal restriction on me. There's the side issue of…

> That's begging the question: you're assuming that failure to recognise a homosexual relationship is a legal restriction

When it is a product of specific exclusionary provisions of the law, in the application of legal recognition of a relationship defined in law, then it is a legal restriction.

> I can declare myself King of England, no-one in America will recognise me as such, but that doesn't impose any legal restriction on me.

The rules governing the manner of succession to the British crown and the people who are eligibile to that succession most certainly are legal restrictions, and they most certainly are legal restrictions on most of the people in the world (even if it is a restriction where most of the restricted people don't care.)

> There's the side issue of all the other things which 'marriage' acts as a legal shorthand for, but that is a side issue.

Er, no, its not. Marriage is a legal status. The legal effects of the status are central to the issue, not a side issue.

> Discriminating between reproductive and non-reproductive relationships is also useful

Perhaps, but (a) why should we believe that in the general case, and (b) given the legal effects of marriage, why is marriage specifically an appropriate and valuable venue for such discrimination? About the only legal effect of marriage that is specifically directed to reproduction is the legal presumption of parenthood in which a spouse is presumptively (either rebuttably or conclusively, depending on jurisdiction) assigned parental responsibility for any children produced by the other partner. Arguably, the value of that is largely in providing an assurance that dual parental legal responsibility will be assigned in the absence of any effort to establish (in rebuttable presumption jurisdictions) or independently of (in conclusive presumption jurisdictions) the facts of biological parentage, which is as valid in a same-sex partnership as in an opposite-sex partnership.

Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up

#754

Post by srean »

EGreg wrote: post #735
srean wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While what you say is true, for the benefit of the readers not very familiar with India I would like to add a few things for context. If from the name of the politician linked by the parent comment you come to the conclusion that homosexuality is frowned upon only by muslim politicians, you couldnt be more wrong. India is an incredibly high variance country. In some metros you would find gay pubs and bars, open kissi…

When you mentioned Hindus and being stabbed in the back I remembered reading about Thugs http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee Didn't they go around stabbing and strangling people?

Ummm... not quite sure what you mean here. They were, you know, thugs or highwaymen. Not what I would call historical representative of Hindu political ambitions.

My point was that there have been many bloody wars fought by Hindu rulers motivated primarily / singularly by political ambition. Thus I find this much popularized universally pacifist portrayal of Hinduism a little dishonest. Short of political ambition, the subcontinent was rich in resources enough that there were no compelling reasons for large conquests and colonization of others. Had that not been so, no one knows how that would have played out.

Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up

#755

Post by srean »

Myrmornis wrote: post #749
anoncow wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read through the comments of an indian news website. Makes me sad. We should love more. I hope people are better than that. A lot of sexuality based and religion based hate. I hope things improve. I hope people love more. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Being-gay-...

Crikey, I always assumed the Times Of India had an intelligent readership.

Far from it. People subscribe to it for their daily dose of cleavage in their newspaper supplements that can be passed of as journalism. In other words its mostly a tabloid.

Some 10 years ago it used to be a really nice newspaper though and I mean really good. Their editorials used to be held up as examples of good writing skills. Now you would find typos, grammatical errors, not to mention factual errors.

EDIT @zimpenfish > Murdoch paper, by any chance? Nope, at least not yet. Small mercies I guess.

Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up

#756

Post by lotsofmangos »

blktiger wrote: post #355
coke12 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a hard time thinking of anyone as Christian if they ignore the basic tenants of what the Bible says. You can be an adulterer and a Christian. You can commit any sin imaginable and still consider yourself a Christian. Homosexuality is no different.

There is a difference though between commiting a sin then admitting you were wrong and actively promoting a lifestyle that espouses sin. I'd have the same problem with an adulterer who didn't think that their adultery was wrong. In one case, someone messed up - in the other someone is actually ignoring the bible entirely.

The Quakers are clearly a Christian denomination, but here in the UK at least, they have been holding same-sex marriages since before it was legal and are one of the groups who forced the law change. Partly as it caused the legal theories against it that were based on respecting religious belief to become hopelessly muddled. It became very hard to argue that the law was upholding Christian rights on the definition of marriage while not recognising marriages being held by Quakers.

Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up

#757

Post by mikegreco »

Myrmornis wrote: post #749
anoncow wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read through the comments of an indian news website. Makes me sad. We should love more. I hope people are better than that. A lot of sexuality based and religion based hate. I hope things improve. I hope people love more. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Being-gay-...

Crikey, I always assumed the Times Of India had an intelligent readership.

Intelligent =/= Tolerant

Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up

#758

Post by jjoe »

Is this submission supposed to remain on the front page of HN? I was confident the mods would have killed it very early on.

Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up

#759

Post by delecti »

jshevek wrote: post #666
rpearl wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you might call "understanding the universe", seeing how it works, the mechanisms by which conscious experience happens... a religious person might call that "knowing god" and both of these are reasonable views of the same whole, just taken from opposite sides.

I don't understand how your comment relates to mine. Are you saying that if someone wants to "know god", they are likely to conclude that god does, indeed, sit around saying " This one is gonna be gay! and this one will be straight!"?

If one truly considers their god to be the all-knowing and all-powerful creator of the universe, its rules, and everything in it, then it is an inescapable conclusion that the sexuality of every being in the universe is something that It allowed to come to be.

Re: Tim Cook Speaks Up

#760

Post by civilian »

narrowrail wrote: post #728
melvinmt wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what's wrong with that statement (I'm also not a native speaker). Please let me know how I could have worded it better. (In my native language, Dutch, it's common to refer to people of mixed race as having "mixed blood". I can find similar statements made in English on Google)

As a native English speaker (not the OP), I'll take a stab at this explanation: No 2 males could have a biologically conceived child (i.e. you must have a female carry your baby). I may be waaay behind on current reproductive technologies, so please correct me if I am wrong. Therefore, the 'blood' of the child (aka DNA) will be not be a combination of the parents (i.e. the people raising the child).

Time for some basic sex ed: The issue is that there are no eggs to be fertilized with two guys. You can still a woman carry a baby that doesn't share her blood/DNA, via IVF.
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