It would be nice if the world were that black-and-white, but it's not. Plenty of Republicans etc. also believe that abortion, or even contraception provided by your health plan, is "absolutely unacceptable", "flat out wrong" and a "backwards mentality".
But we live in a democracy, where we need to get along. Black-and-white absolutist thinking doesn't really help anyone. You may not think it's "simply a political view" in 2014, but many other people do. Fortunately, we live in a pluralistic society with freedom of expression where we're all allowed to have and share our views, which is the whole basis of democracy.
And this is very different from women's suffrage, because nobody's right to vote, or their participation in the democratic process, is being legally affected here. Other things are being affected, but not people's representation as citizens in a democracy.
People seem to miss something from this whole "free speech" thing. Feel free to speak your mind, but that will always invite other people judging you and their interactions with you based on what you say (which is of course perfectly sane).
I'll happily defend your right to anonymously spout homophobic nonsense on 4chan, but as soon as you attach your name (and a thousand bucks) to discriminating people based on their sexual orientation, I'll exercise my right to shun you for it.
That right is, presumably, something you revoke when joining a ‘open-minded and tolerant’ community -- something that both Mozilla and OkCupid asked their employees to do.
That’s why, to justify shunning from someone within that group, you need to qualify supporting Prop 8 as abhorrent: something outside of Free speech.
I’ve posted a few comments already, so I feel the need to clarify my position: I have an opinion; I never shared it with anyone, ever. What I know however, from knowing many people on any sides of however you want to split this, is best said here:
Would I have happily embraced slavery if born at the time? Not a doubt in the world. Surely my peers would have considered themselves open-minded and tolerant just as much.
Here is what this comes down to: is there an overall shift in societies sentiment on this issue towards tolerance and against discrimination? If yes, you don't want to be standing on the wrong side of history by publicly expressing your disagreement.
> If yes, you don't want to be standing on the wrong side of history by publicly expressing your disagreement.
Lincoln was very much on the wrong side of history, and even in his time many abolitionists argued that it was horribly immoral to allow slavery where it existed, or to end slavery only in military-occupied areas of the Confederacy. Should we have shunned him then?
This is exactly why I don't like black/white mob rule, FWIW. Life's too complex to be reduced to a set of tripwires that define our behavior. Evolution has provided us all with the most advanced processing devices on this planet, we should all feel free to use them to examine a given case on its own merits.
I know… I’m just trying to defend the good side, which is always the one listening first.
As for history, it’s a forgiving mistress: always remember that the one absolute, un-impeachable moral hero of all modern history was an openly incestuous child molestor, and that all his friends and relatives begged him daily to stop.
OkCupid is not advocating restricting Eich's right to participate in civic society, to spout his hate, or even his ability to spend money to promote restricting the lives of others.
They are simply and clearly pointing out that he seeks "to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration" They don't want to associate with him, and they are recommending that other people avoid doing so.
OkCupid calling out a powerful person on his despicable behavior does not threaten democracy.
OkCupid is not calling out Eich personally, but Mozilla because of Eich’s individual position. There is a gap there that they, as an institution, decided to bridge. If you apply the same brush to OkCupid, their don’t sound so different they can give a lesson they needn’t listen too.
Democracy is not threatened in this debate -- however, consistency might not be on OkCupid’s side.
certainly well written, and you are right nobodies' right to vote is being abridged here. however the constitution of the United states affords us many rights one of which is the right to due process and equal protection(14th amendment).
wikipedia> nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Equal protection has been used repeatedly in the courts as a way to show the clear and un-bar-able "right to contract" protecting companies and individuals right to make agreements and have them be enforced and recognized by the state.
looking at the nuts and bolts way that the state approaches "marriage" as a form of contract similar to a corporate merger: tax differences, medical rules regulations, inheritance, general ownership of property. Baring an entire group of people from this right to contract is very clearly an abridgment of those rights and the protections brought by that form of contract.
This is why this issue has made such clearer and easy headway in the courts where the rulings are based more clearly on the law it self and the precedent of situation.
your argument though well written is more of a red herring fallacy trying to distract from a very real issue that you paint as more serious to trivialize what is really an important issue in our system of governance.
The women's suffrage movement was more than just the right to vote it spoke to how we define equality in this country. And this modern incarnation of that same discussion (which has taken many shapes over the years color, disability, language) is similarly important though it may feel distant to YOU because it impacts a sub-segment of the population not as large as say 50%.
Segregation, marriage inequality, restrictions on abortion and contraception--what do each of these have in common? It's that the government is imposing an arbitrary value system on the behavior of private citizens. This is acceptable when said behavior could harm others. In these other cases, it feels pretty off to have this happening in 2014. (Do not respond to me about fetuses.)
I love when people end an argument with "Do not respond to me about <the obviously controversial part of my opinion>".
The fact is, people from all backgrounds and political viewpoints hold opinions which they view as absolute. Whether that's "being anti-gay is equivalent to being pro-slavery" or "abortion is murder", people are going to disagree even if they are both guided by the same fundamentally good goals.
I fully admit that it's controversial, I just don't have the time or the energy to debate it here. (Or anywhere.) The rationale I gave holds up, but good luck debating it.
Abortion ban: government-imposed restrictions on the right to terminate genetically-undesirable fetuses. Which of these criteria should not be allowed: Gender? Height? Lack of physical strength? How about, say, statistically-probable homosexuality?
All is not as it seems when you change the optics (edited, restored).
I admit, those scenarios are almost as odious as they are unbelievable. People already select for height, strength and a host of other genetic characteristics when they mate. But anyways, mother's choice. Her body, her choice. Very simple.
Sex-selective abortion is abhorrent, but it's not at all unbelievable. The others are mostly hypothetical - for now - but amniocentesis and genetic testing for specific diseases is a very real thing, and the steady march of GWAS means we will have the rest soon enough.
That's the libertarian stance. If the gov't had nothing to do with marriage and people were free to enter into whatever contract each party agreed to, we wouldn't be wasting time arguing about gay marriage.
It's only because assholes go crazy about it that it's a problem.
Also, gay couples have been doing the "set up a bundle of contracts" thing for years. It's expensive and doesn't actually provide the same protections that marriage provides.
Well, demographics is not exactly fætuses… close though.
Some people justify their intervention in all these issues by claiming that the up-coming generations are everyone‘s future, and needs to be protected as such. Hence many laws to prevent them from harm, most of which I’m sure you adhere to.
The salient cases are often about disagreement about which is the greater harm: being Métis in a race-based, or living in a race-based society? Some (abortion) are about disagreements on what constitutes a child.
I don’t think that you, or rather some other people on the same side as you on such issues, choose to make themselves better persons by disparaging your opponents openly. Like you, they are worried, and inconsistent. And, if you step away from absolutes, they would agree with you on many actual cases. Cognitive dissonance (which, admittedly, happens more often among your opponents) is very painful, and you want to respect that to effectively make the world a better place.
This does impact a person's federal rights in the democracy that they participate in though. Specifically, over 1,100 rights are denied to couples who love each other but happen to be the same gender.
All men are created equal, right?
Gay couples are disadvantaged at a federal level. Being able to vote doesn't change that.
I'm liberal, and I believe society should be as permissive as it can stand to be with regard to behavior, choices, and the kinds of lifestyles we can create. But I'm not an idiot. Abortion is perhaps the only thing you could have used as an argument here. It's obvious to me why people have a problem with abortion. Even people who had one probably didn't like it. But I don't care enough about it to try to prevent anyone from having one.
Gay rights aren't abortion. Enough people believe it is exactly like every other precedent for civil rights, that you can't really seriously hold onto this argument anymore. Sorry. And absolutely nobody said it had to be about voting, so where did you pull that out of?
But we live in a democracy, where we need to get along. Black-and-white absolutist thinking doesn't really help anyone. You may not think it's "simply a political view" in 2014, but many other people do. Fortunately, we live in a pluralistic society with freedom of expression where we're all allowed to have and share our views, which is the whole basis of democracy.
And this is very different from women's suffrage, because nobody's right to vote, or their participation in the democratic process, is being legally affected here. Other things are being affected, but not people's representation as citizens in a democracy.