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Anyone else feel tolerance has gone too far?
Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
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http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2014-04-04/mozilla-ceo-resignation-raises-free-speech-issues

It used to be "I don't agree with you, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."

Now it's "freedom of speech is for people who agree with us."

I remember less than ten years ago telling people I was pro-gay marriage just because it annoyed the general public to hear it and highlighted their insecurities. But now... I'm going to have to say I'm against gay marriage for the same bloody reason. What the hell happened in the last ten years?

Why have we lobbed "criticism"/"disagreeing" and "hate speech" into the same category?

How would you feel if every single post you ever wrote was sifted through and ultimately weighed for or against whether you should have your job?

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

Arthur Kalliokoski
Second in Command
February 2005
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I think Heinleins "Crazy Years" are upon us. Intolerance toward speaking up over having your rights trampled.

1476Free_Speech_Zone-med.jpg

They all watch too much MSNBC... they get ideas.

Derezo
Member #1,666
April 2001
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In this case the fear was that the CEO was misrepresenting the organization he worked for and causing damage to the organization's (rather pristine) public image.

Freedom of speech doesn't mean you're not accountable for your actions. If I created a website that bashed my employer and promoted our competitors, but continued to work there, they have every right to fire me (or ask for my resignation, in this case) because I am causing negative impacts to the organization's bottom line.

Freedom of speech still applies. It's not criminal for me to do that. It's just stupid.

"He who controls the stuffing controls the Universe"

Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
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Derezo said:

If I created a website that bashed my employer and promoted our competitors, but continued to work there, they have every right to fire me (or ask for my resignation, in this case) because I am causing negative impacts to the organization's bottom line.

There's a difference between bashing your employer and having an opinion.

For example, just because global warming is likely manmade doesn't mean you shouldn't be allowed to debate it with facts considering there is a gigantic industry making money of off the "green movement" with significant vested interest in keeping you afraid of global warming. [Notice I didn't voice my opinion on the matter at all as it's irrelevant to this point.]

To ostracize anyone who says "I'm not convinced" is the same kind of group think B.S. that comes from all the people who blatantly say global warming isn't manmade without regard to facts.

How long before you're called a bigot for not blindingly believing something society deems good?

How long before you're a "bad person" for swearing? Or believing, or not believing, in a deity? Or being pro or against Israel? (Oh wait, that's already happened.)

I mean, can you honestly say you've never said anything online that if someone sifted through it enough, and misconstrued it enough, you'd lose your job? The very means for which you provide for yourself? What if you started getting death threats? Would it matter then?

[edit] So let me clarify. The point is not whether you agree with him or not. The point is should people be blatently fired any time they say something you merely disagree with, and how dangerous the repercussions are for a society that thinks that's acceptable. Ala is America turning into /r/CircleJerk

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

Derezo
Member #1,666
April 2001
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There's a difference between bashing your employer and having an opinion.

No. By "bashing" I was referring to presenting a negative opinion.

In this specific case the Mozilla Corporation has an image that represents individual freedom. The CEO's opinion is that not all people should be free to marry, only heterosexual relationships should be legally recognized as unions. That is in stark opposition to the values of the corporation.

In your example, it is akin to the CEO of SolarCity publicly supporting, financially, another organization that promotes the idea that climate change is not man made and that green energy is a sham that will do nothing to combat it. He's free to hold those opinions, but that doesn't mean his employer wont want him to leave.

"He who controls the stuffing controls the Universe"

StevenVI
Member #562
July 2000
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I do think it is ridiculous that someone's personal beliefs should get in the way of their employment.

Derezo said:

the Mozilla Corporation has an image that represents individual freedom.

As a user (not a mouth-foaming fanboi) of Mozilla software for over a decade, I always thought of them as organizing open source software projects. Nothing to do with the freedom of people.

It's all subjective. What's culturally acceptable today will be taboo tomorrow.

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Derezo
Member #1,666
April 2001
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StevenVI said:

I always thought of them as organizing open source software projects. Nothing to do with the freedom of people.

You're not wrong that they organize open source software projects, but to say that has nothing to do with freedom is incorrect. They may be a software company, but they are quite clear that their purpose is to encourage, support, and spread the freedom of the individual person using their software.

When I wrote that post I was going on my admittedly fallible personal view of Mozilla, the stuff I "already knew". After I posted it I verified it's accuracy by reading the Mozilla Mission (mostly focuses on technology) and Manifesto (mostly focuses on the individual), two documents that outline the core purpose and vision of the organization and why it exists.

The mission is the first link in their navigation, so I would think it is pretty high on the list of corporate priorities.

"He who controls the stuffing controls the Universe"

Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
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StevenVI said:

I do think it is ridiculous that someone's personal beliefs should get in the way of their employment.

To me it's not even personal beliefs. If the CEO of Google liked [killing babies], that's going to reflect throughout his actions. But to merely be against gay marriage (of which there are even gay people who have that view), is so insane. It's a matter of preference. It'd be as bad as someone being fired for eating meat (not being vegetarian), or liking coke over pepsi, or pop music over alternative music. It's just a personal preference!

It's not like he thinks all gays should be burned at the stake, he just doesn't like the idea of them getting married.

And I'm saying all of this while I hold the opinion that gays should be allowed to get married! But I think a more important issue at stake right now is the freedom of expression itself!

Who cares if gays can get married if they're no longer allowed to have opinions?

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

Derezo
Member #1,666
April 2001
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To me it's not even personal beliefs.

You're right, it wasn't about what he believes at all. It's about his actions -- he did something about his beliefs.

He acted by making a direct financial contribution to an organization that opposes the fundamental values of the organization he is commanding as the chief executive officer. The community lashed out about it. Seems simple enough to me!

He didn't blog about it.
He didn't joke about it.
He did it. He gave them the money.

Gay marriage is a controversial subject, and that's the only reason this is a controversial resignation. If it were something nobody disagrees with, like if he was funding a human smuggling ring, it would be fine.. but because there are enough people who disapprove of homosexuality, there is controversy.

"He who controls the stuffing controls the Universe"

Matthew Leverton
Supreme Loser
January 1999
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What if he donated for a cause against polygamy? Same outcry by those people? No.

That's the hypocrisy.

torhu
Member #2,727
September 2002
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Chris, you are an asshole.

Matthew, feel free to flag your opinion anytime :P

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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It's not a matter of tolerance, but intolerance. Intolerance of differing ideas and debate. It doesn't really matter if the idea is women's rights or playing baseball with live babies for bats (head first, obviously). Merely expressing ideas does no harm. No babies were harmed during the authoring of this post (unfortunately). It may be against the law to actually play baseball with human baby bats, but it isn't against the law to propose it or even rally for it. The fact is that we're all a bunch of idiots. We are not very good at identifying good ideas in isolation. Our brains are not consistently reliable. Our greatest strength is open debate of ideas. When you look objectively at an idea and debate it openly you have a tendency to work out just how useful that idea is versus the conflicting ideas that have been presented. And since we can't consistently do that seeking a consensus from a group open to debate benefits us by averaging better results than an individual can do alone.

Believing that gay marriage is wrong isn't necessarily wrong. Mr. Eich[1] is entitled to his beliefs, whether they're controversial or not. Just as we let Christians and Muslims believe in magical beings. The idea that gay marriage is wrong is much less controversial to me than that. I'm not necessarily against gay marriage, but I think that modern society has lost touch with what marriage is. If you just consider it a legal formality then sure, there's absolutely no reason to restrict its access to homosexuals and transgendered individuals. Of course, that loss of context is probably also why more than half of marriages these days end in divorce, despite the words "until death do us part" being pretty consistently required (and where the vows are changed it just further highlights the issue)... I am against Christianity, and if I knew more about it I'd probably be against Islam, but I still respect people's rights to believe in either. That doesn't mean that I'll humor you when you express your beliefs. Quite the contrary I will challenge them every time until my mind is changed.

Everybody supporting the motion feels good about themselves for having defeated a monster. Unfortunately, people are idiots, and when the debate isn't open you tend to get group think where being wrong is the defacto right and everybody agreeing about being right about being wrong furthers wrong ideas. The reality is that terminating Mr. Eich's employment because of his beliefs is equally contrary to freedom as his support of gay marriage bans, if not more so. IMO, there may actually be valid reasons to oppose gay marriage (without even being intolerant of homosexuality), but opposing individual rights to beliefs and expression of those beliefs is indefensible.

I have been labelled a bigot and more several times, elsewhere and here in the Allegro community, precisely for not blindly believing something society generally deems good. I guess that means you're preaching to Satan. Given the Feminist screensavers applied to all of the computers at my current place of employment I have no doubt that I would be terminated if the wrong people caught wind of my ideas. I know that I'm not alone in that though, and I don't let it silence me.

References

  1. Ooooh, apparently the creator of JavaScript. I'd say burn him, but unfortunately after years of disdain I grew to kind of like JavaScript. I guess I changed my mind. :-X Turns out that I was wrong about it to start. I reserve the right to change my mind again. >:(
torhu
Member #2,727
September 2002
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bamccaing, you seem to be... overcomplicating.

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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torhu
Member #2,727
September 2002
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Nope, I think that you are a little bit homophobic. I am slightly bothered by people that that are homosexual, too. But I recognise that that's a cultural bias that is wrong, and that that does not mean they should not have the right to marry. Because they should, why should they not.

StevenVI
Member #562
July 2000
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This thread is for discussing "tolerance gone too far." Please make another thread to discuss another topic. ;)

__________________________________________________
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torhu
Member #2,727
September 2002
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StevenVI said:

Nothing to do with the freedom of people.

The next time you want to pretend you're not a bigot, please try a little harder ::)

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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I'm not homophobic at all. I recognize that biology is not an exact science and that gender is not a binary attribute.

I have no problem with two cock munchers gobbling cum.

More power to them, I say. That said, I do think that marriage is something somewhat different, and opposite genders may be somewhat implied by marriage. Which doesn't at all detract from the relationship that a homosexual couple has, but it certainly carries a different dynamic than that of a more usual heterosexual couple. Albeit, it isn't hard to see the lines blurring. The point is that it doesn't really matter if gay marriage is "right" or "wrong" (marriage is for all intents and purposes a human invention so we make the rules, not the universe, but I won't concede to their being no reasons to oppose homosexual marriage... After all, we invented marriage because of the accumulative influence of universal laws...) because regardless of which one society settles on Mr. Eich has a right to have held those beliefs 6 years ago and now without being persecuted by his employer 6 years ago, now, or in the future for them.

torhu
Member #2,727
September 2002
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Mr. Eich donated one thousand dollars to the cause of reverting the right of gays to marry in the state of California (IIRC that was the state). And he would do the same again today, judging by the public (non)statement he made after the complaints started rolling in. It's very clear that he has not changed his views, he did not even make a serious attempt to pretend that he had done so.

If gay people want to get married, why should anyone else care? Buying a house together is a much bigger deal than getting married, not to mention having fucking kids. Just to put it in perspective and all that.

Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
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First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.

--Martin Niemöller

torhu said:

Chris, you are an asshole.

Isn't it great that we live in a society where you can publically express that opinion without fear of reprocussion?

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

torhu
Member #2,727
September 2002
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That is completely backward :P The people that want the kind of freedoms we are discussing here are the same people who want the same freedoms for everyone. But the freedom to harm or oppress people just because they are not like you is not included in that. Unless you have an actual reason, a reason that is not something as subjective as personal gain or religion. Something that makes sense in a broader context. Which you don't, because nobody else has either ;)

Derezo
Member #1,666
April 2001
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Since everyone is voicing in on their gay marriage beliefs, I care very little about gay marriage. I do not know anyone who wants to marry someone of the same sex.

However, I am in a place that people can freely do so if they wish because "On June 10, 2003, the Court of Appeal for Ontario confirmed that current Canadian law on marriage violated the equality provisions in Section Fifteen of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in being restricted to heterosexual couples"wikipedia.

That is why this feels very plain and simple to me. We passed it 10 years ago.

What if he donated for a cause against polygamy? Same outcry by those people? No.

That's the hypocrisy.

That may cause an outcry from the female techie crowd about women's rights, but indeed the outcry would be much smaller because polygamy isn't in our faces as much and many people wouldn't even know what it means without looking it up.

Of course, with no outcry there is no PR damage which means there is no cause for resignation. It is the outcry and the controversy that makes this case, the fact that it was gay marriage is circumstantial.

His resignation is because of the backlash, it really has nothing to do with gay marriage specifically. He's a brand new CEO and people are already freaking out about him on day 1. However, I feel like that backlash wasn't completely unwarranted for the reasons I've said.

"He who controls the stuffing controls the Universe"

torhu
Member #2,727
September 2002
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I think "M" was probably trolling :o >)))*>

Derezo
Member #1,666
April 2001
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Well then he got me ;D

"He who controls the stuffing controls the Universe"

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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torhu said:

Mr. Eich donated one thousand dollars to the cause of reverting the right of gays to marry in the state of California (IIRC that was the state). And he would do the same again today, judging by the public (non)statement he made after the complaints started rolling in. It's very clear that he has not changed his views, he did not even make a serious attempt to pretend that he had done so.

He has no obligation to change his beliefs. His beliefs are none of your business. His actions matter, but the only thing he is guilty of is giving money to a cause that he believes in. A relatively negligible amount of money. Many years ago. It's laughable that you are so strongly in support of his persecution. He did nothing worthy of termination by any reasonable definition. If you concede that it is OK for him to have been fired for this then you must also concede that it is OK to refuse employment to him for this. That would essentially make him unable to contribute to society, and force him to become a leech upon it. You might even drive him into becoming a true harm to society, and if it did come to that it would be society and people like you to blame for it (I realize this is an extreme idea, but it's worth following the idea to completion).

torhu said:

If gay people want to get married, why should anyone else care? Buying a house together is a much bigger deal than getting married, not to mention having fucking kids. Just to put it in perspective and all that.

I think that your perspective is skewed by your own personal biases about marriage. I understand that. A few short years ago I would say that I supported gay marriage too, and even now I'm not really strongly opposed to it. It isn't the homosexuality that I have strong beliefs about. It is the marriage. A few short years ago I would have argued that marriage had already been perverted and there was nothing left to preserve. That probably would have been bitter defeatism talking.

Now I'm inclined to believe that marriage was meant to represent an agreement between a man and a woman to cooperate with one another for the rest of their lives in having a family together: a lifelong investment and obligation. It was between the opposite sexes firstly because that is needed for procreation and most of us are naturally wired that way, and secondly because men and women have different strengths and weaknesses that tend to complement each other.

There's no particular reason that homosexuals can't complement each other in similar ways, and I have no real objection to them complimenting each other in those ways, or making those same investments and obligations with each other. My only concern is that marriage is already a bastardized idea in our Feminist society, and I'd like to see marriage return to something more meaningful. You may be right to say that in our society buying a house is a bigger deal than getting married, but arguably it shouldn't be. The idea behind marriage is that life is hard and men and women are incomplete without one another. And without a lifelong investment nothing stops people from exploiting others short term to satisfy their needs and abandoning each other. This essentially leaves us in an incomplete state, and starves us of achieving our full potentials.

As for having children, I agree that having children is a very big deal. Or at least it's supposed to be. Unfortunately, in our fucked up society an unreasonably large proportion of people now have children before they even graduate from high school. And compared to ancient times, the age where people begin to be capable of really providing for themselves, let alone others, has gone up so the consequences of this are more. In much the same way that marriage has been perverted so too has sex (no pun intended?). I'm not even blaming pornography or the media per se. It is a social attitude towards it. Now we give 12 year old girls birth control instead of discipline. I think in many ways you can trace this back to Feminism too, though it may not be the only cause.

My only point is that things are sorely broken. In a religious sense homosexuals generally will find that their religion probably isn't very tolerant of them so looking for "fairness" there is barking up the wrong tree. You can't make an imagined deity from 2000 years ago tolerant of ideas that its creators 2000 years ago that literally wrote the book(s) on it did not tolerate without admitting to yourself that you're full of shit. And if it's literally just a legal technicality then who even gives a fuck? You can say you're married without even actually being married. If it were still agreed upon mutually beneficial obligations to one another that were expected of married men and women then I'd generally be willing to support that for gay couples as well, except that our fucked up society has even thrown those way out of balance to the point of being completely insane and I really don't think the majority of our society can handle a higher cognitive load in that debate.

I do not object to homosexuals existing. I do not object to homosexuals openly being themselves. I do not object to them having intimate relationships or forming lasting bonds with one another. I do not object to homosexuals vowing to spend their lives together, exchanging tokens of their commitment, celebrating the occasion with family, or spending two weeks in tropical weather fucking like rabbits. I do object to them vowing to spend their lives together and then reneging on the arrangement and further contributing to the perversion of the whole practice. Not because they're homosexuals, but because they would be married.

If marriage doesn't mean anything anymore then it shouldn't even be practiced, let alone recognized by law. In my mind the gray area for homosexuals comes from the fact that they are probably wired fairly similarly to one another and have similar strengths and weaknesses and therefore presumably have less to gain from one another. More or less just sex and companionship, I guess. There's nothing wrong with that, but it certainly seems like it makes them depend on one another much less than I think marriage was intended to embody.

To be clear, I'm not saying that I want the law that permits gay marriage in Canada to be undone. I don't really care. I even sort of know some homosexuals that might want to get married sometime and I don't really object to the notion. I want them to be happy (or miserable, as the case may be). I just very much want for marriage to be restored to being significant in society, and for people to be bound by their decisions (or circumstance, as the case may be). I really don't think that most people are even capable of processing heterosexual marriage in that context anymore, let alone homosexual marriage, and I imagine the latter will only muddy the waters and make it ever more difficult to achieve anything meaningful.

In much the same way that I believe that Mr. Eich's beliefs shouldn't have affected his employment in the way that they did, my current malleable beliefs on gay marriage don't affect the debate about whether it was acceptable for Mozilla to terminate Mr. Eich because of his beliefs and political actions on personal time in the past.

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