I’m having a tough time feeling really sorry for the artistic director. He has every right to express his opinions and he can donate his own money to whatever political causes he likes, however he also has to accept the fact that in doing so he may involve himself in a real shitstorm. This is obviously an issue which millions of people have very strong feelings about and they think it directly and personally impacts their lives.
So the group directly impacted by Prop 8 (gays) and other folks who aren’t the targets of it but feel very angry about it anyhow decide that they aren’t going to patronize his employer. That’s their right, they can associate with whomever they want and spend their money wherever they want. Is it necessarily the most rational decision on their part? Dunno, but I completely understand their emotional response.
Using the fast-food situation as an example, if I walked into the store and recognized the guy taking my order as secretary of the local Nazi chapter I’d probably take my business elsewhere. I’m Jewish and don’t feel any love for someone who thinks that my grandparents should have been gassed. It’s not hatred for the store or the owner or anyone else there, just a feeling of revulsion and a decision to spend my money someplace else. And yes I might contact the owner and explain my decision.
And how about my hypothetical KBGT radio station guy? I can easily imagine some resident of my hypothetical town saying, “…just a feeling of revulsion and desire to spend my ad money elsewhere when I think about that guy donating money to men who want to put their penises in other men’s rectums…”
Should those residents of Bigotville be permitted to take the information they glean from donor lists and use it in this way, too?
I don’t see an enforceable and transparent alternative. People decide where to spend their money on a host of different subjective whims. If you take away the visibility into donations, you create other problems.
Quite a while back (almost 4 years ago, in fact), in a thread about a toy bear that had offended some people, you took a pretty strong stand against the idea of people organizing boycotts against companies whose messages or practices they disagreed with. Here’s the core of your argument in that thread:
I know it might seem rather bizarre that i’m bringing this up almost four years later, but i think it stuck in my mind because i was so surprised you had taken that position. I find that i agree with many (most?) of your positions on this board, but i remembered taking issue with your argument in that thread.
I realize that the two situations are not identical, but i think there’s enough similarity to warrant a question about whether you have changed your mind about the general principle of the legitimacy of boycotts, or whether you think that this particular case is different enough that it does not conflict with your previous position.
I’m also not asking this as a “gotcha” moment. I’ve changed my mind about things on this board, and i’m sure that someone with some time on their hands could find apparently inconsistent statements i’ve made here. I just happened to remember your previous position on boycotts, and thought i’d ask.
Actually, on rereading the thread, i now see that you modified your stance on boycotts somewhat on the second page. I had not previously noticed those later arguments that you made. I’d still be interested to know whether your overall position on boycotts still stands, and where this particular case fits in.
I wasn’t trying to suggest hypocrisy, or even that your previous position (even though i disagreed with it) required an excuse. I was simply curious enough to ask if it might have changed since then.
Okay, speaking seriously, I don’t currently agree with what I wrote in that old thread, and I’m not entirely certain how much I agreed with it at the time. Without going back and re-reading the whole thing, I suspect I got worked up over something in it, and extended my argument beyond what I could have reasonably supported. Certainly, there are any number of reasonable, even noble, reasons to engage in a boycott. There are a lot of ignoble reasons to engage in a boycott. And there’s a metric fuck-ton of stupid reasons. I’ll maintain that boycotting someone over a teddy bear (If I recall the reason for that thread correctly) is in the third category, and I don’t think I’m being particularly radical if I say that people who engaged in that boycott should be shot in the head and their bloated carcasses fed to pigs.* But I would no longer argue that the concept of a boycott is by its nature objectionable or unacceptable.
And denying the vote to women was the societal recognition of the natural superiority of men over women. We managed to get over that one too, eventually.
The fact that something is recognized by society, or accepted by tradition, or is the opinion of the majority, does not confer any inherent legitimacy or truthiness.
Hmm, never heard of it, but I am pretty new to the area., relatively speaking, and actually live in Folsom, which lessens my knowledge of Sacramento.
What bothers me is that I don’t know where the line is. Folks are talking about this emplloyee versus that employee, etc. But what about other considerations? What if he only donated $25? What if he donated no money but did phone banking? What if he had a bumper sticker onhis car?
I understand the sense of betrayal and one can be angry aat an individual. But I am very uncomfortable with the punitive, retibutive nature of some of this. In a democracy we don’t punish someone for their views, we reason , educate, debate, we engage people and we try and convince them of the correct-ness of our side. I am not an advocate of browbeating people into submission.
To be quite honest, I’d trust you to interpret god’s law over most people I know. I don’t always agree with you, but I believe you at least try to think things through completely.
That’s a great compliment, and I thank you sincerely.
And hopefully my tongue-in-cheek commentary about God’s law doesn’t obscure the real point, which is: in a society, we have to have some system of arriving at a decision about how we’re going to do things. Sure, if I were in charge, same-sex marriage would be legal everywhere. But not all my ideas would be greeted with such glee, I feel sure.
And even if they were – even if we all agreed that I’m just so all-fired hip and cool that my reign as philosopher-king is assured… what happens when I die?
It’s true that the law doesn’t confer legitimacy in some utterly pure sense. But it’s the vehicle by which we, as a group, have agreed to make these decisions. So from a practical standpoint… yeah, it kinda DOES mean legitimacy.
Makes perfect sense. There’s no more reason to publicize the name of his employer than to publicize his favorite NFL team or menswear outlet.
Although I recognise that your comment was at least partly a joke, surely you recognise that in America, most of the progress toward true equality came from the [judicial] bench, rather than from the voting booth. Women’s suffrage was, if not unique, then certainly an unusual achievement.
We’ll do what we always do when philosopher-kings die. We’ll prop you up in a chair and toss a coin when we need you to make a decision.
Er… okay, we’ll compile all your wisdom in book form, and appoint a group of elders to interpret your words to apply to any new controversies that crop up. We’ll also go ahead and assume that you recognized that one day we’d invent broadcast television and the internet and the automobile and space shuttle and telephone and gender reassignment surgery and partial-birth abortion. You know, what with you being so wise, and all. It’s only natural that you’d leave us a clue about what to do about all this newfangled stuff. Failing that, we’ll choose something you said at random and mumble about analogous circumstances.
We could call this system “ecclesiastical courts”, or maybe just “courts” for short.
Eh… not sure I agree. The Fourteenth Amendment was a result of the voting booth. (As were the Thirteenth and the Fifteenth!) The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a huge step that came from the voters as well. (“Voters” meaning “the legislatures selected by the voters,” of course). Yes, the judiciary needs to be effective in applying the words the legislature has crafted, but they shouldn’t decide to essentially craft new words out of a desire to help us progress towards true equality. That’s a noble goal, but it’s not what their job is supposed to be.
