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This seems like the right decision (and I'm saying this as an LGBT person). The problem is, it just doesn't seem like legislation is the right instrument for promoting diversity in boardrooms. But what is the right mechanism? I anecdotally recall studies that found organizations with greater diversity deliver better financial results, and that public companies have a responsibility to their shareholders. It's important to state this because businesses exist primarily to create profits, not promote social movements. There's a legitimate business justification to diversity policies.

I empathize with those in diversity roles that are tasked with finding the informal-but-not-legally-enforcable means by which to increase diversity. How are you reasonably going to achieve that? It's a hard problem to solve. It seems like something driven by society at large. I'm not sure if you can hire a person to solve this problem, honestly.

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I anecdotally recall studies that found organizations with greater diversity deliver better financial results

Seems to not make much difference in financial results, either way. Wharton study:[1]

[1] https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/will-gender-dive...

There's a little bit of a systemic epistemic bias around this- diversity is socially desirable, so positive results are more likely to get published, get into the media, get shared, get remembered.

I wonder what would happen if we found out that people of similar backgrounds work better together? The reasoning of increasing shareholders value would still apply. Would we start implementing de facto segregated workplaces?

Maybe GP is thinking about the Gartner research measuring “performance” (can’t recall exactly how they define that though).

https://www.gartner.com/en/human-resources/trends/workforce-...

I believe those studies but correlation does not equal causation. I think the real reason that more diverse boards do better (if they do) is that the company hires people more based on talent and other metric which don’t discriminate, vs ones like patrimony. Forced diversity just sidesteps the problem because the company can still use bad metrics.

moreover, diversity of viewpoints borne of diversity of life experiences will better represent the search space in any decision-making. that's what makes diversity better, all other things being equal, which potentially then leads to better financial performance. it doesn't mean that any one decision will definitely be better, but that the totality of decision-making will be better on average than a less diverse decision-making group. this is a pretty reliable result in group dynamics/decision-making research.

> It's important to state this because businesses exist primarily to create profits, not promote social movements.

Those at the top will often prioritize their feelings over profit potential. Corporations are not true profit maximizers, that's a total myth. It's one of the reasons why WFH wasn't more popular earlier, and why some companies are trying to force back-to-office to the point it causes some of their employees to quit.

It's a myth that I just cannot comprehend.

Do people not go to work and see their managers in action? What makes them think that after just enough career steps a switch happens and people just magically become soulless profit driven AIs?

> I anecdotally recall studies that found organizations with greater diversity deliver better financial results

People also tout these studies for getting more women in business leadership. in reality that's a weird argument, women or lgbt or people of color don't need to be better in order to be accepted, they should be accepted by default. Maybe business culture with its rigid and often stupid conventions and demands has a lot to do with it. Things like, how business people socialize, what they 're expected to wear, what business gifts they send etc.

Pretty sure the idea is that diversity (of thought and other) itself can improve outcomes, not that anyone is necessarily better or worse at their jobs.

well, if we accept that the success of business is the sum of its parts, then it is implied that the diverse people add something more than others

"The sum of its parts" is a very opaque phrase here. But even without defining it, anyone with work experience has some understanding of the effect of workplace dynamics, environmental factors, office morale, and other intangible influences on one's productivity and hence, the business's success. In other words, there are emergent properties in the calculus of success, and pursuing diversity is one way of trying to control that.

"Diverse" people do not have to be intrinsically better employees, for them to positively affect the business's success.

Sorry, you put a lot of buzzwords there, but buzzwords do not constitute any proof. It's certainly true in low-skill businesses like , i dunno, agriculture that production scales linearly. If nonlinear interactions occur it would be interesting to name them, instead of attributing it to some kind of magic ether. I dont like this completely vague explanation because it's exactly the rhetoric that people mock when they want to attack diversity

Then let’s hear some hard logic. You’ve presented literally nothing.

If the best response you have is handwaving team dynamics as a buzzword, and pretending its not a real and tangible thing, go to work and start abusing all of your coworkers and see if their performance remains consistent.

Well, to make it concrete then: I've seen teams get happier and more productive when some asshole is removed from the team; I've likewise seen teams get less productive because someone is added who drains morale, interest and productivity because they're continually negative and waste everyone's time with distracting concerns and a lot of "yes, but what about this?" type navel-gazing. I've found my own productivity fluctuating with different coworkers based on how well I communicate with them (where someone I struggle to interact with well gets along well with others).

So no, you can't view overall productivity as the sum of individual productivity because there are factors like this that are a function of group composition. And there's a lot of factors that are not functions of individual productivity.

Great; I definitely do not accept that, and in fact it’s pretty trivially false even if you can’t really prove it.

to begin with, that's logically false [unless u mean it's undecideable which is a vanishingly small probability]

i also have no interest in replying to flame bait

Please explain your logic. Are you saying that someone’s contribution to the company is: A.) mathematically exact (lol) B.) not dependent on their team dynamics?

>in reality that's a weird argument, women or lgbt or people of color don't need to be better in order to be accepted, they should be accepted by default.

In reality every non-majority demographic has to be better in order to be accepted. They often have to work harder just to reach the default that the majority takes for granted, because that system works with the majority, and against everyone else.

Do they? Here is the composition of Ivy League non-international students, courtesy of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30338742:

                          Ivy League   US      Ratio
  Jewish                  17.2%         2.4%    7.16
  Asian                   19.6%         5.3%    3.71
  White (incl. Jewish)    50.3%        61.5%    0.82
  Hispanic                11.4%        17.6%    0.65
  Black                    7.8%        12.7%    0.61
  White (non-Jewish)      33.1%        59.1%    0.56

what'd those numbers look like in 1980 no reason just curious.

Which column identifies how hard people in any of these demographics worked to achieve this outcome?

You want to attribute different outcomes to differences in behavior by race? In this case, you're saying that Jewish students are 11x more hard-working than Hispanic ones, and Asian students are 6x more hard-working than Black ones?

Which other racial disparities do you attribute to differences in behavior?

You're the one who responded with the start of a refutation ("Do they?"). It's reasonable to expect you to actually make the argument.

I'm the only one that presented any data at all - the original comment simply asserted something was true, without backing it up in any way.

It's reasonable to expect a refutation to contain at least some data, instead of dismissing what data we do have as not complete enough, and reverting back to the original fact-free assertion.

You can't just throw up a data table and go "ok I refuted it!" That's not an argument, it's just some contextless numbers. It is legitimately not clear to me in any way what you're trying to say or what it has to do with the thing you're replying to.

>In this case, you're saying that Jewish students are 11x more hard-working than Hispanic ones, and Asian students are 6x more hard-working than Black ones?

Does Michael Phelps (23 Olympic gold medals) swim 23x faster than Mack Horton (1 Olympic gold medal)?

Fine. N-times more likely to be hard-working enough for the Ivy League.

Internet arguments aside, the fact that certain cultural groups push their children to study hard (and also provide them with as many resources as possible to make sure their studies are fruitful) probably is a big contributor to the disparity illustrated in your table.

It does not seem to have helped non-Jewish whites any, compared to Blacks and Hispanics.

I guess it's a very special kind of studiousness whites have - one that helps with SAT scores, but not Ivy League admissions: https://www.brookings.edu/research/race-gaps-in-sat-scores-h...

Anecdotally, it absolutely has. The people I knew growing up (regardless of race) whose parents encouraged educational excellence were far more likely to attain it.

(Looking at your link, it's important to note that it doesn't separate Jewish and non-Jewish Whites.)

But it looks at all students (not only those that make it into the Ivies), so Jewish whites, that are only ~4% of all whites, have a minuscule effect on white SAT scores. Yet, for non-Jewish whites, comparatively higher SAT scores have not translated into higher Ivy enrollment.

>Jewish whites, that are only ~4% of all whites, have a minuscule effect on white SAT scores

On average, yes. At the Ivy League level, though, they account for a solid third of the white admissions. I'm sure you'd find a similar overrepresentation in the top few percentiles of the SAT.

> I'm sure you'd find a similar overrepresentation in the top few percentiles of the SAT.

Even supposing this is true, it still doesn't answer the question: Since non-Jewish whites do better at the SAT than Blacks and Hispanics, why does this translate to lower, not higher, Ivy enrollment rates?

The data clearly shows: higher SAT scores help every group except non-Jewish whites.

I get the general point about the affirmative action, but it's important to remember that it's not just Whites getting the short end of the stick. Asians are absolutely underrepresented too.

There are indeed racial disparities in time spent on academics [1].

1. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/...

As a sibling reply said, I'm not making an argument. I'm asking for the relevance of your reply to the statement you replied to. I think there are a lot of confounding factors to the data you presented, so personally consider it to hold very little value on its own. You're the one who seems to draw meaning from it.

So, what meaning do you draw from it? What explanation do you have for these discrepancies? How do they relate to what you replied to?

In other words, show your work.

Don't be deliberately obtuse. Of course you were making an argument. You were making it sarcastically, to be sure, but it was still an argument dismissing the data presented as irrelevant because it doesn't purport to show the level of effort from the groups involved. And it's a spurious argument in any case, because the data presented still shows a major issue in the initial claim, which was that non-white students need to expend significantly more effort than white students to be accepted into the Ivy League, unless you happen to believe that (non-Jewish) white students for whatever reason expend much, much less effort than other demographics to join. If you think other factors are the cause of that, state them; don't just off-handedly and rudely dismiss people presenting valid contrary data.

> initial claim, which was that non-white students need to expend significantly more effort than white students to be accepted into the Ivy League

You've added a whole bunch of words here that weren't in any claim of this thread. The person I was replying to is the one who brought students and school acceptance into it. I've double checked the whole thread to make sure, so if I missed it please point it out. The conversation above car_analogy's post was about business leadership.

At any rate, while of course I'm being a little obtuse, I really do not know what car_analogy is driving at. I can speculate, but I suspect I'd be accused of being uncharitable if I said my speculation out loud. It's not up to me to make their argument for them, and they didn't even bother to make one.

Anyways,

> If you think other factors are the cause of that

Fortunately, as I'm not the person who threw a snark bomb into the thread tied to a table of tenuously related data, it's not my job to interpret the data I don't think is significant to the argument at hand. If car_analogy wants to convince me of its relevance, they can say more than two words about it and then get defensive.

Meritocracy is bigoted or rational depending on which groups appear in a particular order. Pick one and be consistent with it. Swapping depending on what pecking order shows up is just more moral relativism to benefit one group while demonizing any others who ever try to do the same. Don't think it's not noticed and remembered for future reference.

Why does the concept of "working hard" have to be a categorized by race when it is largely based on individual circumstances such as family income, parental upbringing, and immigration history? Someone who individually works hard that is a member of a group that is not considered to be hard working (or vice versa) would still be treated unfairly by this proposed system, making it no better than the status quo.

US immigration policy selects for high earners, the already wealthy and the highly skilled and educated. I think that can explain the demographics pretty well.

> women or lgbt or people of color don't need to be better in order to be accepted, they should be accepted by default.

And yet they are not. Why not?

> Maybe business culture with its rigid and often stupid conventions and demands has a lot to do with it.

If we look at the history of these groups in the US, Occam's Razor points to simple bigotry as an explanation.

I’ve never had an issue with it.

Well I’m not a woman but as for the rest of it it’s never been an issue.

The only time it’s even been mentioned is that when traveling by bus in Texas in 1999 that I should make sure I take my ID with me when leaving the bus just incase there’s ICE around.

My experience has been that people largely create their own problems, right now I’m in a very catholic country and looking for a cross necklace. It’s just to avoid people asking me if I believe in God which I don’t care to talk about.

Blend in and you’ll have 100x less problems. Your work likely doesn’t care who you’re banging but is going to care if you want to talk about your relationship all day instead of business.

I’ve never really understood the diversity thing. Why should it be more desirable to hire me because I was born in this place or that?

Is the native part of me more deserving of a contract than the Latin part?

If I was with a guy the night before instead of a woman am I more beneficial to a company? Am I even more valuable on the odd night I’m with a trans person?

Am I more beneficial with my Paraguayan passport instead of a Canadian passport?

Diversity should just be called what it is, bigotry.

If diversity is valuable then:

  * in an organization filled with native (whatever that means) people, your Latin heritage would add value. In an organization filled with people with Latin heritage, the native part of you would add value.

  * in a company filled with cis-straight men, then diversity being valuable implies that anyone with a different experience would add value.

  * in Paraguay, your Canadian experience is more valuable in terms of whatever value diversity brings than it is in Canada. By contrast, in Canada, your Paraguayan experience would offer more value.

Of course, it is possible that it's not true that diverity is valuable. But there's solid anecdotal evidence that it is, and maybe even a bit of actual statistics.

Oh by native I mean indigenous, I’d just say Indian but I’m not allowed to call myself that anymore without issues from the PC people telling me how ashamed of myself I should feel. I always forget the acceptable term to refer to myself by.

I kind of get it but I just call that hiring people with experience.

Like I do get hired because I’ve done a whole bunch of different roles and have actual diversity I’m not just a Java programmer with 20 years of experience making login forms.

Also having done a lot of things I usually have an interesting non-work story to tell.

I find that kind of diversity hugely valuable. I find hiring people because they check a diversity box dumb and bigoted.

Well yeah, mostly.

The worst-case scenario is a bunch of people with different ethnicity, religious affiliation/experience, gender identity, age, etc. etc. ... who all like the same entertainment, food, clothing and vacation options. "Diversity" ... yes. But actual diversity, no.

However, I'm not sure that this actually a real-world problem.

I'm not going to defend diversity but the idea is having a Paraguayan and Chinese would be better than two Paraguayans because you get insight from two cultures vs one.

For some roles this might be important (sales) for others like accounting it's foolish.

What if the Paraguayan and Chinese cannot (hypothetically) effectively work together because of cultural differences?

That's the other side. Having all Chinese allows for easier communication, shared cultural experiences, similiar worldview.

Location is a factor.. in China everyone is Chinese. In the US you have a variety of people with different cultural backgrounds. What works in China couldn't work in the US.

>I anecdotally recall studies that found organizations with greater diversity deliver better financial results

While that may be true, it isn't the case that more diversity necessarily makes a more profitable organisation. It's also a pretty dangerous game to play; diversity policies can be, and often are, implemented in a ham-fisted or corrupt way that destroys value.

Simply look at the havoc that BEE has wreaked on South Africa's economy and especially the public service.

Since it’s us mathematically minded people here, it’s worth pointing out that these studies don’t establish causation. You’d probably find a strong correlation between financial performance of firms and investment into other social initiatives, such as corporate philanthropy or environmental causes. It’s possible that wealthier and more successful firms are simply better able to afford such investments than less successful firms.

Exactly: Most studies that I've been referred to are shiny McKinsey pages that boil down to big companies having more diverse boards on average.

Besides what you said, that's not a surprising correlation because it's easy for Multinational MegaCorp Inc. to have a multi-ethnic board after a few international mergers.

And then there are very opinionated shareholders like Vanguard and BlackRock, which receive voting rights for every Euro that I save for old age, who can make this outcome a self-fulfilling prophecy by punishing companies for lack of diversity.

I don't think it's possible to control for all of this.

I’ve done some work adjacent to those shiny mckinsey pages. The mergers wouldn’t explain it. It’s not looking at size, it’s looking at growth and success relative to where they were some period of time ago.

It’s probably a bit tautological. The only effective way to make your company more diverse is to grow and hire diverse candidates. This is not the case for top level leadership though. Boards as well. Growing companies want to invest in their people and that tends to result in some more attention to diversity. Conversely dusty old companies that are having their lunch eaten by tech enabled competitors do tend to be very non diverse because that’s they way it is and it’s not an environment that diverse candidates want to join. Also self fulfilling.

Board diversity can also be an indirect metric indicating a board that stuffed with irrelevant rubber-stampers: if all you need is a rubber stamp wielder you can pick whatever flavor of human will complete your box of crayons, but if you actually need someone's judgement or experience the selection is more limited.

It’s also important that, at least as to racial minorities, they oppose consideration of race in hiring and promotion by large margins: https://www.vox.com/2019/5/9/18538216/diversity-workplace-pe...

> White people were the most opposed to considering race and ethnicity in hiring and promotion: 78 percent said only qualifications should be considered. But a majority of black respondents (54 percent) and Hispanic respondents (69 percent) also said race and ethnicity shouldn’t be considered.

These are policies are being driven mostly by liberal whites oh behalf of racial minorities, but those minorities themselves mostly oppose such policies.

IMO the right mechanism is for people of [insert desired demographic] to start companies and make them successful.

The chance to successfully start a new company depends on the succes your parents and others in your demographic had.

It's not that simple.

Having successful parents is equally random for everyone, isn't?

Not with other systemic issues.

Anybody up for an argument that the government should have custody of and raise all children? I know that’s a non-starter, but if you want to level the playing field for all kids, this is how you do it. Outside of that, you are leaving children to whatever shitty situation they didn’t ask to be born into.

I’m not saying I’m for this. I’m not and you would have to kill me to get to my kids. Just seems like the most logical solution to an otherwise impossible problem.

> Anybody up for an argument that the government should have custody of and raise all children?

Because that worked really well in Communist Romania. "Let's make sure things are equally terrible for everyone, then we can call that a level playing field" is not sensible policy.

some grim capitalist realist shit when it's easier to imagine taking everyone's kids away than it is to imagine not structuring society around the exploitation of artificial inequality.

Seemed fine in Logan's Run, so it should be ok?

I think you could do a lot of stuff to provide support to all kids without going all the way to universal government custody. Things like (optional) government paid universal day care and after school care, government paid universal health care for minors, food/housing/etc stipends (like the child tax credit, but bigger), and arguably better pay for teachers and smaller class sizes. These things wouldn't end inequality, but might more kids up to good enough resources.

You could also pull a China and outlaw tutoring/test prep to reduce the advantages wealth can provide.

But here’s what the government can’t fix…

Violence in the home (most goes unreported), Mocking education in the home, Drug abuse in the home, An example of single parent pregnancy everywhere, General neglect - nobody to read to you

These are all cultural things. Culture is the software that gets installed on you and some people are getting a shitty software version that almost guarantees failure. If you don’t believe that, watch any documentary on rural Appalachia.

> Anybody up for an argument that the government should have custody of and raise all children?

That's either a bit strong or a bit already true, depending on how you look at it; the state sets boundaries and responsibilities on the relationships parents have with children, and if they violate those boundaries or fail to live up to those responsibilities, the legal relationship between parent and child can be terminated.

I'm for it is a more practical way. It is the state's responsibility to be good at raising children, because some children will have no family to take care of them. We (at least in the US) horribly fail at this, which is a clear signal that our society is selfish and irresponsible. This should be changed. People with shitty parents should be jealous of state wards. If we can't be successful when we have complete control, we shouldn't have much to say about how well parents are doing except in the cases of gross neglect and abuse.

We can't figure out what to do with constituencies that don't have lobbyists.

Yes, in the same way that every soul had the same opportunity to be born to a king.

> The chance to successfully start a new company depends on the succes your parents and others in your demographic had.

I'm not sure that's the case.

I agree upon the success of your parents. It only makes sense that say a 'rich' or 'successful' parent that knows how to budget, had a better education, a strong will to persevere, and/or is extremely kind will pass on those skills of success to their children. Does that kid deserve to have the advantage? I'd say yes because it was the parents who created the life of their kid and what the parents want to do with their money and time, if that's support and educate the life they created then should be able to do that. In U.S. with public education, financial aid, and grants it is about as equal as possible monetarily but if a good blacksmith makes the best swords their son has a teacher around 24/7 that can teach them and make their son the next best blacksmith - but that applies to every single profession, but in general just budgeting or the skills I mentioned above would be enough to succeed in almost any profession, and bonus points if they have multiple of those skills.

Parents provide more than just moral teaching. For example, when kids screw up, wealthy parents can buy them second chances and the appearance of moral rectitude — when in the same situation a poor kid would be ashcanned as a dissolute moral failure, whose parents didn't know how to budget, didn't pass on a strong will to persevere, etc.

How does that work when the demographic is extremely economically disadvantaged and has no way to earn starting capital?

Why would that be the case? AFAIK it's equally probable for a woman/gay/trans person to be born in a wealthy family or a poor family.

Are you actually serious?

We are obviously not talking about being born into wealth. Middle-class people still need to accumulate capital first, generally by working, something that's not always possible (for an extreme example, take e.g. ~90% unemployment rate for autistic college grads).

Even if we were talking about wealthy families, that doesn't count out being disowned, etc. for being gay or transgender.

In any case, check out these links: https://theconversation.com/transgender-americans-are-more-l...

https://nwlc.org/income-security-is-elusive-for-many-transge...

https://www.lgbtmap.org/unfair-price-transgender

Transgender people are a tiny percentage of LGBT people, so using them to characterize all LGBT is intentionally misleading.

Also, this law was actually about requiring that any non-white or LGBT person be on the board; the LGBT part being highlighted is part of Newsweek's anti-gay agenda.

The US has a recent history of racial discrimination that prevented a lot of people from building wealth in their communities or generational wealth. Not that there aren't a shit ton of white people living in trailer parks, but no one was denying them home loans because of the color of their skin.

So, if owning your own home is a big part of your wealth over a life time, and your parents and their parents were discriminated against and prevented from accessing those mechanisms, it makes it much less likely that you will today be born in a wealthy or a poor family.

Look up redlining on wikipedia if you want specifics.

Sure but here we're talking about LGBT.

I include women because of this:

> I anecdotally recall studies that found organizations with greater diversity deliver better financial results

AFAIK most of these studies focused on "women in boardrooms/leadership"

Hmmm, fair enough, I suppose I simply failed my reading comprehension roll.

this is mathematically similar too, and about as sensible as, statements like "it either kills me or it doesn't, so that's a 50% chance"

You're reading it wrong. They weren't saying that there's an equal chance for anyone to be born poor as to be born wealthy, they were saying the chances are the same for a straight person to be born either poor or wealthy as for a LGBT person to be born either poor or wealthy.

This is not always true for other minorities. A random black American isn't as likely to have been born into wealth as a random white American.

You mean like Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s? Or for that matter Italians or Irish or Eastern European immigrants?

Racial/cultural/nationality discrimination isn't identical to LGBT discrimination.

Indeed, it's much easier to hide that you're gay than that you're black or Russian.

Until you need funding and find out you don’t fit the profile of a successful founder.

capitalism doesn't solve every problem.

> I anecdotally recall studies that found organizations with greater diversity deliver better financial results, and that public companies have a responsibility to their shareholders.

If diverse boards do better it's because you have to be doing very well already to do something as stupid as picking board members for their sexual orientation.

Hence the argument that this move was a bid for regulatory capture by already established corps.

> There's a legitimate business justification to diversity policies.

Based on personal observations, innate aptitude and interest doesn't seem to be aligned. Eg, one of the more amazing minds I've ever met was contained in a woman who just didn't have the competitive glint in her eye to make herself successful. Sad story in many ways.

But - if that observation is true - then diversity policy quotas will break the correlation. At the moment, about half the aptitude is in women, some percent in various minority groups in rough proportion to their prevalence, etc. Companies better at surfacing talent will naturally be more diverse. Companies that forcibly make themselves more diverse through a quota will ironically probably regress to the mean level of competence and perform worse.

>This seems like the right decision (and I'm saying this as an LGBT person). The problem is, it just doesn't seem like legislation is the right instrument for promoting diversity in boardrooms.

Oh for sure it's the right decision. If even the legislation's intention was successful, forcing this matter will only go to create more radicalization and make the situation worse.

>I anecdotally recall studies that found organizations with greater diversity deliver better financial results, and that public companies have a responsibility to their shareholders.

Regardless of the issue you wish to prop up. There is always a study that says it will work.

>It's important to state this because businesses exist primarily to create profits, not promote social movements. There's a legitimate business justification to diversity policies.

Businesses should not even consider diversity. There is a problem in some businesses in that they do discriminate. They discriminate against and that's the ideal goal of what should be fixed. Or should it? If we are in a free market and Business 1 refuses to hire LGBT. Business 2 hires those and will eventually pick up good people that give them a competitive advantage.

Government coming in and using force to make Business 1 take LGBT on the board... That's not going to work out.

> and I'm saying this as an LGBT person

I' m left-handed but I would never think of identifying myself as being part of some diffuse group of people 'united' by handedness. In the same vein I do not see why gays, lesbians and bisexuals are to be seen as part of a single group given that as far as I gather there is often not that much love [no pun intended] between the former two - it is not as if gays and lesbians have much in common.

Do you truly identify as 'an LGBT person' - implying that those who claim to be spokespeople for 'this group' also speak for you - or do you just see yourself as a gay, lesbian or bisexual man or woman? Or, to put it even more bluntly, would you not rather see yourself as a person who happens to be gay or lesbian or bisexual, just like I see myself as a person who happens to be left-handed? I may sometimes grumble about some object which could have easily be made to fit left- and right-handed people alike [1] but I would never join a left-handed political action committee, nor would I trust anyone to 'speak for me' in such a context because I don't want to be used as a pawn in some ideological/political struggle.

[1] If you ever start a cheese packing facility make sure to put a peel corner on the left and right hand side of the package, the latter is far more useable for left-handed people...

There's a difference between what one wishes the world was like, and what one should do given the world as it actually is.

Given the past rampant anti-LGBT feelings and actions around the world, it totally made sense for LGBT people to band together, to enact change on their own behalf.

Much of the world is better for LGBT people today, but a) it's still not quite as good as most would want it, and b) in many parts of the world, it's still quite bad.

So given that everyone else treats LGBT as a group, and that everyone else treats them badly, then of course it makes sense for them to act as a group. (Though of course I don't literally mean that everyone treats them badly, just the general trend)

> So given that everyone else treats LGBT as a group, and that everyone else treats them badly

Simply put: Nonsense

A bit more elaborate: some people have something against people who differ in some way, whether that be in their sexual orientation or handedness or skin colour or the language they speak or the food they eat or the god(s) they worship or the parties they vote for or the places they live or the clothes they wear. This has always been that way and will always be so. Most people harbour some preconceived ideas about those 'others' - yes, you do as well. In most liberal western societies these preconceived ideas are frowned upon by official institutions, especially when it concerns such ideas related to 'protected' identity categories like sexual orientation, race and religion. your statement regarding the supposed mistreatment of that group does not hold any water. It is a lie, an untruth, a distortion of the facts - unless you can prove your claim.

Can you prove it? Show us how your statement is true, in what way everyone treats gays, lesbians and bisexuals badly. Just saying this does not make it true, not even repeating it ad nauseam, not even when it is claimed to be true by academics from the grievance studies departments - especially not when claimed by those academics from those grievance studies departments since they are on an ideological mission.

> Can you prove it? Show us how your statement is true, in what way everyone treats gays, lesbians and bisexuals badly. Just saying this does not make it true, not even repeating it ad nauseam,

As I said in the original comment, not literally everyone treats LGBT people badly. But are you seriously suggesting there is zero bad treatment of LGBT people? Do you think historically there was, but now there isn't? Based on the language in your comment, it seems you have a certain point of view about this topic which makes you think there isn't any bias against LGBT people, and you're not just randomly asking for proof.

So as proof, I can easily show historical mistreatment of LGBT groups. Example: having homosexual sex, at least for men, was illegal in some places (including some states in the US). Until fairly recently, getting married to a same-sex partner was illegal in the US. Those are two easy examples, the latter change happening what, less than a decade ago?

For existing mistreatment, homosexuality is still illegal in many countries. There are new laws being passed in the US which some LGBT groups consider to be against their interest. In my own country, it's only within the last year that gay couples could have a baby through surrogacy within the country. Etc.

If you think that none of this counts as mistreatment, I'd urge you to say what * would* count in your opinion.

You first state that 'everyone treats gays, lesbians and bisexuals badly', only to walk it back a few words later. Why did you say it in the first place?

Also, I asked for proof of your statement in the here and now, not for historical proof. Not 'was' but 'is'. Furthermore, the fact that some things are illegal in some countries does not mean anything for how those things are treated in liberal western democracies which is what I was asking about.

The fact that 'new laws being passed in the US which some LGBT groups consider to be against their interest' is totally irrelevant unless you can show which laws those are and in what way they actually discriminate against gays, lesbians and bisexual people.

You have not shown proof of your claim that everyone treats gays, lesbians and bisexuals badly. It is not up to me to provide you with examples of what would be mistreatment since I did not make any claims about people being mistreated. You made a claim but you can not prove it, it is up to you to either provide proof or walk back your claim.

> If you ever start a cheese packing facility make sure to put a peel corner on the left and right hand side of the package, the latter is far more useable for left-handed people...

I think there are a LOT of products that would benefit from company leadership having someone left handed (or colorblind, for that matter) due to the fact that more than a few products work sub-optimally ... probably more than from having someone who's gay.

Diversity in company leadership would better be spent on factors relevant to the product or workforce. Outside of some specialist industries, board members sexuality has absolutely no place in the workplace.

> I anecdotally recall studies that found organizations with greater diversity deliver better financial results

If Hollywood movies start getting a lot better with the new diversity requirements for Oscar eligibility, presumably this will serve as an example for every other industry.

For the curious, eligible movies must satisfy at least one of the following criteria:

At least one actor from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group must be cast in a significant role.

The story must center on women, L.G.T.B.Q. people, a racial or ethnic group or the disabled.

At least 30 percent of the cast must be actors from at least two of those four underrepresented categories.

The only companies that can afford to diversity hire are already having great financial results

Maybe introduce new grounds for suing - if the stock underperforms, and leadership is showing a bias in its demographics, then the share holders can sue for presumptive discrimination reducing the quality of decision making.

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