GopherCon pulls out of Florida due to “Don't Say Gay” and abortion restrictions
blog.gopheracademy.com
blog.gopheracademy.com
You seem to be conflating this fact with the so-called "fad" of leveraging decisions for clout in an overtly partisan context.
I have a bit of a crisis of conscience about this stuff. On one hand, especially with the oppression the LGTBQ+ community continues to face worldwide; any and all additional awareness and acceptance we can get is obviously so important.
On the other hand, it's obviously pandering, and a lot of these companies that fly the flag during Pride month have serious issues within their companies like fair treatment of employees, or whatever-have-you.
I'm actually more grateful, I think; for mandatory sensitivity training modules in most corporate businesses these days that essentially explain flat-out that homophobia and transphobia is not tolerated, and also help people who might genuinely not fully even know about things like proper usage of pronouns for trans people, for people who identify as gender neutral, etc.
My Dad is one of those homophobic/transphobic Christian nuts who thinks it's cool to use the name of God in order to belittle us, etc - he actually disowned me for a year when he found out I was transgender.
But - he had to undergo some sensitivity training through Microsoft, where he works - and eventually told me he had to work with transgender people at a couple points.
It helped him come around and decide to treat me like a person, too. So that kind of thing clearly helps, and I think it's awesome that companies are legitimately proactive on LGTBQ+ issues - not just during Pride month. :)
link to the related meme (I think it's actually pretty HN-suited): https://shorturl.at/aioqM
You might be confusing the fact that non-profit organizations are banned in the US by the IRS from endorsing candidates or engaging in political campaigns. Outside of those organizations, politics has always been intertwined with sports, with the performing arts, with extracurriculars (e.g. Scouting and nature hobbyist activities), schooling, businesses in unrelated domains (e.g. the outpouring of businesses in support for renewing the Voting Rights Act 20 years ago, musicians against the Vietnam war/Iraq war), and so on and so on.
The only people who do not get politically entangled with politics are ones who are used to politics leaving them alone.
What about the 1970s when some bars stopped serving Coors to protest of the company's anti-labor and anti-LGBT policies? ("As late as 2019, Coors beer was difficult to find in any gay bar in San Francisco." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coors_strike_and_boycott )
Or 1969 when the AMS decided to move the spring meeting from Chicago to Cincinnati, in response to the brutal police attacks on political protestors during the 1968 DNC meeting? https://books.google.com/books?id=UnkYqxyWGz8C&pg=PA88&dq=mo...
Or even earlier in the 1960s when MLK proposed a boycott on Mississippi products? Quoting https://books.google.com/books?id=qcADAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA50&dq=%2...
> When millionaire Flint merchant Joseph Megell, 51, short, stocky aggressive president of 'Yankee Stores, Inc., announced that his buyers would boycott Mississippi-made products, he hoped that other large buyers of Mississippi goods would follow suit. Megdell, whose 18 stores, located in eight Michigan cities gross millions annually, launched the boycott because of the "ugly racial situation" in the state.
For a country that likes to jerk itself off about being the epitome of ‘freedom’, they sure do like to tell people what to do.
A country where I can get a gun without a background check - but potentially be arrested for an abortion - is the definition of ‘fucked up priorities’.
Saddening recent events have only proven this is more true than ever.
Shall we talk more about conference security instead?
> Florida no longer represents the safe and family-friendly destination we envisioned when we first selected the location.
> we feel a strong moral and ethical obligation to ensure that the location of GopherCon aligns with the values of our community.
The latter justification leads me to ask: how do we ascertain what our community values are? Why do these particular values weigh more than others?
Another way of thinking this is utilitarian: non-queer people will not be target of violence by armed (or even unarmed drunk) people in Nevada or California, while the LGBTQ community is at a greater risk of being the target of violence in TX or FL. So having the local governement pushing the "don't say gay" bill, and announcing it that strongly (only heard of it because of the Disney debacle) to me can only be a kind of "virtue signalling", the kind of virtue being: all against LGBTQ+ people.
[edit: forgot conclusion] thus for utilitatian purpose, it is better to have the convention in state where violences against marginalized communities present in tech are the lowest, or at least don't seems state-sanctioned.
Totally agree. Though you didn't answer my question, how do we figure out what our _community_ values are? Those are individual values. For example, I would say that a 16w fetus is weaker than the woman who carries it whereas you might say the 16w fetus's rights aren't important because it is unborn. How do we tell as a community which of these contradictory views wins out for the purposes of... location for a tech conference?
I agree that weakness usually poses a risk to rights. In theory the weakness of a community is irrelevant to their rights, their rights should be protected regardless, but I see your point. The problem is that the Florida bill is about elementary education restrictions on sex education, it isn't "against" LGBTQ people and can't be because they aren't referenced explicitly or implicitly in the bill [1].
[1] https://www.npr.org/2022/03/28/1089221657/dont-say-gay-flori...
Exactly, this is the issue! Like the indentured workers laws weren't against black people in theory because they weren't referenced implicitly in the bill. Still, 90% of indentured servant were black, and was seen by the ex-slaveowners (or any person with power in the South) as a permission to push black workers into "crimes" (like vagrancy and other dangerous crimes like not having a job or saying a profanity).
RAW doesn't really matter, not in the US at least, especially this kind of law which won't have any impact except maybe on school library (and that's an issue we can discuss this if you want, but if it bans the "guide to sexual zizi", which helped A LOT of shy preteens, including me, it should just die imo, especially when porn today is that much easier to access). The only thing this law does seems to be virtue-signalling "we don't like gays here, like you, people who vote for us".
This is how people outside the US understand this law. I mean, i've talked less than a week ago to an hungarian (i was in portugal, weird settings and all) who told us he wanted his president to pass the same "anti-gay in school law" to prevent children from "turning gay". So its not only opponents of this law that saw it this way, it is how it has been pitched to everyone.
What that law actually say is irrelevent here, don't you agree? It's how the average citizen perceive the law that matter, and if anti-LGBTQ people (mis)understand this law as a pass from the local government to beat up gays, it makes the state more dangerous. So to avoid for conferences.
So we basically agree
> What that law actually say is irrelevent here, don't you agree?
No, I think the opposite is true. Just because a group of activists make up a slogan for a piece of legislation doesn't change what that legislation is, and the wording of the legislation is indeed the actual power behind the law. Any violence or discrimination that stems from any law is abhorrent and unconstitutional.
> if anti-LGBTQ people (mis)understand this law as a pass from the local government to beat up gays, it makes the state more dangerous. So to avoid for conferences.
Agreed, and if it indeed is dangerous culturally that is a much deeper problem than legislation and won't be fixed by legislation (all of that is already illegal).
Well, talk to your community and find out. Ask them what matters to them, what they think is important, how they want the world to change.
However - here's where safety comes in. As a queer/trans woman, I don't particularly feel safe (at all, really) in the southern states (California excluded, I guess?) - Florida and Texas, especially.
People are actively, regularly violent towards LGTBQ+ people down there. And, of course - it's not the ban - it's the attitude behind it - and the people behind it who are dangerous, and are often violent people with guns.
I've rejected a handful of paid business travel opportunities because they were either in Texas or Florida. It's not worth it on the chance I run into some psychotic anti-gay Christian and their gun, demanding I get the hell out of their city...again. (Yes, this has already actually happened to me...)
And of course I would never visit Afghanistan, either!
> The laws are a direct result of these people existing and voting for them.
I see these as contradictory statements. In reality independent legislatures are making laws along the lines of their constituency's prevailing ideology. Both sides of this cultural divide are increasingly unable or unwilling to even entertain each others' points of view in good faith debate.
From your response, are you saying it is OK to vote for people who actively support discrimination against a segment of people ?
How is allowing people to live their life without State Sanctioned harassment a "point of view" ?
* It harasses me about taxes every year as I constantly mess things up...
* It should definitely harass you if you break the law!
These laws in question "harass" (restrict) one population by disabling harassment perpetrated by another population.
For the sex-education ban it "harasses" (restricts) sex education to prevent teachers from "harassing" elementary aged children about sexual identity in schools. An abortion ban "harasses" mothers by restricting them from "harassing" their babies.
We're talking about a culture that values the one group's rights over the others' rights. Who wins depends on the prevailing culture in our system of government but one group will necessarily win at the others' expense.