Well let's just fire all Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and Hindus since those religions all traditionally are against homosexuality and also have sexist elements.
Eich wasn't ousted for a belief, he was ousted for directly pushing for the codification of discrimination. There is a far-cry difference between believing something is (a)moral and directly funding an initiative to make your religious-based discrimination part of secular, civil law.
I could argue that anyone who supports any special legal recognition of "marriage" is directly pushing for the codification of discrimination. Many people make the argument that if a man and woman who are romantically involved can get a government marriage license and reap certain benefits, then gays should be able to as well. That obviously makes sense. But why can't two roommates in a plu(a)tonic friendship receive the same benefits?
The prohibition of gay marriage is clearly a double standard. But simply allowing gays to marry doesn't completely resolve the double standard. Either the legal benefits of marriage should be extended to literally all people, or there should be no such legal benefits for any people.
> I could argue that anyone who supports any special legal recognition of "marriage" is directly pushing for the codification of discrimination.
There is a sense in which that is true -- every legal status is, by definition, discrimination in the law.
But then, there is nothing wrong with discrimination, per se, what is wrong is discrimination on bases which do not serve a legitimate public purpose. Which, of course, takes a lot more work to identify than mere discrimination, but then, meaningful distinctions are often harder than meaningless ones. And, so, we end up establishing a series of explicitly suspect bases for discrimination such that we require a higher standard of proof that there is legitimate need being served and no better way to serve it for certain forms of discrimination, because of our experience of them being deployed inappropriately to keep groups powerless rather than to advance some legitimate common interest.
> But why can't two roommates in a plutonic friendship receive the same benefits?
(1) the word you are looking for is probably "platonic", unless this is some kind of friendhip oriented around money, cartoon dogs, deities of the underworld, or dwarf planets.
(2) Generally, law doesn't require a romantic relationship for marriage, it just requires appropriate age (sometimes with exceptions or variations with parental consent), specific gender combinations (except where same-sex marriage is allowed), not already being in a marriage with a different partner, and not being within a certain degree of consanguinity. So, platonic roomates can get married.
> But then, there is nothing wrong with discrimination, per se, what is wrong is discrimination on bases which do not serve a legitimate public purpose.
That's true, but that means it's not sufficient to denounce anti-gay marriage proponents simply because they favor discrimination.
> the word you are looking for is probably "platonic"
Yes, definitely. I actually looked it up to make sure I would spell it correctly, then still proceeded to spell it incorrectly.
> That's true, but that means it's not sufficient to denounce anti-gay marriage proponents simply because they favor discrimination.
In policy debates "discrimination" alone is often used (often on both sides of the debate) as shorthand for "discrimination not justified by a sufficient public purpose". This is fairly widely understood, but its easy to get tripped up over.
Yes, debating the virtues of the specific issue being discussed is what the argument should be. But people often just pull the discrimination card and avoid doing that. You can see that widespread in the HN threads when the Mozilla debates broke out. A lot of people plainly dismissed Eich for supporting discrimination or opposing equal rights, without qualification.
People protested Eich because of his personal actions, not for being a member of any religious or ethnic group. Besides, I personally know Christians and Muslims who not only do not work against gay and feminist rights, but are activists in those areas.
All you're accomplishing here is making yourself look intolerant.
Going to a mosque, church or temple is an action. People usually donate to their religious organisation, and in turn that money may go to advertising traditional relationships or beliefs, and at the very least is money going to an organisation that won't marry gays...
There are many people who are still religious but do not go to a church or temple. There people who do go to church who do not donate. There are churches that are neutral or even supportive on the issues of gay rights. There are also people who don't agree with everything their church does, but feel the good it accomplishes (helping the needy, for example) outweighs the bad.
None of these people, are doing anything close to the same thing as Eich's personal, fully intentional, concentrated contributions directly to the cause of undermining human rights.
It's important to judge people based on their real actions and beliefs instead of generalizing based on stereotypes. That's when we risk getting onto the so-called slippery slope.
If you (not you Mikeb85, the hypothetical and general "You") are trying to remove the legal rights of a segment of the population, and basically trying to make them second class citizens, then don't be surprised if people are gonna want you not to have any power over a group of people (like being the CEO of a multi million business for example).
Doesn't matter if you are Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Atheist or whatever, that is beside the point.
Yes, traditional Buddhist beliefs are quite sexist (many sects believe women must get reincarnated as men before they're able to achieve liberation), and uphold traditional views of marriage.
Edit - have to add though, that Buddhists are generally very tolerant of those of opposing beliefs, and still preach compassion and love above all else.
More misdirection from mikeb85. While it is true that different Buddhism sects had and have various views(including discriminatory) in relation to homosexuality, it is intellectually dishonest to avoid mentioning that Dalai Lama (a most prominent Buddhist spiritual leader) supports gay marriage.
The Dalai Lama is the leader of a single sect (Gelugpa) of a single religion (Vajrayana). There is also Chan, Zen, Pure Land, Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism. The Dalai Lama is hardly representative of all Buddhism...
I think you're confusing culture with religion. (A similar example is female genital mutilation, which is a cultural phenomenon and not a Muslim teaching. IANATheologist.)
