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Comment by codeoclock | Hacker News Reader

No no no, not "shut up" at all. That's not what I said. But, bear in mind that everything you say can affect your future. Which is totally fair enough. Judging a persons character by what they have said and done in the past is standard, and fair, practice. Expecting immunity from everything you've ever said or done is unrealistic.

If Eich no longer believes what he believed, it's on him to make sure he makes that point. However, Eich never said anything to that effect, nor did he apologize, so we have no reason to assume that his opinion has changed.

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Judging a persons character by what they have said and done in the past is standard, and fair, practice.

You judge a CEO by the actions/decisions made in professional context. You don't use a personal decision to extrapolate what-if scenarios.

"If Eich no longer believes what he believed,"

So the issue is not speech but rather thought. George Orwell had a term for punishing people for their thoughts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughtcrime

And he acted on his thought about marriage equality, so it was not a piece of thoughtcrime

No, the action of donating money to helping the suppression.

I don't think Eich would deny job to someone just because (s)he was gay. He didn't tried or even thought to split any gay couple apart.

He just couldn't accept a definition of marriage which includes same sex couples.

But those are subtle details for the liberal fascists.

> He just couldn't accept a definition of marriage which includes same sex couples.

Then he took it a step further and donated to group that was working to destroy human rights for homosexuals.

> He didn't tried or even thought to split any gay couple apart.

You're right, he didn't try to split a gay couple apart, he just sought to dissolve their marriage...

So, as Pacabel just asked, would you support someone being forced to leave their job because they supported gay marriage?

Sure, it's a free country. If someone doesn't want to exchange dollars for work hours anymore, for any reason, that should be totally fine.

I'd also stop giving that company money.

This is a ridiculous question, of course not. Please don't try to act like pro/anti gay marriage are equally ethical positions, they aren't.

You see same-sex marriage as a human right. (You would surely agree that same-sex marriage was a right even were it not a legal one.) To those of us who believe in human rights, which undoubtedly includes Eich, that would make anyone who took action to deny anyone that right unethical.

The problem is Eich doesn't see it as a human right. Indeed, to him, it may be the case he sees same-sex marriage as unethical. (We don't know what his objections are.) At any rate, he has no reason to find the support of gay marriage ethical or the opposition of it unethical.

There is no objective morality that tells us who is right or wrong here. There's no divine tablets we can all interpret listing out all our rights.

You can't stop at "same-sex marriage is a human right" and "opposing gay marriage is (ergo) unethical." That just leaves you talking right past people like Eich. It doesn't advance the argument or the cause - it just labels people as stupid or bad.

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