I’m not sure I care what they thought, vs. what they did. “The road to hell” and all that.
Gays are nice. They’ve always been nice. But what happens when they’re too nice is they get people who donate $25,000 to take their rights away and claim they’re friends with gays. The gays will understand. I know what’s best for them, after all, they’re nice.
Being nice doesn’t mean they agree with your judgment of them, or naturally accept their second-class status and are willing to let you make decisions about what is best for them, like they’re your children.
So did the donors; under the law, these donations ARE a matter of public record. They should have known.
Around here, the upper limit for anonymous contributions to anything political is $50/person. This provides safety and privacy to the small private donor, the family down the block, nobody needs to know who they gave to, heck, the 5 of them can pool their donations and add up to $250.
Well the blindsided folk I do agree don’t bare as much responsibility, but I do think they had a reasonable duty to find out what their money would be used for. I’d be willing to cede the people who donated before the harassment started and had no reasonable way of knowing they would aren’t hypocrites. Just misguided. The ones after sucks to be them but they should have known.
As for the people who felt harassment of the antiprop 8 rolls was “an unfortunate side effect”. Why shouldn’t their own harassment be an unfortunate side effect too? Surely if they felt it was worth it for other people to be bullied, then they’re okay with being bullied too? Or do these bigots think they’re better then teh gais?
They can dish it out but can’t take it? That makes them nothing but cowards who deserve everything they get.
Aren’t you compelled, whether you like it or not, to pay taxes? It’s not conscious choice. It’s the law. There’s no law saying you have to donate to prop 8. Since we’re in a democracy I would argue that you as a voter bare just as much responsibility for what the government does as your vote is worth, if who you voted for wins.
In my opinion, without the context of this event – say, for example, a year ago – if we had discussed a drill-press operator who had donated $500 to a pro-gay-rights ballot initiative and been subsequently fired by his employer, citing fears of bad publicity for the company – there would have been near-universal howls of outrage and loud calls for legal action to be taken.
In my case, if I’d heard your hypothetical case, I would’ve boycotted the company that fired him. If a company won’t stand by its employees, I won’t stand by the company.
You keep trying to turn this around and convince us that we’re being hypocritical. We’re not. The people who want their donations to support Prop 8 to be anonymous are the ones being hypocritical.
Uh huh. I found a quote earlier somewhat interesting in this regard…
This assumes that the (gay) Steve had a right to win in California - and indeed in employment law there sexual orientation is a protected class. This won’t protect your political activities, mind, but it will complicate matters.
Guess what else, though, is a protected employment class just about everywhere?
Religion.
Just something to mull over while you’re poring over the LDS rolls and advocating boycotts of Sundance because it is in Utah. Your right to do so, but if you screw with someone’s job as a result, they indeed can have a case.
Like I said before, there is a place for these tactics - but they can easily go too far. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out.
I believe that employers should not discriminate for or against their employees on grounds irrelevant to their employment. Some of those grounds are protected by law, e.g., gender, ethnicity, religion; and others are not so well protected, e.g., sexual preference, and political activity. So I’d be outraged, yes, whether the employee was campaigning either for or against Proposition 8.
But I think that employment discrimination like that is quite different from activities such as consumer boycotts of companies. I think it should be completely legal to boycott a company for the political activities of that company. I’m not sure how I defend that distinction up to Bricker’s high standards, but it’s in part because employees tend to have limited rights in an employer-employee relationship, while consumers and companies selling to them are on a more equal basis.
Religious protection has its limits under the law. As recent court decisions have shown, one can’t claim religious protection if you want to marry a minor, nor would religious belief protect you from discriminating against minorities.
Uh huh. Tell me - is gay marriage in California permitted by law right now?
What would you have people do - you tell them a situation is unconstitutional - they go through all the necessary steps to change the constitution to suit their notion of what should be legal and then you start attacking livelihoods?
I’m of the opinion right now that gay marriage is not only inevitable given current trends but also that it won’t be as wrenching to the body politic as some people predict. But that might come about if you convince former opponents to the notion (as, admittedly, I once was) and refrain from making them a more angry enemy.
What I said about backlash is true - and this amendment was itself backlash of a sort. Most people don’t like changes they hate coming from judges they can’t hold accountable. We see rage on this board over Supreme Court decisions all of the time, so this shouldn’t be a mystery. Roe v. Wade was decided so long ago it should be a settled issue, but the manner it was done in large part kept the issue in the political realm.
So there you go. What could have been a nice legislative civil unions bill followed a few years down the line by a marriage bill turned into a massive bloodfeud with little hope of compromise. Not content to eat your cake you had it taken away - wedding cake at that.
I’m not sure I’ve encountered anyone who is “poring over the LDS rolls”, where did you get that idea? And if a boycott is called because Sundance is in Utah (a foolish idea, to my mind, but whatever), are you claiming that someone who might lose their job due to said boycott could bring a suit? Against whom? Where?
I can certainly see calls to boycott a business, as Lightnin’ said, but if this were to happen in an employment at will situation, then anyone screaming for legal action would have been laughed down. As well they should have been. As to howls of outrage, they’re kind of a constant. Just depends on whose ox is being gored. Take this thread as an example.
I have a question. I just looked at the map and found a handful of people in my area who donated to support Prop 8. Some of them just list a name and a date when they donated and others list a company name as well. Did the people who donated have to list a company name or list themselves as unemployed or something or were the people who gave their work information volunteering their company name to be put on the list? I know if I owned a company and my employee wanted to support a cause I would have no problem with it until they started trying to drag me into the issue with them.
Well, for whatever it’s worth, I don’t support donations in any amount being anonymous. I do, however, believe there should be a threshold amount below which the name of your employer is not publicized.
In other words, Steve the drill-press operator isn’t entitled to anonymity if he donates $500 to either side… but since his employer has nothing to do with it, there’s no reason to publicize the empoyer’s name.
Now, it should be required information, in order to assist in discovering strawman contributions… but all things being equal, it shouldn’t be routinely published.
Homosexuals are not given minority status under the law for being gay. Since they are not a protected minority, the government doesn’t care if you discriminate against them or not.
That is, if you’ll remember, one of the ways people went after “Jim Crow” laws in the South. Ever hear of the lunch counter sit ins?
Gays have been pretty reasonable about the whole thing, it seems to me. Some people will not change, unless they’re forced to. The anti-gay marriage folks have also gotten support from the Federal government (DOMA, Bush’s public stance against gay marriage, etc.), the Civil Rights movement had support from the Federal goverment. Clearly, if people stand around and “hope” for things to change, they will not do so at anything faster than a glacial pace.
The same can be said for Civil Rights legislation. I’m sure plenty of the folks bitched about the Federal government interfering in a “states rights” issue.
Sure, if the company, or its owners, take a political position, by all means they deserve whatever praise and/or fallout results. But if the company is a target based on the after-hours actions of its employees, then it’s reasonable to say that the company can protect itself by forbidding its employees to make any political contributions at all, and fire those that don’t comply. A company will likely say, “I don’t want the bigots mad at me for employees that donate to ‘No on 8’ and I don’t want the gays mad at me for employees that donate to ‘Yes on 8,’ so I’ll forbid it all.”
Were the people making contributions required to say who their employer was? I was talking about boycotting a business if the business as such made political contributions: I think that’s fair game. But if an employee makes contributions, or has other political activity, outside the workplace, then that should not be a reason for boycotting the employer. So:
(1) People taking part in political activity should not be required to say who they are employed by – and that list of political contributions should just have name and address.
(2) Employers can reasonably say, “You are free to support any political causes that you like outside working hours and outside the workplace, but take care not to have your poiitical positions associated with us as your employer. So, when you write letters to the editor or make political contributions, don’t identify yourself as an employee of ours.”
A fair point. But to my eyes, it’s in not caring that some people have good intentions that can cause a lot of the problems and anger in response. IOW, what one side does will be taken as a cue by the other side, and I personally would prefer to err on the generous side than not, in the hope that i’ll be treated in the same way by those who disagree.
But for those who think of gays in terms of “I know what’s best for them”, speaking up won’t necessarily help either. A child who who argues a point will just be thought of as precosciously cute, or at worst to have a temper. The best way to address the idea that “I know what’s best” is to be obviously different in thinking, and there we have a problem because the best way to try and get others onside is to highlight the similarities between gay people and straight. I suppose really the linchpin is respect; having gay friends doesn’t mean you respect them if you’re also of the opinion you can understand them completely and happily act contrary to their wishes on the grounds of knowing what’s best for them. I can’t really think of any better ways than to say “Well, no, actually…”, sadly.
That’s fair. I didn’t think of the responsibility to find out what it is your money goes to, which is a good point.
I suppose the general idea would be that by trying to anonymize these processes, they’re aiming to protect not just themselves but also gay people. How do we know they weren’t in favour of anonymous donations even in the cases of gay donaters beforehand? OTOH, it could be they are just wanting to protect themselves, and in this instance that the idea would also protect gay donaters is itself the unfortunate side-effect.
Well, as the popular response goes, if you don’t like it you can always leave (not a perfect answer, truthfully). To the extent that you could avoid paying taxes by moving (even state or townwise, in the U.S…), I don’t think it’s entirely a bad analogy. But there are plenty of examples of supporting the whole when a part of that whole isn’t something you’d support alone. Like I said, i’m not sure in such occasions to what extent someone is a hypocrite; I suppose it probably depends also on whether the particular overall cause is the only one which will gain those good effects or not (that is, there’s no other way but to accept the unfortunate side-effects), which wouldn’t be the case in this instance, presuming there being more than one Prop 8 Yes campaign/support system.