On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 23, 2014 20:29 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313)
In reply to: On the sickness of our community by dlang
Parent article: On the sickness of our community

Putting this in another light.

Why is it that "disrespect" for homosexuals (by opposing Gay Marriage) is something that should get you banned, but "disrespect" for the Catholic Church (a crucifix suspended in urine) is something to be praised?

You need to be able to tolerate other people's beliefs. Their actions are something to respond to, but you need to keep the response appropriate. Scorched Earth tactics against anyone who disagrees with you is not a good thing.

I don't care if someone I work with is a Satan worshipper, as long as their actions at work are no different than anyone else (and yes, this does mean that I dislike the extreme religious types that shove their religion in your face all the time, even if I agree with the religion in question)

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 27, 2014 15:51 UTC (Mon) by nye (subscriber, #51576) [Link] (62 responses)

>Why is it that "disrespect" for homosexuals (by opposing Gay Marriage) is something that should get you banned, but "disrespect" for the Catholic Church (a crucifix suspended in urine) is something to be praised?

Are you serious? You think these things are comparable?

You think that a serious legal attempt to remove the civil rights of a minority group you dislike is merely "disrespect", on the same level as erecting a piece of artwork in questionable taste?

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 28, 2014 0:57 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (30 responses)

this depiction of the two shows your bias. Someone else may view the two as resisting inventing new rights vs acts of blasphemy.

When you have priests being threatened with jail for refusing to perform gay marriages (which we now have had happen), things have gone way too far.

to answer your other post as well, prop 8 was not some fringe movement, it gathered roughly half the vote. If you believe that anyone who supported or voted for it deserves to loose their job (and therefor be unemployable, because they would deserve to loose their next job as well with the same logic), you are running a very real risk of serious backlash. This sort of witch hunt has gotten to the point where even long time Gay Rights advocates are saying that this is wrong.

I'm not saying that there aren't cases where someone's beliefs and the way they promote them can cause enough problems to make it worth getting rid of them, but someone donating a few days pay to a campaign that receives almost half the vote and is only discovered by people looking through the legally required list of doners is pretty obviously NOT causing that sort of problem in the workplace.

It's not a question of being "technically legal" or not, it's a matter of accepting the fact that there are people in the world who disagree with you, and not deciding that they are pure evil scum because they disagree.

Going back to the topic of this article, disagreement is healthy, even heated discussion can be healthy. It's when you stop seeing the other side as people are start demonizing them that things become a problem.

And in the systemd debate, we have some people on both sides who are a problem.

One one side you see people who disagree with where systemd is going demonizing LP

On the other side you see people calling anyone who isn't enthusiastic about systemd luddites who just need to die off and be replaced by the new generation.

Neither attitude is healthy for the community. A community requires both sides to be willing to talk (and listen) to each other. A healthy community can have people agree to disagree and coexist. For all the talk about the Vi vs Emacs or linux distro 'wars', each side has been willing to let the others continue to exist, frequently cooperating on some things while competing on others.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 28, 2014 1:00 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (25 responses)

> When you have priests being threatened with jail for refusing to perform gay marriages (which we now have had happen), things have gone way too far.
When we have commercial companies claiming to be religious organizations - things have gone way too far.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 28, 2014 1:09 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (24 responses)

> When we have commercial companies claiming to be religious organizations - things have gone way too far.

Given that you also want to force companies to jump through all sorts of hoops to become 'non-commercial', I don't see how you can reasonably block religious commercial companies.

I am curious as to what companies you think are such offenders here. I'm guessing HobbyLobby but there is a big difference between saying that a company is "a religious company" and allowing the owner of the company freedom of religion in deciding how to spend their money.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 28, 2014 1:13 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

> Given that you also want to force companies to jump through all sorts of hoops to become 'non-commercial'
That's your problem, if you wish to discriminate people.

> I am curious as to what companies you think are such offenders here.
The marriage chapel forced to allow gay wedding (note: no priests were required to perform rites). It's a commercial company that technically rents the building for weddings.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 28, 2014 1:40 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (22 responses)

>I'm guessing HobbyLobby but there is a big difference between saying that a company is "a religious company" and allowing the owner of the company freedom of religion in deciding how to spend their money.

Sure. Let's consider their religion and their investments then.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/04/hobby-lobby-r...

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 28, 2014 2:36 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (21 responses)

The point of this is to NOT be judging others the way you want to do.

First off, I don't demand perfection in people, and since organizations are made of many people, I sure don't demand perfection or even perfect consistency in any substantial organization.

The fact that their retirement fund invested in a company that does things you think they should hate could be for a number of reasons, including that the people doing the investing don't run every decision past the people who care more about the details, or the fact that the company they are investing in may be doing enough things they like for them to be willing to put up with the things that they don't like.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 28, 2014 2:45 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (2 responses)

>The point of this is to NOT be judging others the way you want to do.

No. I am judging them by their own criteria. They fail to meet it with it with any consistency even after it has been pointed out to them. So that makes me question the sincerity of their claims. This is a question of sheer hypocrisy. Not of perfection.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 28, 2014 7:29 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

as I said, in the real world organizations do many things, some of which you like, some of which you may object to. Just because a company does something that you object to doesn't mean that you should have no dealings or investments with the company, you need to decide if the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

And even if they don't, and you do decide to stop investing in that company, it's not something to implement quickly. If you have a large investment and announce that you are not going to do business with them and sell off your interest in them, you will loose your shirt as people pay you less than the stock is worth as you sell rapidly. So the right thing to do for your investors (the retirement account) is to do nothing in the short term, and in the longer term shift your money gradually away.

the world is not black-and-white.

All that being said, I haven't followed the details of this case, so I don't know much about it. But then again, nobody outside of that company really knows what their criteria is either. You may very well be misunderstanding their criteria when you declare that they are being hypcritical. Their lawsuit wasn't to have them stop paying for all forms of birth control, only about 4 out of 50.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 28, 2014 10:59 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

That's a bunch of flimsy excuses. They went to court claiming that plan b and iud were equivalent to abortion and by any definition most of them that they refused to cover are not. They were also caught investing in the same type of companies doing exclusively the things they claimed they were against. When asked about it they did nothing. Some women cannot use other forms of birth control and they are copaying for premium for health insurance to get the best they can. By being ignorant and hypocritical they have outed themselves.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 28, 2014 3:20 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (17 responses)

But judging spouses of others, that's OK?

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 28, 2014 7:23 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (16 responses)

it's redefining what marriage means, that's not just judging spouses

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 28, 2014 8:07 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

Does marriage redefinition affect you in any way?

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 28, 2014 8:51 UTC (Tue) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link] (2 responses)

Allowing marriage between white people and non-white people to marry redefined marriage.

Fixing something that is imperfect isn't a bad thing. As a software developer you should know that :)

Just saying.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 28, 2014 11:58 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

That's been going on for centuries, it may have been frowned upon for a short (at least in the historical sense) time, but it wasn't a big change.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 28, 2014 12:39 UTC (Tue) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link]

This isn't a big change either.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 28, 2014 11:33 UTC (Tue) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (11 responses)

So here's my problem with the "redefining marriage" argument (at least based on religious traditions): if this is true, the government should *never* have given *any* benefits for "marriage". It should have dealt with "civil unions" and if you want to tag your church along with it to call it "marriage", fine, but the government can't give extra benefits exclusively to those who didn't the extra bits for a "marriage" (whatever they may be). However, it is called "marriage" on the books and as such, you can't have your word and then still exclude people from it at the government level. Unless you can prod Congress to actually do anything. In which case, you're some kind of superhero (maybe DC should make a Paper Mover hero…).

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 28, 2014 11:50 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (10 responses)

Thank you for a calm response. I could debate this with you, but this tangent has gone on too long anyway.

I will point out that California had "Civil Unions" on the books with equal rights and that wasn't considered good enough, so that wasn't the solution.

Trying to get back on topic here. The issue isn't that people disagree, the issue is if they can disagree one some points without calling for the other person to be suppressed or thrown out.

Punishing people for holding the 'wrong' opinions, even if they aren't taking actions on those opinions, was wrong when it was McCarthy doing it on the right, and it's equally wrong when it's the various groups on the left doing it.

Everyone needs to accept the idea that people who disagree with them aren't evil or insane, they can have reasons to disagree with you. If you can discuss the issue and the reasons one of you can convince the other they are wrong, or you can agree to disagree and still work together. But when it gets to the point of "I think that you think X, so you should be ignored forever" no further progress can be made.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 28, 2014 13:05 UTC (Tue) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (9 responses)

> I will point out that California had "Civil Unions" on the books with equal rights and that wasn't considered good enough

Most states do, but the rights are not always the same. So just because California may have had it right, if you move to, say, Montana, they wouldn't recognize you because you're not "married". Since Californians have ~zero say in Montana directly, they can change it from California's side at least.

Back on track(ish):

I do agree with you that *punishing* people for their opinions and beliefs is bad, but if the employees are not happy with their CEO, then their CEO should probably concede something (in this specific case, maybe he should have been allowed to continue but as soon as any actions pertaining to the company occurred which went along those lines, fired on the spot, but that's not how it worked out).

My view is that you can say whatever you want, but I still have the right to publicly shame you for what you're saying. Your argument(s) seems to be closer to "say what you want" without recognizing that there may be social consequences to those words. "With great power, comes great responsibility." If you're put into a position of power, it is your responsibility to keep your personal beliefs separate from your job. Maybe Eich could have done it, maybe not, but given the examples we have crawling around in DC and other political fora, I can at least understand a knee-jerk reaction (if not why it doesn't seem to apply so strongly to them).

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 28, 2014 21:25 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (8 responses)

remember that for Eich, the issue wasn't any actions or statements he made at work, it was people noticing his name on the public records of doners. This was noticed and known inside Mozilla years before he became CEO and as an organization they apparently had accepted that he could work with them. It was the outcry from people outside the organization who had never dealt with him that caused him to be fired.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 29, 2014 5:55 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (6 responses)

There was, IIRC, also unease at the Mozilla Foundation (the non profit one if I got the names mixed up). Either way, the CEO is a public figure for the company and any bad PR attracted because of them is unlikely to be ignored (whether right or wrong). Also, didn't he resign? It's not like he saw no issue at all (again, AFAIR). I just wish that people were as interested on digging up facts on other companies and the webs they weave as they seemed to be doing here (and if it traces back to a single or handful of people, so be it; more information here is better than none and the corporate veil should not be as opaque as it is today).

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 29, 2014 17:39 UTC (Wed) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (5 responses)

"He resigned" is a weak argument, Richard Nixon resigned. Margaret Thatcher resigned. Although described as voluntary a "resignation" is often something that was essentially forced on the person, either explicitly ("quit or we'll fire you") or implicitly ("we're counting on you to do the right thing here").

It's easier to feel sorry for a minimum wage employee fired for public relations reasons than a senior executive but the direct outcome is the same, someone lost their job because enough people, or loud enough people demanded it.

"They did a thing I don't like, so I want nasty things to happen to them" is revenge. Revenge is not a healthy or productive instinct, but then, that's the topic of this whole thread, so it shouldn't be a surprise.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 29, 2014 17:44 UTC (Wed) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link] (3 responses)

"I don't trust that person to supervise people they are known to be biased against" is a very different thing than "I want nasty things to happen to that person".

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 29, 2014 18:29 UTC (Wed) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (2 responses)

I don't think there's much point in keeping up the pretence after this particular cat is out of the bag. People make excuses yes, so very many excuses, but what they actually wanted is revenge. And they got it, and sure enough they were content.

I care about outcomes, that's what I do. So revenge doesn't work for me. You nailed the guy to a cross? That's great, did it actually help? No? Well that's a bunch of time you wasted and one more corpse.

We used to do that a lot in safety critical jobs. Train crash? Find out if the driver lived and if so fire him. Tell everybody he's incompetent and may have been drunk. Now the papers are distracted by a simple easy to understand bad guy story (also his children will probably starve). Meanwhile, we'll continue to run railways the same as before. Huh, another train crash. Well, you know the drill, fire the driver.

But it turns out you can investigate the actual causes, work out how to prevent them and solve the problem instead. Newspapers don't like this approach, because instead of an instant bad guy to demonise they have to wait a year to digest a sixty page report that says basically "A lot of things went wrong" and then painstakingly lists them. That's not a good story! But it is a good way to improve, and it saved a huge number of lives over the last century or so.

If you _really_ thought the problem here was that an executive might be supervising people they were biased against there were lots of sensible options for what to do about that. Options with a real lasting benefit to Mozilla employees (or if mandated more widely, all employees). But that is not what the people who forced that resignation wanted. They wanted revenge, and they got it.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 30, 2014 16:27 UTC (Thu) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (1 responses)

There's really no comparison between some poor faceless train driver working for a railway, and the CEO -- the public face -- of a non-profit corporation that justifies its whole existence by claiming to defend principles of openness and inclusivity. Mozilla's whole existence depends on people trusting Mozilla to have their back. Brendan's initial sin was giving the impression that he wasn't trustworthy in this respect; his mortal sin was that after the PR mess started, he completely and utterly failed to take any actions whatsoever to respond and reassure people. Very talented programmer, sure, but the whole situation, and his lack of handling it, made clear that he was simply unqualified for a CEO position.

This has all been explained many times, of course, so if you want to keep claiming that everyone who disagreed with you was acting out of pure malice then I guess it probably won't stop you...

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 30, 2014 18:11 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

I assure you a mere employee chosen to be the scapegoat and sate the public's desire for revenge doesn't remain faceless for long. You would probably recognise the face of Francesco Schettino even if you don't live in Italy. Schettino will likely get a jail sentence for his role in the Costa Concordia disaster. But do not be fooled, Schettino while culpable is not the problem, sending this man to jail saves not one single life, it's purely society's retribution.

Firstly let's briefly tackle a purely technical mistake. Brendan was CEO of Mozilla Corporation, not Mozilla Foundation. The corporation is a for-profit, and only its owner the foundation is a non-profit. The corporation hires most of Mozilla's employees and always has undertaken activities that don't contribute to "principles of openness" and of course most of their income is from Google, in exchange for ensuring that the 99% of users who never change their defaults will visit Google's search engine and other properties.

Anyway, so you claim the problem was that Brendan couldn't handle this "PR mess" and this (even though it looks exactly like the others) is not an excuse but instead a /real/ reason why he just had to go.

That seems fine, right? Except, if you fail one component for its inability to pass a new test you made up, it's weird if you then subsequently just never use that test on any other components. That makes it pretty obvious that your real motivation was the failure of that component, not setting a higher standard. So, this new excuse doesn't fly because there was no effort to create a "PR mess" for Chris Beard and see how he'd fare nor for the equally important Mitchell Baker.

In fact Chris and Mitchell can keep their jobs because there isn't a powerful and organised political group trying to get them fired. They probably feel a little bit less secure knowing (from Brendan's experience) that if they piss off the wrong people they're history but for now they are safe.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 29, 2014 17:51 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

> It's easier to feel sorry for a minimum wage employee fired for public relations reasons than a senior executive but the direct outcome is the same, someone lost their job because enough people, or loud enough people demanded it.

And there's zero difference in how easily these people a) are in need of a job for financial stability and b) can find a new job? Sure, the *direct* outcome is the same, but the collateral damage is *far* worse in the first case.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 29, 2014 16:24 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

You don't remember the public ouctry in 2012?? It made the newspapers. But, since it wasn't terribly relevant to his role as CTO, everybody decided they could continue to work with him, and we all went back to life as usual.

It was only when he was made CEO that people couldn't accept it. Now gay people will be working FOR him, not just WITH him. It's a big difference. If you put yourself in their positions, can you understand the problem?

As an aside, why do you continue to say he got fired? Mozilla statements, newspaper articles, Eich himself, nobody else is saying that.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 28, 2014 8:56 UTC (Tue) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link]

I'm curious:

*who* in this discussion (other than you) has said anything about "anyone who supported or voted for it deserves to loose[sic] their job"?

As far as the systemd vs non-systemd discussion goes, the difference between the two cases you state, is that the attacks on LP are personal (including death threats).

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 28, 2014 10:40 UTC (Tue) by nye (subscriber, #51576) [Link] (2 responses)

>this depiction of the two shows your bias. Someone else may view the two as resisting inventing new rights vs acts of blasphemy.

I can't believe you would be so brazen as to actually come out and say that. It's *appalling* that that kind of statement would be allowed on LWN. Anywhere else, that would be seen as obviously crossing the line, but here of course low subscriber numbers are sacrosanct.

This post makes it pretty clear: you are a great symptom of the sickness in our community.

You want to silence people from speaking out against those who are oppressing them, because you believe that the *actions* of a bigot are more important to protect than the *words* of an oppressed minority.

You are desperately scrambling to come up with some ideology to support your bigotry, but unable to come up with anything consistent because fundamentally your goal is to restrict people's freedom, and you're not willing to come out and admit that.

A community that supports toxic elements like you - even tacitly - is one that can never be healed.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 28, 2014 11:55 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

Ever hear the phrase "I disagree with what you are saying, but I'll fight to the death for you're right to say it"?

Freedom of speech requires that people be willing to say things that others disagree with. If it wasn't for that very freedom, the Civil Rights movement would have failed miserably.

In this case you are not even condemning me for a view I hold, but for a view that I point out some people do hold.

In any case, this tangent has gone on too long already, and Goodwin has been triggered a while ago. So I am going to try and let this tangent die off.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Nov 1, 2014 3:53 UTC (Sat) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link]

Your comment is truly amazing. Literally, for every assertion you made, the opposite is true. If I didn't know that you were being serious, it would seem like a caricature of a rabid leftist. You're not even able to understand the difference between taking a position and saying that some other people hold such a position.

I just wish you could recognize your own hypocrisy. You call him toxic for his reasonable comments, being the epitome of the very toxicity you decry. Demonization is your modus operandi, which you irrationally employ in lieu of calm, reasonable arguments. It's like you have been brainwashed by the radical left.

You're calling good evil and evil good. Your hatred and bigotry are blinding you to the truth. I pray that your heart and mind will be opened, that you will diligently seek the truth above all else.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 29, 2014 4:57 UTC (Wed) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link] (30 responses)

> You think that a serious legal attempt to remove the civil rights of a minority group you dislike is merely "disrespect", on the same level as erecting a piece of artwork in questionable taste?

Such a common myth about gay marriage in the above statement.

"Marriage" has nothing to do with civil rights.

The legal form of marriage, which is completely separate from the religious meanings, provides a default basket of legalities such as hospital visitation, tax writeoffs, powers of attorney, asset sharing, etc.

But refusing to grant legal marriage is not a civil rights violation.

If it was, then marriage would automatically be allowed between close family members and multiple people. Which I have heard people are working on, not that I think they'll succeed. And really if single people aren't allowed to marry themselves and be granted the same rights as married people then their civil rights would be violated too. If it was a civil rights issue.

Its a word definition problem.

So basically opposing Gay Marriage is about equal to opposing changes in the legal definition of "doctor patient confidentiality" or the definition of "search."

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 29, 2014 5:28 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

Marriage between siblings is possible if they are not related genetically (i.e. if one of them is adopted). It would be interesting to hear about an outcome of a case about marriage between two same-sex siblings...

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 29, 2014 16:39 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (28 responses)

> hospital visitation, tax writeoffs, powers of attorney, asset sharing, etc.

You don't think these are important to people who may have been together for decades but then are not allowed to sit by their partner's deathbed or make decisions on their behalf in such an instance because they're not "married"? Like I said earlier, the first problem was conflating the term "marriage" with these things, but since no one is going to get legislatures to amend everything on the books to say "civil union", expanding "marriage" is the simpler path.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 29, 2014 19:52 UTC (Wed) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link] (27 responses)

> You don't think these are important to people who may have been together for decades but then are not allowed to sit by their partner's deathbed or make decisions on their behalf in such an instance because they're not "married"?

Sure it is important. But come on, write that you agree with me that if it is a civil rights violation to deny marriage for LGBT so they can get these things, then it is equally a violation to deny it to someone else because he can't marry his mother.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 29, 2014 20:31 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (2 responses)

Except for tax writeoffs and asset sharing, of those explictly listed here, you get the rights by virtue of being family already (though power of attorney is only if no one else has already taken the position…such as a spouse). Arguably, your mother already got tax writeoffs via the tax refunds for children and asset sharing is already there if you're each other's beneficiaries (and there's no real base to fight such a declaration as there might be between family and "lifetime partners" over assets).

Anyways, I don't see any obvious reason to deny it out-of-hand from a legal viewpoint.

However, this does make me think of an interesting scenario. Since corporations are legal people now and are basically treated easier when they break laws (in relative terms, not absolute), how long until someone tries to marry their business? Does this mean that corporate takeovers are slavery? I wonder if any pioneering lawyer would be willing to try such an argument.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 30, 2014 18:57 UTC (Thu) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link] (1 responses)

> Since corporations are legal people now

If you are referring to the Citizens United US Supreme Court decision, this is another myth. You should actually read the decision. It isn't horribly long and is very interesting.

The way that *I* read it, the *people* in charge of corporations cannot have their legal rights restricted merely because they are using corporate assets to exercise those rights. This includes freedom of speech.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 30, 2014 20:53 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

> The way that *I* read it, the *people* in charge of corporations cannot have their legal rights restricted merely because they are using corporate assets to exercise those rights. This includes freedom of speech.
How is that materially different from: "Corporations are legal people now"?

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 29, 2014 21:15 UTC (Wed) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link] (23 responses)

Not being able to marry parents or siblings is closely tied to the fact that incest is illegal, mainly due to the incestuous relationships resulting in offspring posing high risks of birth defects, etc., but also because of the parent-child power imbalance.

So no, the situations are by no means comparable (I'm at least glad you didn't bring up the good old slippery slope strawman "next people will wanna marry their pets!").

While prohibiting incestuous marriage has legal reasons, LGBT relationships are none such. In some countries being outside the heteronorm is illegal, but luckily that is not the case here. Hence blocking LGBT couples from equal legal protection and benefits *IS* discrimination.

I leave it up to you to decide whether discriminating against people solely based on their sexual orientation is a violation of their civil rights. Personally I think it is, just like I think discriminating against people based on their gender, colour of skin, etc.

PS: Just in case you intend to drag up the polygamy strawman -- I'm not opposed to that either on a conceptual level, though I do believe that it is fraught with legal complexities that would take a lot of thinking to solve.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 29, 2014 22:05 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (22 responses)

This is still off topic, but since this branch of the discussion is remaining civil, I'll make another comment here.

> Not being able to marry parents or siblings is closely tied to the fact that incest is illegal, mainly due to the incestuous relationships resulting in offspring posing high risks of birth defects, etc., but also because of the parent-child power imbalance.

And this gets to the real reasons for government imposed Marriage laws.

They are intended to protect Women and Children and encourage the formation of a healthy next generation.

Now, the argument I've heard made that childless couples shouldn't get Government Marriage benefits has a little truth to it, but since it's really hard to make a legal distinction between a couple trying to have children and one that isn't (or can't), it seems a very reasonable thing to let this minor distortion to the system slip through (and a substantial number of couples that "aren't intending" to have kids end up doing so anyway)

Marriage can't just be devolved to a contract between willing adults because the children that come along don't have a chance to agree or influence the contract.

Please explain how Gay Marriage helps produce a next generation and so deserves to be added to the subset of legal groupings.

As others have noted, it's not enough to be deeply committed to someone for years in the case of Incest and Polygamy, what makes Gay Marriage so much better? Especially, why does this get elevated to the status of a "Civil Right" for these people, but not for other combinations?

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 30, 2014 16:03 UTC (Thu) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (21 responses)

> They are intended to protect Women and Children and encourage the formation of a healthy next generation.

This is a simplified fantasy you made up to make a convenient argument; reality is more complicated. If this were really the sole and only purpose of legal marriage, then why is it that marriage e.g. gives spouses special rights to decide on medical care for each other? Marriage has a lot of complicated cultural, social, and legal aspects; child-care is just one piece of it.

Even accepting this for the sake of argument though, it doesn't help your position at all because:

> Please explain how Gay Marriage helps produce a next generation and so deserves to be added to the subset of legal groupings.

Same-sex couples have kids all the time. It's totally normal; it happens every day. And those kids do totally fine, but better if their parents can be legally considered their parents, and get the various advantages that are granted to married mixed-sex couples.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 30, 2014 17:14 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (13 responses)

> Same-sex couples have kids all the time. It's totally normal; it happens every day.

They adopt or they they are commuting adultery, biologically same sex couples are not going to have children of their own.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 30, 2014 17:22 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (11 responses)

> They adopt or they they are commuting adultery, biologically same sex couples are not going to have children of their own.

Heterosexual couples adopt etc all the time too. I don't see how the method of conception is relevant to the health or well being of a children. What is more important is how they are treated after they are born.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 30, 2014 17:35 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (10 responses)

adoptions and childless couples are statistically irrelevant when it comes to producing the next generation.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 30, 2014 17:49 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

Are you being stubborn or desperate here? Let's try something similar:

> Linux on the desktop is statistically irrelevant when it comes to modern computing.

What point are you trying to prove?

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 30, 2014 17:50 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (8 responses)

I don't see what your point is. If they are irrelevant according to you why are you against it?

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 31, 2014 0:21 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (7 responses)

children are not created by a Gay Marriage (this is a fact of nature, not opinion) as such, Gay couples are not any more relevant to creating the next generation than singles are.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 31, 2014 1:10 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

I don't buy that they are irrelevant. They might not be biologically creating them but they adopt them, do artificial insemination etc and help them grow into adults just like many hetrosexual couples do and therefore are in part responsible for the next generation. So if such straight couples can marry, there is no particular reason you have provided to deny that right to gay couples.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 31, 2014 10:01 UTC (Fri) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link] (5 responses)

I know infertile heterosexual married couples.
I know heterosexual married couples that just don't *WANT* to have children.
I know heterosexual couples who have no common children, just children from a previous marriage.
I actually don't know any heterosexual couples that have children through insemination, but there are plenty.
I know heterosexual couples who have adoptive children.

All of these are apply equally to your "not any more relevant to creating the next generation than singles are", yet they are all entitled to get married.

How about bisexuals, btw? A heterosexual person having a child before getting married to another person than the other parent and then no more children after is no different than a bisexual person having a child before getting married and then getting married to another person after.

No matter how you put it, unless you explicitly tie marriage to childbearing (say through not allowing marriage until birth, or having mandatory divorces after a certain time limit without a child) -- which would be a horrible thing indeed -- then you *ARE* discriminating against non-heterosexuals.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 31, 2014 11:09 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (4 responses)

This is why I used the term 'statisticly' earlier in the thread.

Yes, childless couples are 'cheating the system', but in this case perfection is very definitely the enemy of good enough. And many of the couples that intend to be childless end up having children.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 31, 2014 11:51 UTC (Fri) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link] (3 responses)

http://www.stat.fi/til/perh/2011/02/perh_2011_02_2012-11-...

"The commonest family type in Finland is still a married couple without children, making up 36 per cent of all families in 2011."

Of course that includes couples that have not *YET* had children (but will some time in the future), but it's still far from just a statistical blip.

Still if you accept childless heterosexual couples (something that according to you is a statistical blip), why don't you accept the statistical blip that is childless non-heterosexual couples?

Let's put it succinctly: *WHAT* are the negative consequences do you think equal marriage rights will cause and *WHY* do you consider them so important that discrimination would be justified?

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 31, 2014 12:12 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (2 responses)

I hate to say it, but...this discussion has wandered pretty far afield. Could it maybe be about time to wind it down or to find a more appropriate forum for it? Thanks.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 31, 2014 20:06 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

Can you create a forum for such "spillover" threads which is well-insulated from LWN? So that such discussions could be painlessly moved there.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 31, 2014 20:15 UTC (Fri) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

You can get this kind of discussion anywhere, if you wanted to cater to LWN readers you or I could pretty easily create our own lwn-lounge.net domain and run a forum there as an unofficial and separate thing, it just wouldn't have LWN authentication data.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 30, 2014 17:26 UTC (Thu) by joncbender (guest, #82805) [Link]

Or they have children from a previous relationship, from a surrogate, artificial insemination, etc.

the method doesn't matter, unless you are trying to argue that both the child and parents are less deserving of legal rights and protections.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 30, 2014 18:23 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (4 responses)

Indeed, and it's evident that state marriage laws on the whole weren't really intended as any sort of system for encouraging good child-care or anything like that. One of the circuit court decisions does a nice job of skewering that assertion, which is often made by anti-gay-marriage people, I will see if I can find it (or perhaps someone else will post it first).

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 30, 2014 19:00 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (3 responses)

Here we go, Posner's decision against Indiana and Wisconsin, both of which tried to argue their marriage laws are about childcare even though they have a bunch of special cases in their marriage law for couples that can't conceive and are unlikely to adopt.

http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=D...

I think this was the best judicial decision I read in October (it was written in September but didn't come to my attention until earlier this month). It's a sharp contrast to Windsor (I know gay marriage advocates were happy to take Windsor as a "win" but it's _terrible_ law). Let's hope that people citing judicial decisions on this topic in fifty years are quoting Posner and not Kennedy (I think we can safely assume they won't cite Scalia).

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 31, 2014 0:33 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (2 responses)

While I have great respect for Judge Posner, and think that he is doing great work on clarifying technology related issues. In this field I think he is wrong and was looking to justify a position he reached for other reasons.

Not all legal cases come out the way they should, even the Supreme Court makes some disastrously bad decisions at times (The Dread Scott decision is a good example), and the bad decisions are usually nto clear immediately (if they were very clear, the Judges wouldn't make them)

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 31, 2014 8:40 UTC (Fri) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

_Dred_ Scott http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford

On the sickness of our community

Posted Nov 1, 2014 2:12 UTC (Sat) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

Now I have a bit more time to engage with the substance rather than the typo.

The nice thing that many people miss about judicial decisions is that the judge is expected not just to say "Bloggs wins" but how and why. So it's not really enough to just insist Posner was wrong, you'd have to tease out why exactly and I appreciate that LWN is really no place to do that.

I do invite you to attempt this somewhere else though.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 31, 2014 0:27 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

> This is a simplified fantasy you made up to make a convenient argument; reality is more complicated. If this were really the sole and only purpose of legal marriage, then why is it that marriage e.g. gives spouses special rights to decide on medical care for each other?

Purely pragmatic reasons, it's much easier to incorporate this into an existing structure than to require that all couples take additional legal actions. Remember that the law (at least in many places) recognizes Common Law Marriages, which basically boil down to "if you act like you are married, you will get treated as if you are married"

And this sort of visitation/medical care access has never been something that opponents of Gay Marriage have been opposed to.

> Marriage has a lot of complicated cultural, social, and legal aspects; child-care is just one piece of it.

I will agree with this statement. However I think that the child-care and child-creation aspects are what drive the rest of it.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 31, 2014 0:59 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

to be clear, I am not saying that this is the conscious reason that all the government support for marriage has evolved, but I'm sure it is the conscious reason for some of the portions (laws regarding incest or adultry for example) and all of the policies seem to make the most sense when viewed from this lens, so I believe that it's been an unconscious reason for this.