> It's free speech whether you like it or not
Hmm, is it free speech to use the threat of violence to enforce your personal religious views on others? I'm not convinced.
Hmm, is it free speech to use the threat of violence to enforce your personal religious views on others? I'm not convinced.
I must admit that I am not well acquainted with all the facts of this controversy, just the basics and I don't recall him calling for violence.
There's no reason to turn this into a less reasonable version of a McCarthy type inquisition. Once we start up with that nonsense it doesn't lead to a good place. No matter how strongly you feel you are right.
Boycotting a company because you don't like the political views of one of it's employees on the other hand is just silly.
What exactly is your issue with separating personal and professional life? Do you feel you should be professionally attacked or your company boycotted because you (presumably) support gay marriage and some people feel that's wrong? No, of course you shouldn't. You should have a right to vote, support, do whatever in this regard and it shouldn't affect you professionally.
Look, I personally support gay marriage. But this kind of behavior on the part of the "crusaders" is outrageous. It really is.
Again, the issue was not his "private religious views." The issue was when he used his power and influence to enforce those views on other people who did not subscribe to them. The line is crossed when one tries to enforce their personal beliefs on others via the government. It's not about politics--I think there are many things in politics about which reasonable people can disagree--it's specifically about enforcing a religious viewpoint on other people through the government. I don't force my religion on others; I think it's reasonable to demand that others do the same, and to enforce that demand through the means available to me, which may well include a boycott.
And who cares? The question should be is the browser any good.
Do you think people should call his place of employment and claim they aren't going to use the product unless they "fire the pervert"? It's ridiculous. It really is. And I'd be saying exactly the same thing if the relationship were switched.
I honestly don't know where I stand on Brave. I hate our current ad-supported world, and it's an interesting alternative to that. On the other hand, I loath Eich and have no interest in supporting him financially after what he has done. Mostly I just stay silent; my feelings aren't strong enough to actually oppose other people using it, but I won't use it myself.
Note that I never said anything about Brave one way or the other. My response was simply that Eich's donation was not simply "free speech," it was a sincere and successful effort to enforce his personal religious views on others, and that it's perfectly fine to oppose that behavior.
From my comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12721891 (linked from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13411986):
``Prop 8 would not and did not "nullify" any marriages licensed by the state in the middle of 2008. See http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Prop-8-not-retroactive...
Retroactive or ex-post-facto law is unconstitutional. I am a big fan of this principle. It protects all of us.''
Now, how about you stop the hate ("I loath [sic] Eich")? I do not hate you.
You can use whatever word you like, but you used your money and influence to cause incredible amounts of harm to your fellow citizens and previous employees through your bizarre need to use the government to enforce your personal religious views on other people. I don't know the right word for that kind of behavior.
Moving on to assert "incredible amounts of harm" as caused by me among a majority of Californians who supported both Prop 8 and the prior work of Mark Leno et al. on Domestic Partner Law, California's form of civil unions -- which as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_partnership_in_Califo... says, and as Leno said at the time, ensures equivalent positive rights under state law for all -- is nonsensical.
We were allies when we supported civil unions. Obama was on side of civil unions in 2008, and likely strategically lying that he believed marriage was one man and one woman. Then the goalposts moved, and incredible yet heretofore invisible harm was being done? Nonsense.
Fixating on "religion" is also nonsense. Theft is against the law. Major religions teach that theft is sinful. Does this mean religious people are enforcing personal views on other people? Of course not. Atheists (I know some; neo-Darwinian evo-biologists) supported Prop 8. People who didn't like the Foucauldian agenda behind the whole thing, or the judicial overreach, or mayors like Newsom overreaching, supported Prop 8. For many and usually coherent reasons, religious or not.
It shows either ignorance or ill will to dismiss both group diversity of thought and individual integrity of thought by labeling views you dislike as "religious", and therefore somehow illegitimate as the basis of action in the public square. Frankly, it is un-American.
You are entitled to your own opinions, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan quipped, but not your own facts. The fact is Californians including me who supported Domestic Partner Law did not do "incredible amounts of harm" up to May 2008. We did not suddenly start doing harm in June 2008 when Prop 8 got on the ballot. We did not do harm when the majority passed it.
Federal law, DOMA -- an unconstitutional power grab against the states by congress and a pandering president -- caused hardships for Domestic Partners in Californians, but Californians could do nothing about that Bill Clinton era law.
As my search link shows, you've been calumniating me on HN for years, while trying unsuccessfully to stay silent on the topic. I'm not optimistic you'll stop now, but that search also shows I've tried engaging in good faith. Here I am again. Instead of silently dropping refuted assertions and moving the goalposts, e.g., to vague "incredible amounts of harm" imponderables, how about making an explicit statement of whom I harmed, how I harmed them, and how I can make amends.
I do want to sincerely apologize if I've been misrepresenting your viewpoint. If I have, it was unknowingly. I assumed it was religious, because that's by far the most common objection to it. In all our years of sparring, you still haven't explained why you're opposed to gay marriage, to my knowledge. You always dance around the issue. If you tell me that it isn't based in religion, then I apologize and will immediately stop making that claim. But then what is it? If you're not actually opposed to gay marriage, but rather something like judicial overreach, was the continued harm to gay people worth whatever point it is you wished to prove?
> how I can make amends.
I can't speak to others. For me personally, an apology for supporting the campaign and a statement in support of gay marriage would shut me right up.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_among_LGBT_youth
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-LGBT_bullying
[3] http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/04/04/brendan_eich_s...
I never bullied anyone, so leave that out. Be careful arguing that I'm responsible for others' actions due to systemic problems and biases. That fallacious line of argument cuts in many directions.
Your whole approach, asserting religion only and as if illegitimate, asserting incredible harm ascribed causally to me personally, then moving on after rebuttal without any amendment to your assertions, shows ill will. I'm not going to "dance around" anything with you, and we are nowhere near a common understanding of all our priors.
The best I hope for is try to find common factual ground, which we are doing, slowly.
However, if you can only keep assuming your conclusions and smearing me by association with groups or people I didn't and don't support, I'm out. If you see no way for civil society to function without all the dissenters -- religious or not, we are many -- toeing your line and apologizing for their heresy, then we are definitely done. We can agree that "Error has no rights" and stop now.
If nothing else, these people come off as sociopathic and it makes me wonder if they are in opposition to you because they feel something immoral has been committed or simply because they just want to let out their hatred into the world.
My viewpoint is that the only reason to oppose gay marriage is because you believe that gay relationships are inferior to straight relationships. Can you please explain to me a reason to oppose gay marriage other than that? You listed a few earlier:
> People who didn't like the Foucauldian agenda behind the whole thing, or the judicial overreach, or mayors like Newsom overreaching, supported Prop 8.
I don't know what "Foucauldian agenda" means. Sorry.
"Judicial/Newsom overreach" don't make sense to me in the context of a public referendum. These people voted against something they wanted just to prove a point about something else(?); and then what, they were going to vote in favor of it again sometime in the future? Okay, but that's pretty baffling behavior.
I just have a hard time believing anyone in support of gay rights would choose to vote against gay rights and support anti-gay organizations. Maybe you can explain this more for me.
But people have all kinds of ideas about what constitutes "proper and fair". Some people feel differently about marriage and being gay than you do (Or I do). They might come here and argue about perversion and degradation of society and and what their kids are exposed to. And what can and can't be tolerated as far as behavior. And how marriage is such and such and doesn't apply etc. etc. And, they feel every bit as strong about it as you do. This isn't a wacky fringe view (yet) and it isn't considered "discriminatory" by the people professing it.
As far as I know Eich doesn't condemn gay people for being gay. He just apparently has certain views on what constitutes marriage. And he isn't alone in these views. I don't agree. You don't agree. The Supreme Court doesn't agree. But the public crucification of the guy's professional work because of these beliefs (which as far as I know he kept private) is to me 100 times worse than the views he holds. And it's a dangerous stance to take. We've been here many times before. Moral crusaders (of all stripes) out to improve the world who do little but cause destruction. At some level we have to accept not everyone shares our backgrounds or political beliefs and work with this fact in a constructive, civil and reasonable manner. It's part of becoming an adult in a multicultural society.
I appreciate you aren't trying to knock his work, that was OP. My only complaint is your original over the top rhetoric, other than that fine, I understand you have a different view than Eich. But you can not like an idea a person has without personally hating a person for having the idea. And that is the right thing to do.
I'm still not certain whether I agree with what happened entirely, but calling it ridiculous is a bit of a stretch.
Being in the position of CEO gives you many powers and perks, and I think it's perfectly acceptable that it also gives you responsibilities that may include 'not being controversial'. I'd say this is especially the case when you're CEO of a a very large, important, and well-known non-profit.
Basically, it's the whole 'with great power comes great responsibility thing'. People in positions of power can be held to standards that don't necessarily apply to everyone else.
I completely understand if people disagree with this position, but it's far from ridiculous.
(and of course I can't speak for those who do feel that aforementioned reason #1 and #2 are enough).