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Comment by thtthings | Hacker News Reader

Does being liberal mean you are tolerant only if it suits your point of view?

I am pretty openminded myself and don't care of someone's orientation but everyone should have the right to do whatever the f they want as long as it's not hurting anybody. Don't tell me it's hurting their feelings!

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Seems like a matter of consistency more than anything. Google has already decided to make an app store that excludes things like overt racism. Seems like if you're going to exclude racism you should also exclude homophobia. Whether we should tolerate both these people is an interesting question, but not the issue in this case.

Hmm, not sure if that logic flies. There are many people who hold the view that race (whatever that may be) is innate while homosexuality is not. They would argue that the latter can be “cured” while the former cannot. From that perspective the distinction makes sense. (I do not subscribe to that view at all, btw.)

Yes, these people are wrong. We must be able to make judgements of fact to make good decisions about these things.

As soon as you say wrong, you start sounding like the people running these churches.

I am ok with people being wrong, that's why we have freedoms. It's society's job to pressure churches and other organizations to turn away from these dangerous beliefs. Not the governments.

That's part of why I fight for freedoms like this. Wrong is subjective, the objective truth of wrong comes from society. If you allow governments to determine what is "wrong" we would have never gotten to the point that we are having these conversations.

Some of our beliefs will be wrong to a future generation, by allowing them the freedom to change them through societal pressure we allow society to grow without creating the friction of civil unrest to grow from that vector.

Who's talking about the government? This is about Google. I'm talking about being factually wrong, not morally wrong.

>Who's talking about the government? This is about Google.

True.

> I'm talking about being factually wrong, not morally wrong.

True.

I was taking things out of context.

I don't love how much power these companies have with their app stores. I'll be interested to see how regulation of these falls out and whether or not that regulation makes them more open or closed. (this was my thinking when I mentioned the government above).

Conversion therapy does hurt people.

Intolerance of intolerance seems to go hand-in-glove with tolerance.

Bullies need a victim, but they also need most other people to look the other way.

These apps are mostly used on teenagers, with pressure from their parents and mentors. There's a fine line between bad parenting and bullying your kids, and there are certainly arguments about where that line is.

All I know is my kid has two friends who fantasize about coming to live at our house (or getting emancipated) because their parents are homophobes. Some people know what kind of adult they're going to be, others are surprised by it, but if you're into puberty and think you probably aren't cisgendered, then I'm confident that you aren't destined to be a poster child for heteronormativity.

At any rate, part of becoming an independent adult is learning to rely on yourself, on your instincts, on your own sense of right and wrong. If your parents spend your entire teen years telling you that you can't trust yourself, that's pretty fucked up.

> Does being liberal mean you are tolerant only if it suits your point of view?

Empirically, yes, it does. It's true that it shouldn't, as you seem to be implying, but people seem to like thinking their enemies are irredeemably evil monsters, and liberalism isn't magically immune to that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Declaring yourself as 'Liberal' is a way to identify yourself as someone who believes in a series of popularized beliefs held by the American Left (in this context I think it is a US-centric topic). In Silicon Valley these beliefs are extremely popular thus there is a large benefit for a company or individual to project themselves as a strong member of the group. What we are seeing is a rational judgement by Google which goes against the mainstay belief of American Liberals that anything but encouragement of LGBT is evil and is a harbinger back to recent US history where LGBT individuals were repressed and actively persecuted.

I'm strongly against conversion therapy but if the facts I'm seeing are true I believe Google made the right decision because this app does not repress or actively persecute LGBT individuals.

Also for what it's worth, though it shouldn't matter, I am a liberal.

Offtopic: HN users use the downvote button as a way of hiding content they disagree with. It should instead be used to hide content that does NOT add to the discussion (or is hateful, or a few other valid reasons).

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