Comment by justinator | Hacker News Reader

Comment by justinator | Hacker News Reader

As noted on metafilter

http://www.metafilter.com/164565/Law-Professor-Challenges-Tr...

FYI, the author is a morally repugnant conservative. He believes that a lesbian couple should not both be legally recognized as the parents of a child;[0] that Texas courts should defy the Supreme Court and further restrict access to women's healthcare;[1] and that colleges should be free to discriminate against LGBT students and employees; [2] among many other positions.

He signed a statement calling on the local, state, and federal government to refuse to follow Obergefell [3] (the case legalizing same sex marriage nationally).

The website this was published on is an outlet of the Witherspoon Institute.[4]

The author is fanatically opposed to what he calls 'the regulatory state'. He is a far-right extremist and religious fundamentalist.

[0] http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/10/18106/

[1] http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/07/17328/

[2] http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/05/16907/

[3] https://americanprinciplesproject.org/founding-principles/st...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witherspoon_Institute

What's your point? I'm trying to understand what you're hoping to accomplish. That the original article is invalid because the guy pushing the issue is a conservative?

Perspective of who the author is. Every author and every website has an agenda. Personally, I cannot support an author who has these types of views, as it is against the inalienable rights of my friends and myself.

This is an interesting example of confirmation bias, specifically the Halo effect.

When you say "support", do you mean by giving him ad revenue from your page view? What if this author were espousing something you already believe in?

Personally, I find those other views different than my own. I still found this article entertaining and interesting.

I def. take a critical eye to authors that have themselves taken a racist and/or homophobic stance (to name just two issues), and will defend that without question or apology. Make up your own opinions, but first get an idea on who you're trying to defend. This person's writing doesn't exist in a vacuum, and it's no a secret what his agenda is. I agree he has the right to express it, and I have the right to counter his writing, by showing what else they're writing about.

In other words, you're willing to disregard an injustice as long as the person it's victimizing is someone you disagree with.

That alone is wrong, but that you state it with such conviction and self-awareness is disturbing.

You're comparing fighting a traffic ticket to the rights of same-sex marriages?

If an author has a stance on removing the rights of someone just because of their sexual preferences - you're right, I'm calling them out on it. I am in no way blocking their right to their own opinion, but adding my own.

For this author, the two subjects are very much entwined and related.

There's lots of injustices. I'm by necessity disregarding almost all of them. I'm not a court.

When choosing how to allocate my capacity for moral outrage, it's perfectly valid to give preference to people who are not actively pursuing the cause of taking away my rights.

In other words, it's ridiculous if the court is actually getting away with not returning the bond, but as a matter of not shooting myself in the foot, the author of the article shouldn't expect me to go to the barricades with him to push through his interpretation of the constitutional invalidity of traffic tickets only so he can turn around and fuck me over next, if he doesn't run me over first, when I could be on way more important barricades to help people suffering way worse.

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