Captain Marvelous said:
Secondhand Revenant said:
For the Mozilla CEO, you may think he did nothing immoral but plenty of us disagree. I think trying to deny others equality is immoral.
I agree that CEO's actions in 2008 were immoral, but they certainly don't justify the crap he received last year. Yes, he was an opponent of gay marriage, but he didn't even do anything worth that type of knee-jerk reaction. The guy had to resign because of his personal views. If he intended to conduct in homophobic business practices, I'd understand, but that was not the case. Does he no longer have the right to his own opinions?
Eh, he supported a political position that the majority of Californian voters voted for. Trying to demand someone being unemployable for voting a certain way is contrary for everything our democracy stands for. I mean, maybe if it was some fringe ballot that got less than 5% of the vote but this is clearly a mainstream belief that may still be there considering the law was only overturned by the courts.
We're all sooo enlightened today but the truth of the matter is, if we lived in the 1920's we'd likely have been racists and anti-Semites just like the rest of society back then. That's not immoral so much as ignorant. Immoral is knowing that something is wrong and doing it anyways. We just happen to be in a transition right now and we're fortunate enough to be on the side that sees that something happening is wrong and we're also fortunate enough to not be immoral enough to continue doing it. People who haven't made it to this side yet, they're not necessarily to be blamed for the scales that are still over their eyes.
I think the government shouldn't issue marriage licenses at all. Straight or gay. Before the Civil War it was all commonlaw marriages and licenses were only issued in circumstances where it would have otherwise been illegal (age differences, period of mourning not having passed, waiting period after divorce not having passed, inter-religious marriages). Licenses began to be required to accept the union as a way to prevent interracial marriages and it's a shame that this vestige of bigotry isn't just still there today but is still being used to interfere with a basic human right. The right for two consenting adults to enter into a union. Businesses have more freedom to enter unions than humans do right now and that's stupid considering that the law sees them as citizens. But by the government insisting on legislating "marriage" they have taken ownership of a cultural, religious, and personal term they have no right governing except in cases where consent is key (too young to consent, not mentally sound enough to consent, etc).
What this impacts is what people think when legislation tries to change who can get "married". They think it's the government meddling in their own personal, religious, cultural ceremony even though it's just the government screwing around with civil union law.
So of course people are going to fight back and think they're protecting their heritage. They may not even be homophobic and may want civil unions to have ALL of the same rights as people with marriage licenses. Which further demonstrates that the issue is more in the name for these people. If they're ok with Civil Unions and not with Marriage licenses then it seems to me that their issue is semantics over a term they have certain presuppositions on.
So, like I said. It's more likely a little bit of ignorance on the side of these people and moreso immoral on the side of the government for maintaining a system restricting a basic human right. It's more complex than homophobia or something. For sure, homophobes are in it too, but that's not all there is by any means.
Oh well, and here I remain thinking no one should be able to get marriage licenses and anyone able to consent should be able to enter a union even if it isn't an issue of "love".
