Queer people aren't causes, they're people. Imagine I worked on the Brave browser, and in my personal time maintained a website aimed at discouraging personal relationships with him. This would probably make me difficult to work with, despite my personal views not impacting the quality of my work. You might say these examples aren't one-to-one, and you're right. My example doesn't actually push any legislation forbidding him from having a relationship with a consenting person, and it costs a hell of a lot less than $1000.

I dunno. Public Defenders (and defense attorneys in general, but PDs don't get oodles of cash) have to work with some pretty reprehensible people sometimes.

I used to live in Bahrain while my wife worked in oil and gas, and a lot of her colleagues had some... pretty different... views from us but we still got along. Hell, the country itself has a pretty significant Sunni / Shia divide, with employees being one or the other and they managed to work with each other just fine.

I think in general people should be able to work with others that they have significant differences in opinion with. Now, in tech, we've been privileged to be in a seller's (of labor) market, where we can exercise some selectivity in where we work, so it's certainly a headwind in hiring if the CEO is undesirable (for whatever reason), but plenty of people still will for the cause or the pay or whatever. You just have to balance whether the hiring problems the CEO may or may not cause are worth whatever else they bring to the table.

That's kind of the point of PDs, though. There's nothing similar in the corporate context.

That's the point. You don't need an alignment of beliefs to work together.

That's exactly my point. They are able to do their job despite not believing in their clients, which for public defenders even means trying to let their clients go free, which is a fair bit further than is asked of a tech employee who disagrees with their CEO.

Public Defenders do not have a choice at who they defend.

If you were on a hiring committee, and your otherwise-qualified-candidate had a political opinion you objected to in this way, perhaps with a similar donation, would you refuse to hire them?

Depends what you mean by “political opinion”.

If it’s about government fiscal policy, probably not. If it’s more along the lines of discriminating against or undermining people’s rights, then yeah I would refuse to hire them.

Perhaps we need stronger laws against discrimination then.

If you were about to hire a candidate and then found out that they donate regularly to the “Arrest kbelder and deport them to El Salvador” fund, would you hire them?

Is that a no?

It’s easy to claim neutrality when it’s other people being oppressed

Ok. I actually think you ought to be able to refuse to hire somebody you disagree with like that. I think you would be very wrong in doing so, though.

Would it be wrong to refuse to hire a neonazi? What kind of people do you think your organization will attract if you start hiring neonazis?

Ones that are sane enough not to bring culture war drama to the office.

I guess “kill all jews” is culture war drama now

Marriages aren't people. And you probably unknowingly depend on a lot of people that despise many things you consider part of your identity. Touch grass and let people have opinions different from your own.

It's not really possible to do that when the opposing beliefs are so fundamental. Mozilla had, and has, a lot of LGBT staff.

How could you expect those staff to work under and trust a CEO opposed to their very existence as equal members of society?

Ive worked with Catholics and my views on sola scriptura and the authority of the Pope never came up once. Ive worked with Muslims, and it was never an issue. Ive worked with Hindus. Ive worked with Chinese, Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshis, Nigerians, Brazilians, Kenyans, Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Ghanans, Mexicans, and many other nationalities. I have been on many teams and in my companies with a combinatorial explosion of fundamentally incompatible beliefs.

So yes I do expect staff to work under a ceo that is opposed to gay marriage, an idea that I would bet globally has a less than 50% popular support.

Have you donated to anti-Muslim, anti-Christian etc. platforms in a public fashion while working with them? Because you would've found quite quickly how that changes the interactions.

I don't mind working with someone who has incompatible views with me, but I'd be quite unhappy working with someone who was actively working on undermining my rights.

That depends. I have donated to Religious missionary work publicly, that could be seen by an extremist of any other religion who sees this as a zero sum game as anti their religion. But I don't bring this up in work because that is uncouth and not what my job is about, and would expect the same from co-workers. Eich also didn't donate publicly, this was dug up and then foisted upon him. If someone were to dig through records they could find my donations and party affiliations, which is what they did to him. He was being professional, they were the ones that were taking his private views and forcing them into the public sphere.

> taking his private views and forcing them into the public sphere

Donations in an effort to change the law are fundamentally a public action, whether or not the government requires the fact of your donation to be publicly disclosed. Seeking to use the law to hurt people is not a private view.

What's so fundamental about marriage?

I don't think childless couples (of any gender) should get any societal advantages yet I have no problem working with people that disagree. Why has everything to be black-or-white, left-or-right, with us or against us? That's not a productive way to think about others.

If there's nothing fundamental about marriage and it's just some weird coliving arrangement, then why ban it for only some groups in the first place? Nothing productive or even rational about it.

Why is the reaction seen as irrational or immature but not the action that triggered it?

It has to be us vs against us because that's what law is all about -- outlawing certain actions.

It's one thing to believe as you do, it's quite another to push for legislation that would (in your example) deny childless couples societal advantages, whatever that actually means.

If you're not in favor of a-or-b arguments the answer is to allow a and b, eh?

In a liberal context, marriage means nothing except for being a symbol of a union between two people. But all rules, obligations and rights that make marriage a meaningful institution are rooted in religion, and are hence not always respected outside of religion.

You could argue that there are laws that only apply to married couples, and that THAT brings meaning to marriage. But:

Firstly, generally speaking, even the most important features of a marriage are not protected by law, most notably: fidelity. So the law is disjoint from what's traditionally considered to be obligations within marriage. That leaves the legal definition at the whims of contemporary polititians. Therefore, law cannot assign the word "marriage" any consistent meaning throughout time.

Secondly, to my limited knowledge, the line between a married couple and two people living together is increasingly getting blurred by laws that apply marriage legal obligations even to non-married couples if they have lived together for long enough. It suggests that law-makers do not consider a ceremony and a "marriage" announcement to be what should really activate these laws, but rather other factors. Although, they seem to acknowledge that an announcement of a marriage implies the factors needed to activate these laws. If that makes sense...

So marriage is inherently a religious institution that in a religious context comes with rules, obligations and rights. Hence why people who take religion seriously will find it offensive that somebody that completely disregards these rules calls themselves married.

So you're also against Atheist Marriage, then?

Of course not.

For one, being childless is a choice (mostly, especially since adoption is a possibility). It's indeed OK to have different opinions for what how laws apply differently to people based on their choices. Being gay is not a choice, it is rather similar to race/ethnic background, and it's generally not OK to have laws that treat people differently based on something like that. I'm sure there are more nuances to add, but it seems to me that makes it quite a different situation.

I don't think everyone agrees that being gay is not a choice. There are no outward physical indicators of a person's sexual orientation. It's entirely behavorial and therefore plausibly under the conscious control of the person. Now, I would agree that a person doesn't choose which gender he is attracted to, but it not something than anyone else can see and immediately understand as an inborn characteristic.

Clearly being black, or hispanic, or asian, or white are physical characteristics. Far fewer people would argue that there is any element of choice in that.

This is the craziest example of “if I can’t see it, it [might not] exist” I have ever witnessed.

Your thinking applies equally to all people. His donation tries to take away a right from a minority group. They're quite different.

If you think for a moment, you'll realise that it's irrelevant whether marriage is important to you - it's important to many.

So when a person wishes to deny this important institution to a minority, they are creating an out-group and discriminating against them.

By that logic, we can put those discriminators themselves in an out-group and discriminate against them. We can deny them institutions such as directorships. Fair's fair.

It's more than fair - despite what conversion camps want to sell, being queer is an intransigent characteristic. Being a bully is just a choice. Discriminating against bullies is as morally just as discriminating against the incompetent.

Obviously it's fine to campaign against marriage.

What unjust "advantages" do you think childless couples get that you would want to get rid?

Pretty much all of the legal benefits of marriage are contractual, not financial, and come at no cost to the public.

Things like spousal medical rights, a joint estate, etc don't come at the expense of anybody else.

Taxes would be a big one. There are substantial tax benefits to being married.

The tax benefits are sorta oversold.

The main benefits are tax free gifts between partners and filing jointly, both of which seem very reasonable and wouldn't be of value to single people.

The actual tax breaks most people think about are tied to dependents in your household, not marriage.

No, there aren’t. In fact, there was a tax penalty for being married until 2017 TCJA.

> It's not really possible to do that when the opposing beliefs are so fundamental.

Sure it is. I've lived and worked in the Middle East and in China. People do it all the time.

It's basic tolerance, it's not that hard. You do your job and collect your paycheck at the end of the week, same as everyone else.

>It's basic tolerance, it's not that hard.

That's right. To get a bit philosophical, it's interesting to see some people's justifications about how they are right to be intolerant in the ways they want to be, while still believing that they are free-thinking and tolerant. A lot of convoluted arguments are really about keeping one's self-image intact, justifying beliefs that are contradictory but which the person really wants to believe. I think that is a trap that is more dangerous for intelligent people.

For what it's worth, I support and supported gay marriage at the time, but don't think people should be forced out of their job for believing otherwise. Thoughts and words you disagree with should be met with alternative thoughts and words.

Could you summarize this into an argument of your own?

That's kinda my point, this was already argued like 80 years ago.

> Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

"I want to discriminate against others but still claim to be righteous."

Bad-faith putting words into my mouth. Take that shit elsewhere please.

And how many Mozilla were fired while the CEO increased her pay to more than $7M per year?

How can staff members feel trust and been seen as equals when they get fired to make place for someone that is already earning 70x their wage. All while tanking the company to new lows.

Donating any amount of money to prevent people you don't know from marrying each other is a clear sign of disordered thinking. Nothing more or less.

I'd donate to a campaign to ban child marraige, is that disordered?

If you think adults marrying other adults and adults marrying children are in any way equivalent, as you imply, then yes your thinking is deeply disordered.

That's not what he said or implied, he's merely responding to your argument 'Donating any amount of money to prevent people you don't know from marrying each other'. I think you might have a justifiable argument here, but it's not clear at all to me what it is.

I cannot imagine the mental model you're working with if my observation is not crystal clear despite omitting the word "adults" in my initial post. Both your and Y_Y's responses read as bad faith to me, but it could be extraordinary ignorance.

In either case I have no idea how to make it clearer for you. Good luck.

Yes people can and should have differences of opinion but a line is crossed when you openly campaign to eliminate the differences of opinion by curtailing the freedoms of the people you disagree with.

Brendan is the one that crossed a line.

>curtailing the freedoms you disagree with

So pretty much any law that is opposed by someone. Shop lifting shouldn't be legal because there are people who like free stuff. Curltailing the freedom of people who want free stuff improves society by protecting people's property.

Who's rights are gay people impeding on in this analogy?

There doesn't have to be any for my analogy to make sense.

Saying that a law is bad because it prohibits someone from doing something is a position of anarchy.

I didn't say a law was bad.

Okay, I assumed that was meant by "cross a line."

Just because people can get together to work towards a cause while believing in mutually exclusive ideals, that doesn't mean it's the most effective way for people to work together. The ability to do a thing and the ability to do a thing well is a big difference.