One should be able to hold whatever views they like, and even share them with others in other communities without it affecting their work life, or status in a community without a direct interest in the controversial topic in question.
The problem is not that these are just controversial topics - They're beliefs and actions that directly infringe on others ability to lead their best and healthy life. Tolerating hatred by disguising it as 'diversity of thought' is just a way of masking and shielding people who need to be brought into reality. You cannot be an moral participant in our profession while believing that others lifestyles don't belong.
It is simply not practical to exclude a community member whenever they have a passionate disagreement with someone else, even if that topic is highly relevant to the community, because every two people are going to find something they disagree about.
Part of being a mature person is being able to work together with someone you'd rather not interact with, because you realize that in that moment, your interests are partially aligned.
The idea that two reasonable human beings will find something they don't have in common is not equivalent to finding out that the coworker next to you doesn't think you should have human rights.
Part of being a mature person is being able to realize that some members of a community hold positions that are fundamentally incompatible, even if they represent a net positive from a work standpoint.
It doesn't matter if your coworker has partially aligned interests with you if some of their other interests infringe on your human rights - that's when you choose not to interact with them, and to exclude them from the community until they change their ways.
Social interaction and software development go hand in hand - The idea that someone with a fundamentally hostile viewpoint is needed to create something of value for both of us is not applicable. There are many software developers who don't wish harm upon others, and they will be more willing to work with you.
The best outcome in this situation is not the product that gets created. The best outcome is an environment in which members of the community don't feel like their basic rights are in question.
Your second paragraph seems to assume a fixed number of developers working on a project, and in that case there is no downside in replacing them. But what about an open-source project where they keep sending PRs for bug fixes and features that all have technical merit? Would you ignore that and redo the work? If I'm working on the same project, should I avoid merging their work to accommodate you?
While I agree that a community where everyone can feel comfortable is something to strive for, I think that does not require excluding some members for the views they hold. It is enough when they don't push those views onto the others.
I think if you manage an open source project you should feel comfortable taking a stand on contributors who have/advocate for actively discriminatory positions. Just because you organize a community project that may be used by people you fundamentally disagree with doesn't mean you have to check your sense of morality at the door.
If someone submitted a PR to my project who held openly racist positions, I would deny the PR. No amount of genius or technical merit makes up for that.
One could come up with a hypothetical of an open source project that is important enough to require any help it can get, and also somehow obscure enough that only a handful of developers are working on it. Nonetheless, I don't really think most open source projects (or even for-profit projects) fall into that category. At the point where work becomes so important that you need to compromise other parts of your character in order to finish it there are probably bigger things to worry about.
In contrast, I, and many other people, would evaluate it on its technical merits and merge it if it was good. It's just code; it inherits no sin from its writer.
But you discriminate against code--not even a person--based on your personal dislike of its writer. Isn't that bigoted?
Ultimately, you can't, and shouldn't decouple someone's work from the person themselves. We ought to feel ashamed when we support someone who's beliefs and actions are reprehensible.
This is a bizarre and grossly impractical idea. Do you interrogate everyone who sells you anything? Who prepares and serves your food at a restaurant? Who delivers your packages? If you don't, you are being a hypocrite. And if we all did that, society and economy would grind to a halt. You are truly an extremist and a totalitarian.
> We ought to feel ashamed when we support someone who's beliefs and actions are reprehensible.
By that logic, I would feel ashamed to support you. Nevertheless, I would accept your code if it were well-written, because I am tolerant of views differing from my own.
The thing is, to a large degree society and economy do already do this. If you're outed as a sexist, or a racist, you lose your job. We mostly operate under the assumption that people are not those things. We're just currently in the phase where we're defining additional boundaries to what is and is not acceptable in the workplace.
After all, everyone who starts a development job nowadays does several things that are akin to what you're describing: You voluntarily confirm that you will not harass or discriminate, and when you break those rules you get kicked out.
P.S. My impression is that you believe that opposition to gay marriage is bigoted, that it's not possible to have intelligent and powerful arguments against the idea.
The problem with this philosophy is that it has a significant potential (and likelihood) for abuse. You feel very strongly that your view is the Correct View about the rights of gay people. Maybe you are! That specific example doesn’t matter here - what matters is that the passion you feel is not a valid heuristic.
Take a moment to put aside your very strongly held personal belief about gay rights to consider this dispassionately: aside from the fact that you feel right in your views, what is materially different about your suggestion from the suggestion that people should not be allowed to eat meat and participate in the community, because eating meat is unethical? What would your reaction be if I was advocating this position as strongly as you’re advocating yours?
I posit that we should begin only with the axioms that 1. outright violence and advocation of violence should be impermissible, and 2. advocation of any controversial agenda does not belong in the workplace, violent or otherwise. Adding more to that has the insidious side effect of being used to suppress opinions which are actually diverse. Therefore, when an opposing perspective does not violate one of these axioms, we should consider it with a principle of symmetry: both parties feel very strongly about their views, and your personal feeling that you’re correct is not unique.
You can be effectively intolerant of violence, but I do not consider it plausible that you can construct a framework for tolerating diversity of opinion without tolerating some opinions you find personally abhorrent. That implies the person who implemented that framework has only Correct Views and no Incorrect Views, which seems extremely unrealistic.
There is no heuristic which will let a given party or organization accept only the Correct Views while disallowing all the Wrong Views; as a practical matter, for the sake of diversity, you should limit your shunning to those who espouse violence and those who discriminate in the workplace.
>Take a moment to put aside your very strongly held personal belief about gay rights to consider this dispassionately: aside from the fact that you feel right in your views, what is materially different about your suggestion from the suggestion that people should not be allowed to eat meat and participate in the community, because eating meat is unethical? What would your reaction be if I was advocating this position as strongly as you’re advocating yours?
Is your point in comparison. You're saying that there is no effective difference between someone saying 'People who eat meat shouldn't be allowed in our community' and 'People who are against gay marriage shouldn't be allowed in our community'. Your entire argument hinges on this false equivalence.
In point of fact, my entire argument relies on the axioms I explicitly and specifically outlined in the previous comment, which are:
1. nonviolent personal beliefs should not determine eligibility for employment, but violent activity, or endorsement of violent activity, may; and
2. nonviolent personal beliefs should only determine eligibility for employment if they are used for discrimination or advocation in the workplace, which is a matter of inappropriate professional conduct.
I'm happy to entertain an argument against those axioms or the actual comparison I made, but don't just keep replying insisting I've made a false equivalence about two things that I'm not even comparing.
>>Take a moment to put aside your very strongly held personal belief about gay rights to consider this dispassionately: aside from the fact that you feel right in your views, what is materially different about your suggestion from the suggestion that people should not be allowed to play League of Legends and participate in the community, because playing League is unethical? What would your reaction be if I was advocating this position as strongly as you’re advocating yours?
That statement is fundamentally equal to your previous statement. But the levels of controversial and how it actively affects people on a day-to-day basis vastly differs. Now to address your axioms:
>1. nonviolent personal beliefs should not determine eligibility for employment, but violent activity, or endorsement of violent activity, may; and
This depends on the collective community's beliefs. Note I am using the word community here, not just drawing a comparison to job-related activities. A company that advertises itself as being pro-LGBT hiring someone that espouses views like 'Transgender people don't exist', despite being a non-violent statement, goes against their overall goals. When a company hires someone like that, the end result is that people start leaving because people have a limit as to who they're willing to work with. Not all bigotry is violence and as an aside I have met people in tech who believe black people are inferior.
>2. nonviolent personal beliefs should only determine eligibility for employment if they are used for discrimination or advocation in the workplace, which is a matter of inappropriate professional conduct.
Often the two go hand-in-hand. We live in a world where what you do both outside and within the company represents them. The smarter people use multiple accounts and properly separate their work and personal lives. However when the two connect it becomes a matter of passive advocation in the workplace. A company allowing someone that believes black people are inferior to continue working at their company is not only a PR disaster in waiting (especially if they intend to promote him to higher positions) but it's also a tacit approval of his opinions. These views often subtly alter your perception too, and allowing said person to be a part of the recruiting process is, again, a PR disaster waiting to blow up.
No, I'm not ignoring any context. I'm asserting that they can both be the same level of nonviolent. Just as I haven't made a comparison about lifestyles, I also haven't made a comparison about how controversial the beliefs about those lifestyles are. At this point the discussion is just getting pedantic.
That's the problem with this whole argument chain - there are clear material differences between advocating strongly against gay people, versus advocating strongly against eating meat.
There is no diversity in opinion that includes bigotry - that's just a way racists, sexists, and other hate mongers hide in communities. Your axioms completely ignore the idea that there are opinions which cause harm without any introduction of violence - something anyone in a marginalized or oppressed group can and has experienced.
Diversity of opinion does not mean accepting opinions which directly and indirectly cause harm to others.