Google Announces Global Campaign To Legalize Gay Marriage

From a shareholder's point of view then sure, the hypothetical trucking company should do that - except there are other considerations - shareholders who wouldn't want to invest in that company, bad press, other companies boycotting them... it's a lot easier for pro-gay companies to boycott a bigoted company than the other way around.

Of course morals come into play as well, personally I'd never run, work for or invest in a company that did that, and I like to think I'd still have that stance if I wasn't gay (actually I don't need to say "like to think", as I already have that stance for various other things that don't directly affect me).

How about a bus company owned by the richest man in the country lobbying against homosexuality being included within sex education in schools and then privately bankrolling a referendum, as happened in Scotland. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/693172.stm

Companies _already_ implicitly do stuff like this when they donate to e.g. the Salvation Army, an org which itself has an anti-gay agenda. It's "OK" in that it is legal and it is probably not unethical.

Is it be morally right? That depends, but public opinion in the US and in many (but obvs not all) other industrialized nations suggests that it is wrong.

Shareholders can and should vote with their feet if a company takes a position they don't like. Ostensibly that's one of the levers available to you in our glorious free market economy, amirite?

You might alienate religious people, but when I consider the merits of this particular topic, screw 'em. There's no reason their views (a choice) should trump other people's basic human rights.

I think it's okay for them to lobby against it.

The term "political issue" doesn't really make sense to me, honestly. A political issue isn't really "political" so much as it's "currently in contention"; Catholic-Protestant civil wars in Europe were political as much as they were religious, because they had political impact. Gay marriage is a political issue because, and only because, it's under contention.

Thus, every issue is something a special interest might decide to take a stance on whether it's Google or a trucking company. The question is whether or not it's relevant, and it's demonstrably relevant to Google, which has gay employees. (It would be okay for Exodus International to lobby against gay marriage, too. Which I expect they do.)

> Does Google engage in public campaign agains antisemitism, which is a real problem in some countries?

Hmmm, anti-semetism is one thing, but it isn't illegal to be Jewish in Singapore.

> Does Google engage in public campaign agains antisemitism

Well, regarding some of the search results for "Jew", they did put up this explanation: http://www.google.com/explanation.html

What about the Google Summer of Code? [1] Google invests millions of dollars every year, both in direct money and in man-hours + infrastructure in random OSS projects. Many of the invested projects are even direct competitors to Google products, most are completely unrelated to Google. But they invest in them anyway and don't make a huge PR deal about it. What about their Solar energy investments? [2] Google Lunar X Prize? [3]

Both are just examples off of the top of my head, of investments that are not directly obvious help to Google. They don't make huge PR fuss about them. (Which I suppose is why you didn't hear about them) But instead they are indirect longer term benefits to Google, in the same way that fighting for gay rights is. So this is certainly not a first time thing. They've been doing this kind of thing for years. Unfortunately you cannot help everything in the world at the same time. So you cannot rule out what they done before just because they're not helping solve specific problems.

[1] http://code.google.com/soc/

[2] http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/12/google-in...

[3] http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/

> Does Google engage in public campaign agains antisemitism, which is a real problem in some countries?

I'm unfamiliar with the issue; is it a real problem in countries where Google has an office and is employing Jews at?

I'm not saying anti-Semitism shouldn't be campaigned against, but if we're arguing that Google's push is based on the interests of its employees, then that's something of a precondition.

I've not worked there for a while, but while I was there they did support employees who were campaigning to help folks. Basically it would work by some employee wanting to help some group that they cared about and the company would generally help them do that. So to use your example a jewish employee who might be trying to do outreach in an antisemtic environment (or country) would get support in the form of time off or use of company resources to help their program or use of a conference room to hold meetings with an outreach group Etc.

However, there were pretty clear boundaries. I did not see any White Supremacists activities or holocaust denial outreach sorts of things either being supported or tolerated. My feeling was they try to support the employee caveat the fine line between supporting an employee who has a cause and supporting the cause itself. Recall that there were Google employees participating in the Arab Spring uprisings, and while Google didn't come out and say "we support overthrowing corrupt regimes" they also didn't immediately fire any employee who was working to that end.

Of course when the press reports anything its less nuanced than what actually goes on inside the Google Plex. Sometimes that is for the best, sometimes not.

More than "improve the world", it's "improve the part of the world that matters to Google". They've done the same thing with advocating for a free and open Internet for over a decade--a better internet makes a better Google.

Let's look at what this might mean for Google, in practical terms. Some 10-15% of people are LGBT. It stands to reason that the same holds true of engineers. Now, it's well-established that the well is running dry in SV; talent needs to be imported.

So if I'm a gay engineer thinking of moving to SV, how does this change my thoughts about where I want to work? It stands to reason that a significant number of LGBT engineers would be motivated to work for Google by this announcement.

Let's look at non-gay immigrants. Outside of places like China and India, most of the countries Google is looking to recruit from are way ahead of the US on gay rights. So much so that the mere fact that gay marriage is an "issue" in the US serves to perpetuate the bible-thumping moron stereotype of Americans. So even for non-LGBT engineers from Europe, Canada, Australia, etc, this would be viewed by the majority as a reason to work for Google.

Now, how would this hurt them? The argument can be made that, among more conservative (read: Indian and Chinese) societies, where gay rights are not accepted as human rights, that some percentage of potential hires would be put off by such a move. Perhaps, but I think that there are a number of mitigating factors, here. First, gay rights aren't nearly as big a political issue in those countries as in the US. It's frowned upon, but you don't have presidential nominees from one of the two parties proving how much they deserve the candidacy by falling over themselves to say who thinks gays are worse.

Secondly and generally speaking, "culture" is simply nowhere near as big an attraction for people from those countries as status and income. So while it may deter some people, it likely wouldn't be many.

Now for advertisers: will anyone really drop Google for online advertising because of this? Somehow I doubt it. There may be some of the Walmarts and whatnot who drop them, but I find the prospect unlikely.

To sum it up: advantages for Google include easier, more effective recruitment. Disadvantages include potential loss of customers.

I think Google wins this solely on the bottom line, let alone the fact that it's just a good thing to do.

>Gay marriage is not just a small detail, it's huge.

Really? How so? Because gays suddenly want to take part in the antiquated, religious inspired ceremony of marriage?

This really is a huge argument against the concept of shareholders. So basically any publicly traded company really is forced to be immoral? Apart from the fact that it is impossible to enforce (how do you decide, as a judge, what is better for the company in the long run - not pissing off the anti-gay people, or not pissing off the pro-gay people?), it makes such companies very unattractive as employers.

Think about yourself, if you are a programmer: would you take on the task to develop a new web site for holocaust deniers? It's just business, after all... If you lose the freedom to pick your jobs, what is the point, really? I'd rather close down my company (but I think you can't do that as a publicly traded company, either).

Given average age of Google workers, the upside wins in their case.

I'm not sure I agree with this. In many ways, this fight mirrors that against racism, and in many of this similarities I find issues that could negatively affect progress.

For example, saying that anti-gay people shouldn't be coddled is fine, but trying to pretend those beliefs are just going to go away is ignorant. What Google is missing here is the 'why' and instead it comes across as pushy.

People are still, and will always be racist, just as they will be pro or anti gay. That doesn't make it right, but it's certainly something Google should be prepared to deal with. I get wary of public companies taking political stances in the same way i do with actors and musicians.

That said, Google is probably in a fine position to do this, as the majority of the Internet world is dependent upon them.

Marriage in general is a lifestyle choice.

> I thought the mainstream opinion is that choice has quite little to do with it.

Outside the USA, yes. Sadly, a majority of Americans thinks that being gay is a choice while being obese is genetic.

I suspect it is about as much of a choice as which hair color you find most sexy.

Seriously I wouldn't call it a choice. Nobody goes and reads up on hair color and then decides "you know, I think from now on I am not going to prefer blonds, but rather readheads." To reduce it to a choice is just silly.

But the anthropological consensus is that sexual orientation is a cultural construct. These can be binding. For example, I suppose I can choose when spending a $20 bill that it has the same value as a $5 bill but there is no reason when I am being paid to choose that a $5 bill has the same value as a $20. So in this regard, I suppose one may argue that sexual orientation is as real as the difference in value between a $5 bill and a $20 bill....

Are you seriously comparing a campaign to slavery?

Influencing other cultures is what we all do every day, and yes, probably you included. The fact that YC offers to take care of Visas influences people to choose jobs that are not part of their culture. Selling/distributing US music, movies and books is a huge influence for change in culture. That's not even talking about the MacDonald's in every corner.

But you're being extremely patronizing to the people that compose those cultures by assuming they are little idiots that have no choice but to be assimilated. If people accept gay marriage it's because they chose to, not because Google strolled around in a bus and brain-washed people.

Gosh darn those crazy Japs! Even after we bring them our enlightened laws their families insist on keeping their arranged marriages!

Seriously though.... At some point the structure of marriage and how it fits into society is a matter only for the people of that society, not a matter for outsiders.

Regarding gay marriage, also consider this:

In many parts of the world, adoption is relatively rare, and the entire retirement support program is moving in with one's kids. This means marriage in most parts of the world is socially tied to procreation. This also means that gay marriage may be a bit of an economic luxury made possible by 401(k)'s and spermbanks..... We can afford that in the US. How sure are we that we want to push this on other parts of the world?

>Being forced to spend your life with someone who you don't want, is far more of an imposition than that of an organisation publicly stating that they think it would be nice if people were allowed to marry who they do want.

Thats what you say after 200K hollywood movies and romantic novels, which is another form on imposition.

Is what you say good for society in general? Is it even better for the persons involved? If you answer yes without hesitation, you should question how much of your thinking has been shaped by the prevalent ideology on your country.

>If projecting cultural preferences onto other groups is bad, then all I have to do is claim to belong to a culture that finds it deeply offensive for people to claim that projecting cultural preferences is bad, and then anyone who holds the first position isn't even allowed to tell me about it, entirely by their own argument.

For one, that would be a fake culture (the one youll claim o belong to). Cultures are made by populations, not a random guy.

Second, the workaround is bs. Here's another version: "projecting cultural preferences onto other groups is bad, period, even if its acceptable in your culture".

Strangely the same sort of cultural arrogance that lead to praising slavery in many parts of the US as good for black people is behind this sort of global campaign. Just think of the number of Africans who would have grown up never knowing about Christ, or never seeing the marvels of the New World if it were not for slavery! Yes there were people defending slavery at the time in precisely these terms. So I think that issue works out the exact opposite way you say.

Indeed, in cases where slavery is primarily endogenous (say, ancient Greece or Rome, or even Viking-age Scandinavia), slaves tend to have some legal rights, and some freedoms because it functions as a bit of a safety net, and there are political incentives to free slaves. For example in those three cultures (Greece/Rome/Viking-age Scandinavia), freed slaves formed important sources of political and economic support. Dred Scott v. Sanford ensured in he US that such a solution could not exist here.

So slavery in the new world was uniquely evil and oppressive. One can defend many other systems of slavery in the world throughout history, but certainly not that one. Indeed the only second-person perspective defence that was made was that we were so much better than the Africans that it was better to be a slave on a plantation in Virginia than free in Senegal. That same arrogance is, once again, behind this today.

Heck, I won't even defend the system of prison labor/slavery we have in the US today because I think that's beyond defence. But I won't just say "we're labelling it slavery and therefore it's evil."

So in New Guinea there is an indigenous tribe called the Sambia. In this tribe you can't become a man unless you go through a coming of age ceremony where you are given a nosebleed by having a tooth of a wild animal shoved in your nose (this is to drain feminine influences, and remove childhood), and where you are required to fellate a tribal elder. Of course this happens at an age roughly similar to adolescence.

Now obviously if this happened in NYC, we'd call this sexual predation, and try to send people to jail for life. But are you saying that we need to insure that if indigenous children don't want to go through such rituals that they have a right to be left alone?

Where do you draw the line?

Should we eliminate indigenous cultures because their coming of age ceremonies are barbaric forms of child abuse (and many may be seen by modern standards as sex abuse)?

Or do we leave the most deeply cultural concepts of society-- how we relate to our bodies, the form and function of marriage, and how we relate to growing up or dying to the members of that culture?

I don't accept any of that btw, though there are certain exceptions. Certainly if you were right on the face of what you wrote, polygamous marriages conducted overseas would be valid in the US, which they aren't.

I don't think that marriage is the same in India as it is in Japan or the US. I don't think marriage is the same in Morocco as it is in Spain. I don't want to meddle in these.

The exception though has to do with some forms of recognition in the US as people move about the country.

If a same-sex couple is married in Massachusetts and they later move to Arkansas, I think it's fairly clear on the basis of what scant legal authority we have, that the Arkansas legal tradition determines whether they are still married. Andrew Koppelman suggests (and makes a good case for the idea that) the general trend is towards more recognition.

However, if the family is merely visiting Arkansas and not moving there, then I think the analysis is very different and we have over a hundred and fifty years of jurisprudence which says that marriages don't wink in or out of existence when people travel around the country, and that rather the venue which controls is the venue of residency. Even pre-Loving v. Virginia I am not aware of a single case where miscegenation laws were applied against a mixed race couple who were merely travelling through a state or present to conduct business. The two cases I know of which involved relocating into states which banned miscegenation went different directions at the state supreme court level, and ex parte Kinney (same facts as Loving but about a hundred years earlier) included dicta that while Virginia could criminalize marriages of residents, they could not do so to out of state residents who were merely visiting.

To hold that a marriage of a gay couple in Massachusetts would not need to be recognized in Utah while they are visiting Arches National Park doesn't work with our system of government. Similarly I would be entirely be supportive of a treaty that said that tourists' marriages would be recognized wherever they go. If you are a gay couple married in Massachusetts I think you have a reasonable expectation that Singapore will honor your marriage. I don't think you have a reasonable expectation that Singapore will alter their laws to let their residents follow in your footsteps.

You can be homophobic without opposing gay marriage (regardless of if you use "marriage" as the word), just like you can be racist without thinking black people shouldn't be allowed to get married. It's about attitude, not actions - the fact that he isn't trying to force his homophobia on others is what makes him the better kind of homophobe.

Off the first hit for "marriage equality" (http://www.marriageequality.org/get-the-facts), here are some choice ones:

* Married couples are permitted to give an unlimited amount of gifts to each other without being taxed. * The law provides certain automatic rights to a person's spouse regardless of whether or not a will exists. * With marriage, a couple has the right to be treated as an economic unit and to file joint tax returns (and pay the marriage penalty), and obtain joint health, home and auto insurance policies.

In the US, marriage makes it trivial to bring your spouse over if you are immigrating from another country. Same sex couples are split apart for very long periods of times. I have seen this happen numerous times with my LGBT friends in tech, and it frequently does bad things for their relationships (as long distance relationships often do.)

It has actually been mentioned quite a bit - https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=Tim+Cook+Gay

Maybe less than you'd expect, but quite a few people deemed it a big enough deal to mention.

No, that's precisely the opposite of what I said. In that, if Google is lobbying for it, then it must be something in contention enough to demand that they actively lobby for it.

Okay, I'll phrase it another way. If Google has to lobby for it, it's probably not as universally held as cheez seemed to be taking for granted.

Only way to not pollute air and waterways at all is to cease all industry and somehow dispose of the large percentage of the human population. Otherwise, they'd have some impact on the environment, it's inevitable. This impact can be bigger or lesser, and can be measured against they usefulness of what comes out of it. Of course, producers argue that their products are very useful and their impacts on the environment are minimal and well controlled. They may be wrong or misrepresenting how actually good is what they in fact do, but I never heard anybody arguing, for example "let's destroy the environment, to hell with it, who needs it anyway". Did you?

Same for tobacco sales and advertising - of course, many people - especially those who enjoy smoking - think it is a good thing that it is legal. They also think it is a good thing that they, being sane adults, can choose how to behave and manage their own bodies and property. Some people think instead it is a good thing to deny certain people choice in what they can do with their bodies and their property, for their own good. There's obviously some disagreement on the topic, but again, I don't see how the former are more evil than the latter. If anything, I'd prefer a smoker over somebody that wants to control minute details of my behavior using government coercion any day of the week, but that's my opinion of what is good. But I'd really want to know why you not only claim it's evil but also claim everybody who disagrees with you on these topics knows they are evil. That's an ambitious statement, I'd like to see some substantiation of it.

Worth doing; there's no official/PR link for this "global campaign".

I have, in all my years, never heard that position successfully argued.

Marriage-protection amendments almost universally outlaw not only marriage equality but also the establishment of other non-"marriage" arrangements that carry the same benefits as marriage. Please explain how someone could agree with that but not hold any hate towards homosexuals.

Yes, I've considered it, and no, it's not possible, since inequal marriage rights harms gays by definition. What scenario did you have in mind?

At the risk of troll feeding, it's inaccurate to say state recognized incestual relationships and state recognized gay relationships are "completely separate issues."

At the heart of the moment for the later is an effort to change what the purpose of marriage is (or, perhaps, recognize a change that has already happened).

Specifically, the move to support gay marriage requires changing the idea of marriage being a relationship primarily concerned with natural procreation into one centered on the expression of romantic "love". You'll note, for instance, that Google is calling its campaign "Legalize Love".

The reason the state has opposed incest is that inbreeding leads to a much higher rate of birth defects.

But if marriage is shifted in focus from being primarily about creating an ideal situation for natural procreation to one based on "love", who is the state to say that two direct relatives are or aren't in "love" with one another?

I agree, and in addition, the probability of incest is much higher for heterosexuals than homosexuals since the probability of two homosexual family members is much much smaller. In other words, when and if support for legalising incest arises, it will most likely be by heterosexuals, not the LGBT community.

You have to define incest. For some definitions it actually has a lot to do with it. For other definitions not so much.

Certainly SSM has little to do with hypothetical brother/sister marriages. But what about first cousin marriages? These are legal in a bit over half the states including California, and in a bit under half the states such marriages are banned as incest. South Carolina, always an odd-ball, allows marriages of first cousins, provided they aren't double first cousins.

Now, what makes this interesting is that sometimes first cousins get married in a state like California and then they move to a state that does not recognize such marriages (I think I read a case from Arkansas). In every case to date where this has been challenged, the marriage has been upheld, but it isn't clear the new state of residency is required Constitutionally to recognize the marriage. Usually it is settled on a conflict of laws basis. The only cases where the marriage has been invalidated thus far (this could change due to Arizona's strange laws, see below) were where residents of a state that banned the practice travelled to another state for the sole purpose of getting married and then immediately returned.

Occasionally anti-SSM laws end up colliding here. For example Arizona passed a law stating that all marriages that could not legally be done in Arizona would be treated as if they didn't exist. This was done in order to prevent SSM from being recognized in Arizona without specifically singling gays and lesbians out. So it covers first cousins, etc too. Well, then the Cooks got divorced, being first cousins from Virginia who had married there and later moved to Arizona before this law was enacted. The law was ruled not to apply to them on retroactivity grounds (similar to the CA Supreme Court holding that Prop 8 could not be retroactive).

So beyond SSM cases likely drawing on incest cases, you have the potential for things to go the other way.

If choice of marriage partners is a fundamental right subject to strict scrutiny, then does that mean we hold incest bans to strict scrutiny and only allow states to forbid sex or marriage between brother and sister, mother and son, and father and daughter? Wouldn't first cousin marriage bans have to fall? Would infertile brother/sister couples get to (ahem) mount as-applied challenges to such bans? I think that would be a mess.

Also keep in mind that to date there have been a lot more first cousin couples married in the US than there have been same-sex couples, so a lot of the common legal issues have been litigated in an incest context first.

Edit: I highly recommend Andrew Koppelman's (pro-SSM) work on this subject: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=665701 Among other things he looks at how bigamy, incest, and pre-Loving miscegenation cases impact the SSM legal question. Koppleman is also the author of the classic law review paper entitled "Dumb and DOMA"

Just to clarify: 1. I did read the campaign but I didn't refer directly to this particular campaign but rather to the general situation in response to equating support for gay rights to support for other illegal activities (in this case incest, but sometimes it paedophilia or bestiality). 2. I am gay myself in a long-term relationship (10 years now) and I'm not interested in getting married myself, and neither do some of my gay friends who are also in long-term relationships. That's why I wrote "most homosexual couples" which I admit is not accurate either since I haven't taken a survey. Maybe it should have read "many" or maybe "in my experience, most", but the main point of my post remains the same and is that while for some (however many) gay couple the issue is also semantical, it's first and foremost an issue of equal rights. 3. I don't really want to comment about this campaign because I find it confusing. I don't understand why they don't start at home (USA, where Microsoft are already active promoting same-sex legalised partnerships) and in countries where the attitude towards homosexuality is generally positive, but which have not yet legalised same-sex partnerships (e.g. Israel). This is not criticism for the campaign, just an explanation why I my comments weren't about it. 4. I do support your and your partner's right to be civilly-partnered as opposed to getting married. I hope that you will be able to do that very soon.