Comment by whoknew1122 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by whoknew1122 | Hacker News Reader

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I'm with most of this. But then we get to:

>In one recent example, voices on the PSF Board were demanding that a condition of funding for a particular PyCon be the formal adoption of a “human rights plan” - a measure that would pose a significant legal and personal risk to its organisers. > >The entitlement and assumption of cultural superiority embodied in these ideas are absurd and offensive.

I can't track down what this 'human rights plan' requires. I also understand that Europeans (and Americans) need to be very careful when projecting cultural norms to other places. I'm not here for cultural colonialism. And there are some countries where supporting LGBTQIA+ rights (and others) is illegal.

The PSF should be careful when it comes to trying to force organizers to take stances that would put organizers in legal jeopardy. But if you find it 'absurd' and 'offensive' to support human rights beliefs that are espoused by a funding body... don't take the damn money.

People can disagree on what human rights exist, and how they should be enforced. I'm well within rights to ensure that funding I'm giving you is contingent on respecting the rights of the people I serve.

Sorry, but there are some hard lines. And support of human rights is culturally superior than non-support of human rights. And if you don't like that, don't take the money.

> And if you don't like that, don't take the money.

If christian missionaries had these attitudes, Protestants with their ethics would have still be just around the Northern Sea. (And I consider protestant church a carrier of protestant ethics, that Webber described.) Because, those peoples where they sent the missions, were not living to the rules of protestants -- some had no weddings and changed wifes over time, some probably did human sacrifice, or killed each other, or stole, etc.

Missions taught people literacy and arithmetics. And also cared about the 10 commandments. Yet they sent and kept missions where people didn't adhere to those.

Same should apply to human rights -- rather than stay away proudly, let others interact with you and let them absorb your moral standards.

=============

If the above is too archaic/colonial, here's a current example: some Western universities, and the German Goethe Institut have their branches in Central Asian ex-USSR countries. All of them are wannabe-muslim, with 60+% of people considering themselves muslim. Open discussion about LGBTQ rights is a very thin ice -- it may lead if not legal consequences, but a very unpleasant mob, or demands to close the event, and bureacracy will silently follow these demands. One of the countries (Kyrgyzstan) has even an "underage gay propaganda" law, which makes any open discussion legally dangerous.

I bet Goethe Institut management deeply cares about these rights.

Should they close, or keep working, spreading their word and values in these countries?

p.s. Maybe it's all just about not spoiling the PSF brand name, by putting it next to some state entity (which state violates some human rights), then PSF should be open about it.

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