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Comment by toeget | Hacker News Reader

One has to note that he also made homophobic comments (available at https://archive.is/dp0n7):

  If I were to pretend to be gay, that isn’t something that I can just wash off and tell those who know me and saw me, that I was just pretending, it was just an experiment. Sure you’re not a homosexual. Having had that thought, I realized that within my inner emotional core, not only do I not agree with homosexuality, I still despise it in a way that I would not want there to be any connection between my personal character and it.

Given that such comments resurfaced during the Pride Month, I'm surprised he hasn't been fired.

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A year later, California would vote to ban same-sex marriage. I won't hold their bigoted views against them, as long as they no longer hold them. If I didn't have that forgiveness, there would be half of the voting population of my state that I'd refuse to talk to.

^ the world needs more people with this mentality.

Thanks. Comments like yours reinstate my faith in humanity.

The notion that people change and grow and sometimes learn from their mistakes and become better people seems to have gone by the wayside in recent years.

I'm curious why this is downvoted. Do people think others shouldn't become better people, or that they should never be forgiven for past transgressions they've learned something from?

i mean, in context, that passage feels more like he is realizing the strength of his internalized homophobia but not justifying it.

but overall the existence of this blog is mystifying.

It's his portfolio that got him his jobs, like a programmer's GitHub repo.

You think it's homophobic for someone to write about their own struggle with internalized homophobia?

"I still despise it..." - you seriously did not understand that statement? And you took it to mean his own INTERNALIZED struggle?

Did you read the whole blog post? Right after that paragraph he talks about the dichotomy between his inner emotional struggle and his explicit thoughts.

> More importantly, it helped me identify the boundary between my intellect and my emotions. Like most white people who are questioned, I am quick to say, “I don’t have problems with homosexuals, one of my best friends is a lesbian.” For me that is sincerely true. I have managed, however, to reconcile the differences of my mind and my heart to maintain what I think is and hope will continue to be a close personal friendship. Indeed, it is through the lasting nature of that friendship that my emotional core is changing. I changed my mind a long time ago.

The comments about Jews read in context seems worse to me than those comments read in context.

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