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Comment by astanm | Hacker News Reader

The latter would be off-topic for a programming language discussion forum, certainly. But working with others that happen to hold differing views on that topic? Not a problem.

It would be unreasonable to expect everyone to have the same perspective on political issues.

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It baffles me how much political every aspect of life has become. We can't just talk about things and hold genuine discussion. It always boils down to "us vs. them" standpoint.

What would genuine discussion look like on the topic of trans people existing? I'm not sure I would know how to identify it even if it existed.

You have demonstrated exactly the point I am making.

I think we are likely to disagree on whether "group X is not entitled to human rights" is a legitimate political view

As long as these views aren't thrashed out in the collaborative spaces to which the CoC applies, it doesn't really matter.

(As a personal preference, I'd rather not know the political views, legitimate or otherwise, of people I work with. It's not relevant.)

If said people kept their opinions to themselves, the issue would never arise in the first place. Pretty much the whole problem in semi-public spaces like this is that folks with strong reactionary beliefs don’t tend to leave them at the door

`s/reactionary//` and you'd be right in your second sentence. It doesn't matter if it's action or reaction, people with strong beliefs, strongly held tend to be holding them because of some core set of ethical or moral principles and those things eventually are revealed in the day-to-day work.

As to your first - if people with a strong set of ethical and moral principles "just shut up" about what they considered ethical and moral essentials ... then they wouldn't be who they are. The only people who don't show what they hold good are people who don't hold as good much of anything.

Now if we're just talking "opinions" here (about things that are not ethical and moral, merely matters of taste), then yes, a person with "strong beliefs strongly held as a universal principle" is someone who is just an ass. But if I know someone is a raving Detroit Lions fan "on the internet", what kind of a person am I if I can't work with them?

Except people have enforced CoC's against people for expressing views on other platforms because those views make other people feel unsafe in those collaborative spaces.

I have only ever seen CoC's abused to push out people with anti-social just views.

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