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Comment by trident5000 | Hacker News Reader

You could reverse that no? The same people who think you should force someone to bake a cake now thinks a private company should not be forced to do anything. Just playing devils advocate.

By the way completely agree with you on antitrust. And its not a free speech issue.

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>You could reverse that no?

One thing that continues to bother me is that on almost any political issue (or even non-political issue) where people point out a double standard, you can easily reverse it and get a reciprocal double standard held by the side claiming the other has a double standard. Yet this is always ignored. By always, I mean I cannot think of a single case where I've seen the side doing the calling out realize that it was reversible on them. I have seen a number of memes from third parties calling out the two major sides as being reciprocal double standards, if that counts for anything.

Yep, it is hypocrisy abound. There is absolutely no standard besides yielding the levers of power for whatever is politically expedient. We are getting played on a massive scale, and it is deeply alarming.

Ah, but gender (and by extension, sexual orientation according to SCOTUS) is a protected class under the Civil Rights Act. Political affiliation is not a protected class.

I belive you mean Bostock v Clayton Co, which was decided this summer and extended Title VII protections to LBGT individuals. Obergefell extended marriage rights to same-sex couples.

Yes, thank you. I edited my post.

And the reason for this is that we now believe that gender and sexual orientation are not subject to conscious thought but are “hard coded” into a person. Whereas political affiliation (and politically motivated acts of violence) are still thought to be choices that can be freely made or changed.

I’m not sure this argument holds in general.

For example, you could change your religion and it would still be illegal to discriminate on that basis.

I don’t think it holds in general for all civil rights, but I do think this change in mindset underpins the increased protection of gender and sexual orientation vs 20 or 30 years ago. Even the typical verbiage has changed, from sexual preference to orientation.

I think the argument holds for religion too.

I can decide to not say offensive things in a store so as to not be kicked out. But I can't decide to change my faith to be allowed entry to the store, because faith doesn't work like that. You can't force religious belief. At most, I could pretend to change my professed religion. But my faith remains unchanged and unchangeable.

You can change gender. And of course you can change sexual orientation, it's just preference.

Look I think you’ve got the spirit but in practice it’s not as simple as that. If transgender people could simply choose not to be their lives would be instantly markedly improved. Nobody signs up to be part of a class of people met with disgust, mockery, routine violence, sexual assault, job discrimination, losing their friends and families, crippling loneliness, and huge medical and therapy bills. They do it because they literally cannot live as their assigned gender.

"Nobody signs up to be part of a class of people met with disgust, mockery, routine violence, sexual assault, job discrimination, losing their friends and families, crippling loneliness"

To me it sounds like you could just as well be describing conservatives.

This is one of the best comments I've read here LOL!

They literally described what it's like to be a left coast conservative.

> political affiliation (and politically motivated acts of violence) are still thought to be choices that can be freely made or changed.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4038932/#:~:tex....

I definitely agree that the growing body of knowledge about the brain and how personalities develop will be a huge challenge to our notions of free will and responsibility under the law.

There are some other examples of protected classes that don't fit this profile. Religion/creed for one. But also the speech of labor organizers in the workplace is protected, but being a labor organizer is not "hard coded".

The difference here is that discrimination based on sexual orientation is prohibited under federal civil rights laws, so if you're going to bake a wedding cake for a straight person, you cannot refuse to do so for someone else because they're gay. As far as I can tell, the company Parler does not fall into a protected class.

Laws only describe the way things are, not the way things should be.

In other words that's a really shallow argument.

How about this, it's not hypocritical to think that discrimination against gay people is wrong but "discrimination" against people calling for violence is right. It's only hypocritical if you think that calling for violence and being gay are equally morally wrong. That or if you think that those who were saying you shouldn't discriminate against minorities were also including people calling for murder as a minority (they weren't).

Ok, so heres the argument in other words: Gay people should be able to live their lives with the same rights and privileges of any straight person. I do not believe in similar protections for a company that exists to host and promote the violent extremist rhetoric shunned elsewhere by polite society.

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