Wow! One generally doesn't expect that out of a corporation, much less from google. I'm very much impressed, and at the same time pleased with their stance.
I do wonder if I would be similarly impressed with it if their stance were the opposite, and whether I would feel comfortable supporting them by using their products and services afterward. Very gutsy decision to come out on a divisive issue like this.
Exactly. Breaking it down, what do they gain? Possibly some good will of the more liberal users. But powerful religious figures could just as easily (and almost certainly will) turn it into something of a pr nightmare that will ultimately affect some of google's users.
I for one am not so impressed by Google's stance, at least not yet.
Is the annoncement coming from Google(US) where it is less risky to take such a stance, or Google worldwide where value driven actions such as these would not be as appreicated in certain regions.
An example already brought up, is Google stance on issues related to China, where they've not been so resilent in keeping with their own values.
If Google wants to play this hand, thats fine, I even hope they take up bigger causes like human rights, and back it up with actions. But a two paragraph blog post simply will not do for me.
I wonder how much shit Sergey is going to take for this. Will it be enough to stop him from doing similar things in the future? The day Google stops being able to do surprisingly/crazy things like this is the beginning of the end.
If I were a shareholder, I wouldn't want my company to be running around taking stands on social issues unrelated to the business of the company. Let Sergey advocate against proposition 8 in his private life if he feels that strongly about it.
Agreed. I even removed my political affiliation from my Facebook profile since I'm "friends" with a number of business contacts there and I'd rather their opinion of our business not be formed by my personal political views.
I think that's my all-time favorite XKCD. I read it whenever I feel that I'm starting to hedge myself in, and it always leads me on to doing things better.
I'd go so far as to state that this comic (and a few things like it, of course, but this is the most memorable) changed the course of my life quite considerably in my senior year, and that that influenced where I am today.
It's not just Sergey's position. It's Google's position. And it is very related to Google, since there are a lot of gay software engineers, this is very important to many of them, and Google wants to attract and keep these employees.
A software engineers sexuality should have nothing to do with his/her work. It's like google asking people to vote for obama because they want to attract and keep black engineers. Bullshit, that's right.
No. Google would have to tell people to stop being racist, not to vote for Obama, for that to make any sense.
Also, my sexuality SHOULD have nothing to do with my work, but if I were affected adversely by this or other similar discriminatory nonsense, it would most likely affect my work. I daresay the same would apply to anyone regardless of sexuality.
Prop 8 is about more than just marriage, it's about what comes with marriage.
If software engineers in gay couples are discriminated against in California, they'll go elsewhere. I know of at least one case exactly like that - they moved to Canada.
I guess that this provides the cover for Google to discuss these issues in an official channel.
Companies do this all the time, directly and indirectly, i.e. on gay rights, what kind of benefits to extend to gay employees (see http://www.hrc.org/issues/workplace/cei.htm). Why is Google and Sergey's public announcement of this so surprising?
Then don't invest in Google, if you don't like how it's run. Buying a couple shares in a company doesn't mean you get to set the tone and policies of it. If enough people feel like you do then Google will suffer, as it should. I suspect this kind of unconventionality is a big part of what has made Google so successful. That's the primary reason I like this.
The founders, their ethics, morals, and actions are in many senses responsible for the culture they have created and the products therefrom. They didn't even try to monetize Google in the first period: they were just trying to make good technology, and help people out.
You cannot extinguish this one flame without extinguishing others.
Personally, I have some concerns over this approach.
Google is a mediator between users and information. As such, it's really important to have and appear to have as little bias as possible - otherwise it taints the information that is coming through. To be effective as a tool, Google really needs to be transparent and impartial as possible. (See Google in China as a counterexample).
Also, I question how effective this approach would be. I'm not sure many people that oppose gay marriage would be swayed by Google's statement... I mean, Google has a strong brand, but I really doubt people will vote no because "Google says so" in the same way as they would with say, Oprah.
I think there are other advocacy paths that are more effective, and don't spend Google's brand/position in this way.
Almost definitely. Brin stated:"...it is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8."
A company isn't just a profit machine. People live and work there to a degree. He probably saw some injustices in his company, and wanted to make a strong statement about how employees should be treated.
Perhaps secretly tilting all search results towards pro-gay-marriage websites would have been better?
Of course they could also pour millions into campaigns. But I don't see why they should have to - they chose to make that statement in their blog, and maybe prefer to spend the millions on other things. What is wrong with that?
"There is no point taking a risk if there is no reward."
The reward is equal treatment for our gay brothers and sisters. The reward is doing the right thing, even if it means profits go down, not that I think they will. Are we so blinded by success and money here that we can't see a "reward" in helping a fellow human being?
> The reward is doing the right thing, even if it means profits go down
Unfortunately, the law says that the Google Board of Directors has a fiduciary duty to their shareholders. If they decide to use the company in a way that is damaging to their shareholders' interests, they can be sued.
Securities laws were introduced about eight decades ago to protect the small investor. The concern was that the small investor had little control over the actions of a company. Therefore, he had to be protected from the possibility that the managers might take his capital and use it for their own private purposes. The law makes no judgment about whether those private purposes are base or noble. If you want to sell shares to large amounts of people, then you are constrained by law to act in their best interest.
Privately supporting equality for our gay brothers and sisters is one thing. Repurposing a publicly-held web services company to do so is quite another.
So if google came out against slavery or child molestation that would be a bad thing? I understand that the board has legal obligations, but to say that this is an issue that is even debatable is beyond ridiculous to me. Look at every companies "diversity" shot on their web page or brochure, companies like to show the public that they are caring and compassionate. This is no different.
> So if google came out against slavery or child molestation that would be a bad thing?
I didn't make the previous statement but I don't think that is what was meant. The point is that shareholder laws state that the purpose of the company is to make money for all shareholders, not to push a social agenda. A company can take a stand on issues but when profit and social issues collide the company is bound to follow profit.
The politically correct view is to dodge the issue. There are a large number of people that oppose a stance in either direction, so the best thing to do is say nothing and give nothing to either side to use as a reason to dislike you.
I'll agree it's PC on Hacker News because apparently we have a large number of readers who don't like prop 8. As to the downmodding, there are other reasons that your comment could have been downmodded.
Once you escape the bubble that is Hacker News you find an extremely large population of religious people that are for prop 8.
So you have large populations for and against. Thus, either position is strongly supported and opposed, there is no correct position that will not be assaulted. Google didn't post on Hacker News, they posted on a public blog.
This idea that neutrality is something to strive for ends up marginalizing the correct point of view by giving equal time to the opposing point of view. In this case, the correct answer is obvious, that gay marraige should be permitted at the federal level. Being neutral about gay marriage is like being neutral about evolution -- it only ends up making the creationists look more legitimate. They don't deserve any attention or neutrality. In this case, Google has no bias because they are right.
As a journalist (one who just finished interviewing someone I find personally despicable but who's done something newsworthy and interesting so merits coverage) I like to think that my readers are smart enough to suss out their own positions on the things I write about. It's not my job to decide which of the different views on a topic I cover is "correct" or "right." My job's to describe them and how they relate to one another and let the reader do his or her homework on which one they think is right.
Drew Curtis has a great chapter in his book in which he rails against the media's penchant for giving equal time to "crazy people." He makes a great argument, but the problem is that it comes from an assumption that your readers are too lazy and dumb to make up their own minds about an issue, so we should be selective in how we treat different sides of an argument. That doesn't sit well.
It's not my job to decide which of the different views on a topic I cover is "correct" or "right."
Right, but it's also not your job to draw false dichotomies and go out of your way to imply moral equivalence just so you can slather a patina of "fairness" over your work.
Even the best (especially the best?) journalists have to editorialize, whether they come to grips with that fact or not. The alternative would be to present an infinity of viewpoints on every topic one covers in any piece one writes. At some point one has to exercise discretion on what gets included and what doesn't, on what gets covered in detail and what doesn't. I don't think it's right or realistic to try to abdicate that part of one's journalistic responsibility.
I agree in the sense that one must place differing viewpoints in context, show how they relate to one another, how they're supported or not supported and in general give an accurate depiction of the lay of the land. If there are dichotomies, they need to be accurate. The last step, declaring one other the other "correct" or "right." is what rankles me.
Agreed 100%. No news piece (even on the internet) has an infinite word count available to dedicate to a particular topic. This means that the reporter for the story and the responsible editor have to decide what is actually relevant and newsworthy enough to merit inclusion in the story, and what is chaff. That's not editorializing or biased reporting, it's good newswriting.
Dedicating half of your story to, for instance, a crazy windbag representing a tiny minority for the (professionally misguided and misinterpreted) purpose of an unbiased piece is where the insanity comes in. If in researching a story you find that there are some dissenting views, you include a quote from them somewhere in the piece, but you don't turn your piece into that one guy or one group versus the original focus of the story. That's sloppy and misrepresenting the issue because you've mistaken "unbiased reporting" with "50/50 equal time for two views."
Being neutral about gay marriage is like being neutral about evolution
What a strange analogy. Evolution is a natural phenomena, while marriage is a state-regulated union. There is a set of reasons apart from tradition why legal marriage exists, and very little in that set would apply with any frequency to "gay marriage". The most obvious reason, of course, is that the division of labor between the sexes is inevitably derivative of the constraints created by pregnancy.
Brin doesn't really argue beyond this,
we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality.
Yeah, equality is such a fuzzy premise for an argument. I would have hoped for something more concrete from someone like Sergey.
UPDATE
@downvoter, if equality isn't a fuzzy premise, where is the line drawn between things that should and should not be equal?
For instance, why shouldn't everyone have an equal opportunity to participate in the Olympics? Why shouldn't everyone have an equal opportunity to be a CEO on Wall Street?
It's because they do not have the functionality that these positions require, as mynameishere pointed out regarding marriage. Claiming equality merely glosses over these important distinctions and does not bring any substance to the argument.
In general, I don't understand why they need to have a marriage anyways. Why not just get domestic partnerships granted at the federal level? They'd get much less flak.
The ideal solution is domestic partnerships at the federal level -- for ALL people, regardless of their combination of sex. However, the federal government is never going to relinquish the power of marriage. We're stuck with the state regulating a religious issue. Within this framework, the difference between domestic partnerships is mostly emotional. It is incredibly insulting to suggest that something "separate but equal" is a good solution. Beyond that emotional issue, it is unlikely that something intended to be different in name only would only be different in name only.
That ignores the fact the traditional societal supports for marriage are all based around the fact that it is a generative relationship. That is why more resources are devoted to it.
Sure, maybe same sex relationships can be artificially generative, but this is no where near the capability or likelihood to equal the basis for traditional marriage.
So, same sex relationships should not have the same benefits that are accrued by a generative relationship, since they do not require them and are thus just squandering resources.
Emotional issues are important, but they should not be the bottom line in a situation that clearly has a functional basis. However, the pro side seems to be mainly emotive in their driving arguments.
"The most obvious reason, of course, is that the division of labor between the sexes is inevitably derivative of the constraints created by pregnancy."
You are claiming that this is the primary reason why we have state-regulated marriage? Two words: [citation needed].
The universality of marriage within different societies and cultures is attributed to the many basic social and personal functions for which it provides structure, such as sexual gratification and regulation, division of labour between the sexes, economic production and consumption, and satisfaction of personal needs for affection, status, and companionship; perhaps its strongest function concerns procreation, the care of children and their education and socialization, and regulation of lines of descent.
How does giving equal time to different views marginalize any?
This also sets a dangerous precedent if those who present the arguments are convinced they know which one is right. If it is legitimate for them to favor one over the other, then they end up dictating what is "right" for the masses, which is essentially censorship.
A search engine who claims to be neutral yet have social-political bias is never a good thing. The word from the top filters throughout the whole organization, if you don't want to loose your job you have to believe what they believe. Therefore if you are working on search, you are going to be biased towards your your company policies (beliefs), wanting to please your superiors, and keeping your job.
I'm not sure that 'marginalising' is the right term but but I agree with the concept. Often, in attempt to be neutral there's a tendency to assign equal weight or validity to all points of view. This is often the case when you have an approximately 50/50 split (eg creationism/evolution in The States). But if you think that an objective truth exists (a right answer) to a fundamental moral/practical/scientific issue, it feels a lot like pandering.
A way to try & look at it from a position where you see something as this as an undeniable truth is to imagine a debate in a different time or place. Equal voting rights for women/minorities was once controversial in the US & Europe, How HIV infection occurs is controversial in some places currently. Would you be able to give equal time to all positions in these cases?
You're forgetting about Google's employees -- would you want to work for someone who refuses to take a stand on whether you can visit your partner in the hospital? Someone who provides full same-sex couple benefits in name only?
If we're going to redefine marriage as two people who love each other and want a long-term commitment, then there is no logical reason n=2 and 2 alone.
Because both the government and corporations don't want to be giving you plus your 7 wives/husbands benefits.
You shouldn't be limited to one partner in terms of love/sex/living together/whatnot if you so desire. Why the hell should I care? But let's say that your job offers healthcare for you and your partner - if you have 18 partners, that's a hell of a different cost from one partner.
Likewise, let's say that you slip into a comma. Who has say over that feeding tube? That's already complicated! Let's say I'm some rich jerk trying to skirt the inheritance tax. Well, spouses are one way around it. Well, clearly my kids are also my spouses! Who gets to visit you at the hospital and who doesn't? Well, spouse 1 says your friend Joe should come, but spouse 2 hates Joe. Does it work by majority voting? What if they can't find all your spouses and you're dying and Joe really wants to see you?
So, if you think of marriage as the government telling you that you can only love/have sex with/live with one person, it seems oppressive if you desire something else. If you see marriage as this standard government contract that says you are allowed to designate one other individual for partner benefits, hospital visitation, inheritance, etc. then it makes sense.
The problem is that our society equates marriage with love/sex. Marriage should probably be seen as a contract. As such, you can see how it wouldn't really work to designate 6 people as having the right to determine whether you stay on life support. Yes, you could simply create individual contracts specifying everything that marriage entails, but that's tedious, expensive, prone to error and requires everyone who deals with you to have a lawyer to interpret that agreement - and they're not going to want to spend hundreds of dollars for a lawyer and tons more in liability to interpret your individualized contracts so they'll just deny you. Marriage is a standard convenience contract and shouldn't be confused with love or sex.
//I'm really interested to see if you disagree with this or how you think things like benefits/hospital visitation/whatnot should work in poly relationships (yeah, sociology student ;-))
I actually don't have any interest in or experience with poly relationships - I was merely asking as a rhetorical question. But everything you said makes sense - being able to designate a single person to make those kinds of important decisions is extremely useful. It would be very good if those rights/responsibilities could be unbundled from marriage.
Where it gets more complicated is in things like the tax code - it seems advantageous to society to offer tax breaks to married couples, with the idea being that this will help them have more resources for raising children. Of course this is predicated upon the notion that a husband-wife team is the best way to raise children (which I happen to believe). If gay marriage is strictly equal to straight marriage, those sorts of policies would seem to disproportionately favor gay couples (who tend not to have children) over straight ones (who generally do).
"It would be very good if those rights/responsibilities could be unbundled from marriage."
The opposite of this is why many people are advocating allowing same sex couples to participate in marriage. It is difficult to assemble exactly the parts of the marriage rights/responsibilities that you want in a legally binding way. Just getting the whole package with the label "marriage" is a big benefit.
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I found your argument lacking. I wouldn't say I disagree, but I'm still of the opinion that n=2 couples is seriously old-fashioned the same way opposite-sex marriages are. If people love one another and want a permanent union, we should allow them to. To argue that we should open this up to same-sex and still leave it at 2 is to have a strange mix of progressiveness and conservatism.
1) People don't want to pay for it. Well, last I checked we weren't adding up figures. This is a definition change. The economics of it are free to work in various ways. For instance, companies could offer n-couple insurance with scaling rates.
2) Who makes executive decisions? ie, Who Pulls The Plug. I'd think you'd set this up the same way any n-party organization, like a board of directors, would. You could just vote. Or go by age. Or by gender. Seems like your marriage contract would be the place to put this.
We allow lots of people to form agreements with n-people. We allow people to live with whomever they choose. Why not allow these agreements to have the force of marriage? I can form a multi-billion-dollar business deal with 7 women but we can't all call each other spouses? It's just stupid. And it's cruel. Especially to me. :)
You can set up whatever legal arrangements you want. But marriage is a sensible default for the majority of people, thus specifically written into specific laws to make our society function more smoothly. If you want a custom arrangement that is less in demand, that is going to have some higher costs and less convenience for you. But that is true of many things, heavily customized products are often more costly and inconvenient than just buying the show room floor model.
I think this is what the post you responded to is arguing for, not some prohibition on non-standard living arrangements.
Why should anyone, or a collective entity, sit idly by while things are being said and done that they do not believe in?
Everyone is so indifferent to everyone else in this day in age. Why shouldn't Google (at least their executive board) be able to say that they feel strongly that gay marriage is a right that should be had?
Your style of thinking is a dangerous subconcious attitude that has crept across our nation since the latter half of the 20th century. Stand up for what you believe, because if you don't you may lose out on more than just your rights.
$deity forbid gay people have the same rights as married couples without calling it a marriage. I have a feeling some people would still be offended like their own personal marriages would be under attack even if you removed all trace of "marriage" for gay couples.
Did they donate money to one side or the other, or did they only express an "official" opinion?
And how would a person who was supporting Prop8 (say, a practicing Orthodox Jew, a Tibetan Buddhist, a Muslim, a Sikh, or a Christian, all faiths which explicitly proscribe homosexual behavior) feel about working at Google after hearing this?
How would they feel about working at Google after hearing this? There are two possibilities...
1) Said Orthodox Jew, Muslim, Christian, etc., while privately disapproving of gay marriage, recognizes that his right to be offended ends where my rights begin. Said employee does not wish to shove his own personal brand of "morality" down everyone else's throats by codifying discrimination into the State Constitution, and therefore has no issue with Google's stance on the matter.
Or,
2) Said Orthodox Jew, Muslim, Christian, etc., is upset with his employer because said employee feels he should be entitled to infringe upon the human rights of others. Said employee is free to leave Google, as he is doubtless of little value to the company, or to society in general.
Google employees should be careful to not mention that they are "Jew, Muslim, Christian, etc". If they want to keep their jobs they need to align themselves with company policy.
To someone who thinks that gay marriage is about equality, this could be seen as similar to a companies stance on racism or slavery (which is obvious now, but wasn't a hundred years ago). If Google believe that in the future people will look back on this issue in the same way, then this could also be a savvy business position. Also, in the eyes of Sergey, this is probably just another way for Google to not be evil.
Google is helping people to see that these decisions have far-reaching effects. Google is pretty confident that the vast majority of people like its products. So now you have to ask yourself: is it wise to cast a vote that would insult a large percentage of the people responsible for making the products you love so much?
Good on ya Sergey Brin. Its nice to see a company taking official support in regards to the things that affect their employees in non-work situations.
And for those saying companies don't take sides or make announcements, lets name a couple. Chick-fil-a is closed on Sundays. Why, because the founder is a hard-right Christian who thinks everyone should go to church or they go to hell. I worked there when I was a teenager, firsthand experience.
How about Dominos? The founder built a town outside of Naples in Florida strictly for Christians. Ava Maria, I think its called.
And don't forget SC Johnson, "a family company". Jeesh.
I believe that Chick-Fil-A is a private company. The Dominoes guy probably built that town without using company funds.
There are good reasons for keeping one's personal life personal. If Sergey's comments cause a lot of controversy, I wouldn't be surprised if Google saw successful shareholder lawsuits. Using your company to comment on social issues is not acting in the fiduciary interest of your shareholders.
Never. Neither does In-N-Out, another privately owned "openly" christian company.
Staying private is one good way to alleviate issues with upset share holders and continuing to passively support the owners beliefs. This is fine as long as the company still respects the rights of the share holders, customers and employees.
As many have already stated, and i'll reiterate. There are two issues being discussed here. 1) gay rights. [no question they should have equal rights] 2) entangling support for social issues with a public company [this is where people have problems].
All the publicly held multi-national companies that I know of offer benefits to a homosexual partner. But they do it through the normal workflow of HR. The problem is Google does everything differently. Including making this announcement. So the question remains is this an acceptable way to do it? Google thinks so. (now my libertarian free market tendancies come in to play) If you support the way they did it, buy some more Google and give them a positive blog article. If you disagree sell it or short it and go use duckduckgo or yahoo.
You're surely aware of how divisive this issue is by just looking at the polling on this matter. By taking a hard stand on a very divisive issue on behalf of your whole company, you are spending an enormous amount of your Google brand and influence on this issue. Right?
According to gaydemographics.org, there are less than 100,000 gay couples in California. Let's assume all of them want to get married. Let's also assume, which I think is reasonable, that those gay couples wanting to get married are already cohabiting, have plenty of food, have shelter, have access to world class health care etc - and after this huge expenditure of Google influence and brand change, that will be the same - but they might have a marriage certificate.
So, I just wonder why you chose that issue over this issue - that of AIDS orphans in Africa (unfortunately that label often hides the fact that these are real living breathing children). According to one.org, there are 12 million children who have lost BOTH parents to AIDS and are on their own now. This is a rapidly growing problem and there are estimated to be 25 million AIDS orphans by 2010. The sheer scale of this disaster is mind-boggling - yet it's mostly an information problem that needs to be solved. These children need parents. There are many couples around the world that are eager for children. Who better than Google to find a solution? For many of these children, adoption would mean hope where now there is only despair. As impactful as a marriage certificate would be to 100,000 gay couples in one of the richest states of the richest country - I'm guessing an adoption certificate would be tremendously more valuable to these children who are truly destitute. And I'm also guessing this would be much more inspirational and unifying to Google's share-holders and users.
I can understand the draw to be edgy and controversial, but sometimes the causes which are most worthy also are the least popular. I applaud the work the Google Foundation is doing, don't get me wrong - but please consider the costs vs benefits to Google in working towards these two pieces of paper I mentioned: the gay marriage license for wealthy westerners or the adoption certificate for a destitute, yet living breathing child who has lost both parents in Africa.
I don't think they took this stand to be edgy, or to allocate brand capital towards some public good. They took it because their employees wanted them to, complemented by a personal belief that it's the morally right position to take. Microsoft was going to take a similar position several years ago -- also from employee pressure -- but backed down.
Yeah, my point is not that there's anything wrong with being edgy or allocating brand for some public good. Look at Bono and the One campaign for example.
The point is that Sergey has many "public good" issues to choose from. Some issues will have far greater impact on relieving suffering in this world - especially for those who have little or no voice themselves. Some issues will have a much smaller impact, especially for those who already have a lot of power and are wealthy and very vocal about their issues. Some issues will be very divisive among Google shareholders and users. Some issues will be very uniting.
It's really a matter of choosing what to do with your resources - and Google is a public company now - not a privately owned company by Larry and Sergey. Employees and shareholders are on both sides of this issue - what may be 'obviously the right thing to do' for some of his shareholders is 'obviously the wrong thing to do' for others. This is a divisive move for his company on an issue trying to help already very powerful and wealthy advocates. To spend brand capital so heavily and unilaterally like this when you could be doing so much good elsewhere and at the same time build unity among shareholders and strengthen your brand - just seems like a poor decision.
And my point is that they aren't doing this to maximize the public good under some moral calculus. Google has nothing to do with AIDS orphans in Africa.
If Google has nothing to do with AIDS orphans in Africa - that's their choice. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Bono, etc would normally have "nothing to do with AIDS orphans in Africa", yet they have chosen to.
You're being pretty rude, dissing Google for not doing "enough" good.
They're a corporation. They make money offering us products that we like. They've made a very GOOD set of products, and I still use several daily. That's the end of my relationship with them. If they're supporting gay marriage, that's great of them, I'm proud of them, but it doesn't affect my using their product. They are not obligated to do anything more, and your getting snotty about their not doing something OBLIGATED is pretty awful and self-righteous.
Gates and Buffett and Bono are doing good stuff. Be happy for them. Don't use them to denounce other companies.
You think Google using its influence to go against Proposition 8 is something, I don't want to know what you think about individual Mormons donating $6.4 million dollars to support this nonsense proposition. I'm not even beginning to count all the other donors. Also let's note how none of this would be an issue if some people would just STOP pushing their beliefs on others..that would be tens of millions of dollars that could go elsewhere.
Compared to orphans in Africa, yes, I'm going to sound rich and spoiled, but Proposition 8 is here now and it needs to be dealt with now. There are other NGOs and others trying to deal with crises worldwide (and I do donate as much as I can in every way to them), but I have to do my own bit to get rid of this deranged proposition November 4th because I really, really want to have the ability to get married to another woman and still have the same rights as, say, my heterosexual parents do. So forgive me and lots of others (Brad Pitt? Ellen DeGeneres? Steven Spielberg?...) for caring so much about something that affects us deeply.
For what it's worth, I may have access to world class healthcare, but it's costing me an arm and a leg. Should I be unable to afford it, well, I don't even want to go there.
(In the end, I'm not really disagreeing with Matt here. I don't think they're exclusive of each other, but I think Sergey thought Prop 8 was a way more pressing issue that could potentially end soon, and Google's support could only help. I would not mind seeing an easier way to adopt children since I plan to do so in the future, but honestly Google isn't gonna turn into an adoption agency anytime soon and I'm sure many people already use Google to find out more about the whole adoption process to begin with.)
Because it's outright discrimination right here that voters in california need to deal with in November that could most definitely have an effect on other states and maybe eventually countries in removing discriminatory practices: a set deadline to deal with an ugly issue that if enough people vote yes on, will mean that everyone on all sides will waste more money and time trying to fight (and oh man, the money going into these yes and no on prop 8 campaigns..). Not that that won't happen if this prop is defeated, but it would be less of a mess than it would if it were not. California's potential impact on this situation is huge. It's a start.
Now, if we were talking money, which afaik Google has not donated to any no-on-prop-8 campaign, then I would agree with the open letter Matt wrote, but a public statement? From Google?
I'm not saying AIDS orphans aren't a pressing issue as well, but organizations and companies better fit to attempt to make an impact on that and many more humanitarian crises are working right now to do so and have been for a while, and I really don't think Google doing what they did for prop 8 for AIDS orphans instead would change much. Google did something like "Donate to $x charity!" link on their frontpage for previous crises like hurricane katrina and the recent devastating earthquake in China, and I bet that would have a larger impact if said charity were one like MSF etc. working to treat and stop AIDS or some adoption agency specializing in AIDS orphans. Or to AIDS research. Or something. Feature a new one every week. Sponsor a child. Adopt a child. Anything. Now that's a cool idea (although one would have to wonder how many people would pay attention, what kind of usability impact it would have on the site, and how many people would just see if they could remove that on their personalized page..).
The world sucks, honestly, but just because one problem is a lot worse than another doesn't mean that the lesser problem should be pushed aside for the sake of the larger problem. They're not exclusive, and some entities are just better fit to help on one than another.
Comparing someone's efforts with what they could have done is a way to deflate and discourage them. While I don't think Sergey will care about your attitude (or even be aware of it), I care.
It's not that Sergey can only ever make this one comment in his life, and he has to pick the very best use of it. He can support more than one cause - and perhaps the journey of a thousand miles starts with the ground under your feet?
Great point. Someone like me could come along to anything good someone is trying to do and say "Hey, what about the orphans!" You do have to start where you can and with what you have - and doing one thing doesn't mean you can't do another later.
Sergey holds a special place in the world since he is one of the wealthiest ($15+ billion) and holds major control over one of the wealthiest companies in the world ($135+ billion - more than even Coca Cola). Most of us would say that places considerably more responsibility in his hands when it comes to taking on world problems. Just a sliver of his wealth can change the lives of millions.
So the letter really is an attempt at a wake-up call for Sergey. The homosexual marriage movement is wealthy, well-supported, and has a very loud megahorn. Using a public company to support a divisive political measure for already wealthy and vocal adults when there are children languishing elsewhere without a voice, just seems like a misplacement of Google's power.
Be the change you want to see in the world - Gandhi
People often see public figures as deities, and abdicate their own center of action to these gods. Saying "the government/corporations/rich should do something" strengthens their power and diminishes yours.
Exactly. The difference between a public figure and a nobody is that the public figure made themselves public. Anybody CAN do it, it's just that nobody DOES.
California politics directly influence Google's employees. Would I want to work for someone who refused to take a stand on whether I could visit my partner in the hospital?
Second, although AIDS orphans are tragic, a general "we support AIDS orphans" blog post would be considered rhetorical and would not get garner much additional support for AIDS orphans. However, voting is coming soon and Google's position on this will change votes in CA.
Third, yes theoretically I suppose that Google is "spending an enormous amount of Google brand and influence" ... but practically, they're spending ten minutes of Sergey's time to write a blog post.
Google is not going to lose business -- you can't use the Internet without seeing their ads. I also doubt that its brand name will be tarnished much -- some people may despise the move, but a lot of others will like Google even more (including myself). Many companies already provide full benefits to same-sex couples -- isn't this already publicly affirming them?
Wow, what bullshit. It is not about the number of couples who might be affected. It is about fundamental human rights. Sure, it doesn't matter that much if somebody adds a certificate to their relationship or not - but to make it illegal is more than that, it is a public statement against gay relationships. It is a stepping stone towards hatred, intolerance, discrimination and all sorts of nasty things many people don't want to have in the society they live in. If you start to compromise on the rights of one group of people just because they are a minority, you open the doors for compromising on the rights of all sorts of people, just because they are a minority.
AIDS orphans in Africa is a completely unrelated problem, so your throwing it into the discussion is a cheap strawman argumentation. Also, not everybody agrees with Lomborg. Also, are you sure Google is not doing anything for the cause of AIDS orphans? They might have donated money and stuff.
Also, how much money has it cost to draw up the proposal for the anti-gay-marriage bill and organize the ballot? Why was that money not spent on AIDS orphans? Why were there enough people annoyed about gay marriage to warrant wasting a lot of public money on that useless debate? That seems much more scandalous to me than somebody wasting a couple of minutes to write a blog entry.
Feeling smart? I was just taking a shortcut in the discussion. I know there are no "human rights", there is only the law of the stronger guy. Still there seem to be some shared desires among humans in most societies.
And it is not about feel-goodness, either. We try not to bother our neighbours too much because in turn they won't bother us, either. If you take away some rights from the next person, expect the same rights to be taken away from you the next day.
Your argument is just plain old stupid. Not bad, not poor, just stupid.
Because there are big problems, one should not solve the small problems? Because I know of aids, I should not give a dollar to the local begger?
Please stop this bullshit about aids orphans in Africa - it's just propaganda by the charity organisations who want you to give them money. Children are children everywhere in the world. Those aids orphans are not abandoned by Africans - every human being has the nurturing instinct. Neighbours are not letting orphans starve in Africa. Africa does not NEED you to solve this problem - it is a large problem, but it's not a critical problem.
There are WORSE things, but they are not sexy. There are men who work their entire life shoveling coal for hardly any money to survive, but nobody cares about them. They are not cute, they are not small, so they are abandoned.
Don't let those charity fat cats shape your perception of where help is needed. THINK first! And everyone cannot fight the same battle, we have to diversify and fight different battles. So if you see someone doing nothing, then ask him to do something. If you see people already helping in one way, don't try to make them do what you are already doing, otherwise all these other problems will get ignored.
You may notice that this letter is not to a private citizen working with their own resources - it's to one of the wealthiest individuals leading one of the wealthiest companies in the world. A company that is not primarily owned by him, but by investors all over the world. This is about using Google - a multi-national giant funded by the investments of others to take a large risk alienating users to help a cause that already has wealthy and vocal advocates. Big risk with other people's resources and little potential upside for those people - doesn't seem like a great idea.
Today you help gay people, tommorow you help aids. Not mutually exclusive, one does not prevent the other. One step at a time, and try for real change.
Look at Bill Gates - they open this "charity" and then invites all his friends to save on their taxes by donating money in there. Utter bullcrap. Charities are the new Tax Havens. And they just hit people like you with propaganda on what needs to be done. It's all about:
The media topics are almost always the same, but are you telling me you really think that the bulk of the worlds suffering is in any of those topics? Are Dolphins more worthy than Hyenas?
Charity is a big-industry, and they use marketing techniques to get money from people. And in marketing, you need to get a clear brand - Darfur is a brand, Aids is a brand, Starving Children are a brand. They don't run billboards with real and unsexy problems in the world.
I spent a lot of time in Africa and in China, and the people I really respect are very small - I met this American couple who have been running a haven for monkeys in the border of Cameroun for the last 20 years. They make a real difference - they have put everything they have into that project, and they have saved so many animals. But these large charities will collect millions and do nothing there! I've met doctors who go to villages and treat the poor people there for free. Those are REAL heroes! They touch disgusting wounds and look at wretched people without flinching. They are people to look up to, people to admire.
Not cigar smoking men sitting in offices in New York and meeting with advertising agencies on how best to create a fundraiser for the new batch of teenage stars.
I would just ignore these people if I could, but when I see them influencing otherwise intelligent people, it really pisses me off.
THINK! If people are asking you for money, don't believe everything they tell you!
Don't be so quick to trivialize cancer and aids. I assure you: if you ever have to see someone close to you suffer and ultimately die of one of those nasty diseases, the problem of getting a marriage license for gay people will pale in comparison.
Sometimes the media serves a good purpose. Not all the time, but sometimes. I personally think that cancer and aids, darfur (last i checked something like 400,000 people, mostly innocent, were massacred), are much weightier issues, and therefore deserve the bulk of media attention.
This is not to discredit the honorable work of people working on relatively small societal problems such as gay marriage, but in most of the above problems, the core argument is that lives are being lost. Think about that.
Darfur is utter nonsense. Remember Sierra Leone? Liberia? I saw the videos coming out of those countries, and yes, that place was a war - a REAL war. Remember the Hutu Tutsi thing? Another real massacre. There are pictures all over the net.
But Darfur is just wierd. In this age of Cameras, Camera People, Live streaming, how come 400,000 people have died, and there are no videos of actual combat? Darfur is the strangest "war" I've ever heard of - it seems to be a theoretical war. I've never met the people running from there, I've never seen the videos of the actual war, I've never seen real photographic evidence of any massacres.
People want to constantly hear about wars in Africa. But that age has suddenly ended. All the wars in Africa have ended, what's just left is just local clashes and conflicts between ethnic groups, and various organisations who have a vested interest in there being conflicts in Africa push up these topics. Do some real research, you'll see how wierd the Darfur war comes across compared to Sierra Leone or Liberia. Also, research the role of China in the region.
Cancer sucks, but cancer has been there since the beginning of time. People get it, people die. The only reason so much focus is given on it is that it is the one disease that being rich has no effect on. So the rich people have vested interest in getting rid of cancer before other diseases like Malaria.
Aids is of course a problem, but seriously, remember 10 years ago? 1998? The news about Aids was the same panic as right now. But the thing is this - for an exponentially growing disease, with drugs that are ensuring that the people infected stay alive longer, should it not have been more devastating than it turned out?
The Aids projection seem to be staying at roughly the same number. I'm not saying it's not there, I'm just saying that it's not an explosive epidemic.
In this age of Cameras, Camera People, Live streaming, how come 400,000 people have died, and there are no videos of actual combat?
Perhaps if you did more research you would actually find that its kind of hard to get videos of actual combat. Even if you could get said footage,how easy do you think it is to publish stuff like this when there is a suppressive government? Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
And i'm not arguing about whether or not these are problems. I'm saying that they are bigger problems than the one posted.
Then how come there is so much footage of Liberia and Sierra Leone? And Sudan is not a supressive government, it's a failed state where the central government is weak and cannot control the country.
Have you heard of the phrase, stop while you're ahead.
I followed your rebuttal essentially stating that one should not lose sight of small problems for the larger ones, but your derivative spiel about charities and about Darfur is incoherent babble.
Seriously.
Darfur was a non-issue in the US/ world-media until perhaps 2006, and even now, most Americans (and perhaps Germans as well?) don't know much about Darfur, don't care, and most importantly to your argument, they don't donate time or money to the issue. So what charities exactly are benefitting by distributing the 'propaganda' about the 'war' in Darfur.
It's not war, it's genocide.
Are you one of those who also didn't believe Holocaust Germany happened? Not enough evidence for you?
Stick to a logical argument backed up by either logic and data, or please do not argue here again. I'm tired of seeing your pointless rants where you spew this ridiculous, utter, nonsense.
Ridiculous, utter, nonsense? And what other pointless rants of mine are you talking about? If you want to make a point, then make a point based off my argument, not by descending into personal name calling.
What other pointless rants are you talking about?
(And by the way, I've been several times in the general conflict zone area. What are your info sources that make you so sure I am wrong?)
Which of Google's billion dollar resources did Sergey use? It's a fucking blog post. He can write pro-gay blog posts and still donate to AIDS orphans at the same time.
For all of you who are worried about your stock price: don't forget to consider what effect this has on Google's culture. From a business perspective, if you look only at the external effects, taking this stand probably does weigh out to a bad idea. But the internal benefits of employee loyalty and a culture of tolerance might outweigh that, making the blog post justified even from your strictly financial perspective.
Should Sergey have posted this on the official company blog? Probably not
Do I support his position even though I'm not gay? Sure do.
Are people blowing this way out of proportion? Absolutely.
First of all, I think those who brought up the question of why THIS issue when there are other, more life-and-death serious problems in the world (such as AIDS orphans in Africa) are missing the point. Sergey didn’t decide to come out in opposition to prop 8 because he was just looking for some social cause to throw Google behind or because he thought it was necessarily the most pressing or deserving issue, but because it is something that will directly affect the company and the employees he is in charge of and responsible for. As he states, it "is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8." Clearly, this decision was made not because Sergey believes that banning same-sex marriage is wrong in the larger moral sense (though obviously he does) but instead because of the comparatively specific, micro concern of how it well effect the people who work at his company.
While Google surely puts more thought into how its practices affect society than the average giant corporation, it is hardly a charity and I don’t think this statement should be any indication that it plans on becoming one. "Don't be evil" is still a long way on the altruism scale from becoming a humanitarian NGO.
...
Is it, though, appropriate for a head of a public company to officially align said company on a piece of controversial (and not strictly relevant to the business) legislation? Well, perhaps not. In this situation however, I think it was an admirable and fitting action. It reinforces Google’s "not business as usual" stance and commitment to social awareness and doing good. Of course, though, there will be many who see this as the opposite of "doing good."
The values of tolerance, diversity, and meritocratic inclusion are, though, so fundamental to the company (and, when at its best, the Valley and the tech industry in general) that this seems like a natural and reasonable move. Though I agree there is certainly room for argument, particularly over specifics, here, many will surely see opposition to Prop. 8 as reflective of the above values. I took Sergey’s blog post as more a statement of "live and let live" and respect for all than as a focused and specific endorsement of gay marriage.
I don't work at Google but I do live in the Bay Area and I'm confident that the employee culture at the company is such that those with strong feelings against gay rights are used to keeping their position largely to themselves. In other words, conservative Christian/Jewish/Muslim/Sikh/etc. individuals who work there have, I’m sure, resigned to keep their religious convictions a personal matter in order to effectively and civilly participate in a diverse environment. Consequently, I would be surprised if this pronouncement causes much of a stir even from pro-Prop. 8 Googlers.
Wow, thanks for the thoughtful reply. Seriously, great points. On a lighter note - I guess if we can get more AIDS orphans to work at Google, it would shift priorities ;)
Because our company has a great diversity of people and opinions -- Democrats and Republicans,
Please, isn't Google made up of 99% Democrats? I'm all for gay marriage, but that is a misrepresentation. One Republican does not make great diversity.
What about libertarians? I don't know of any at Google (except for that guy who wants to build a libertarian city on an offshore platform), but I do know that they're highly overrepresented among hackers.
As the father of a gay son who one day wants to marry, I am opposed to same-sex marriage. The word "marriage" has significant religious and cultural significance and this significance should be preserved. Same-sex unions with all of the benefits? Sign me up.
More significantly, I disagree with Google's taking a position on this issue. I think corporations should think seriously about taking positions in domestic, cultural issues. Civil rights issues? Go for it. Changing the definition of religious terms? Out of bounds. I'm not religious, but this seems to make the most sense in my own life. Google should do the same.
If Google wants to wade into politics, then welcome to the party. I'm sure they are comfortable with the results of becoming political -- when people with opposing views make and change the laws in order to diminish Google's political power. That's the way politics works. I'm also concerned with idealists who only whine about things that are easy and never take a stand where they could make a real difference or where it could really hurt. What about billions in China not getting the full internet? Well, to listen to Google that's a much more complex subject.
I am opposed to our government getting involved in marriage, period.
Gays nor straights should have to turn to the government to have their unions blessed.
But since straights have such advantages given to them as a result of our legal system, it would be silly not to have the rights given to all.
Marriage is NOT a religious construct. It is a construct granted because of other dependent bodies of law, including taxes, health care, child custody, property rights.
Without marriage laws to assist, it is more difficult to have our courts administer the other dependent laws. You are therefore denying gays equal access to the legal system and its protections as a result.
You have the right to believe in whatever you want.
You do not have the right, in MY country, to deny other human beings rights or protections that others have.
Go to church all you want. Just leave me out of your bigotry.
I'm not religious -- perhaps you missed that point.
Marriage is deeply a religious idea. Religions and their ideas of marriage pre-date all existing governments and other social structures. Therefore it would be silly to make an argument that marriage is government-based: it's not. Governments simply codified and wrote into law those commonly-held ideas of marriage. Later on, as society became more complex, sure, other rights were given based on these definitions.
Civil Unions offer all of the advantages of marriage without getting into a cultural war (unless you want to do that).
Sounds like you enjoy feeling very self-righteous about your beliefs, ie, the whole "in MY country" routine. I wouldn't want to deny rights to anybody. Why don't you calm down a bit and realize that you're trying to argue with somebody who basically agrees with you?
And don't call me a bigot. You don't know me, and based on your post you don't even understand my position on the issue. It's an ad hominem.
Yeah that would work if we were talking about building a school for gays.
This is not 1960 and we are not talking about African Americans. Once civil unions are defined there is no way they can be treated any differently than other legal relationships, such as limited power of attorney.
Think this through. Please. Stop using a civil rights metaphor. It's not. It's more a question of the licensing power of the state and the nomenclature of the privileges involved.
If I thought for a minute that civil unions were "separate but equal" I would not support them. But I do not feel that way. It's just rhetoric.
By this logic you also advocate replacing any state or federal use of the term "marriage" with "civil union" for heterosexual couples as well, and leave "marriage" as a term exclusively to religious groups, then?
I don't have an opinion one way or another on that one.
Since the gist of my argument was "let's not fight over something we can solve" perhaps we just add the term "civil union" wherever the term marriage appears. Or perhaps we have a constitutional ammendment that makes the two phrases equal. For instance, I don't think you could go back in the historical record and change terms. The answer to that question may be based on how you make laws.
Another poster made a comment about 3 or more people in a union. I believe this follows naturally as well from an extension of the term "marriage". Things like multiple partners seem just fine in the 21st century. At least to me, but I'm a libertarian. Since the term seems to be opening up, as a hacker I say make the new definition in one place to be equal to anywhere else the term "marriage" was used.
Marriage is not a religious idea. It is a result of evolution, like everything else. Being a couple makes it easier to accomplish certain tasks. There are also animals who "marry" for life, it is just a strategy to cope with certain problems. Therefore cultures with marriage seem to have prevailed in the evolutionary competition.
Religion is just the handbook for a society (like the "turnkey" instructions manual for a McDonalds branch), therefore it includes marriage.
Also, I am confused: you are not religious, yet you style yourself as a supersensitive guy respecting the feelings of religious people. How about respecting the feelings of your son?
I don't know how marriage is handled in the US, but in Germany it is more than just a religious or cultural thing. It has several legal consequences, for example if your spouse is unconscious in the hospital, you are (officially) only allowed to visit if you are family. There are also tax breaks for married couples etc. I think the legal reasons would be a main reason to marry, after some point, the state basically forces you to marry because it is kind of stupid to not be allowed to visit your ill spouse.
Personally I despise the hypocrisy of the state when it forces a certain value system on us with the marriage laws (like tax breaks for married couples - so the state takes a stance against unmarried couples for moral reasons).
The primary argument for gay "marriage" seems to be equal rights for both gay couples and married couples. Another key argument I keep hearing is to "keep government out of the bedroom."
Couldn't both of those goals be accomplished without getting into a cultural war over the term "marriage"?
If "civil unions" are legislated to having the same rights as marriage - then that solves the equality problem.
Also, "civil unions" can have a much looser definition. So if there is a threesome of men that really love each other and want to make a life commitment to each other and have equal rights as a married couple, they could do so. However, with gay "marriage" that would not be possible unless it also included plural marriage - and given our nation's history that's pretty unlikely.
"Civil Unions" just seem to be much more flexible in preserving rights of people in minority situations. Even for non-homosexuals. I had good friends who were cousins in their 50's and had lived together non-sexually for over 30 years. They were inseparable and they shared all their resources. When one of them had a brain tumor and was in the hospital, fortunately because they lived in Germany, it was no issue, but if they had lived in the US, there would have been issues with visiting, etc from what I hear. For them "marriage" would not be something they wanted obviously, but it would have made their lives much easier in many situations if they could have had a "civil union".
So, I'm all for having equal rights and government out of the bedroom, but gay marriage just doesn't seem to be the right solution for those two goals. 1) It leaves out other very legitimate situations where companions - either non-sexual or plural arrangements would not have equal rights, and 2) it starts a divisive cultural war that could be avoided. Peace and love right?
So you support "seperate but equal?" That was the winning attitude of our nation for about a century; and that turned out just dandy!
Why should polygamy or polyandry be outlawed? If multiple people feel they love each other enough that they wish to be bound by the legal act of marriage, who are you to say otherwise? Who does it hurt?
This concept of marriage and single sex partners is not only anti-evolutionary, but is only backed by religious nonsense. Granted some animals wish to be this way, but why should anyone say others cannot?
I see a common thread between your post and the gp--marriage vs. civil union is an artificial distinction. The best solution I've heard is to remove government-sanctioned marriage, and replace it with civil union. Religious institutions can still perform religiously-recognized marriages; so there's no controversy over eroding definitions. Government gives the same rights and privileges to civil unions, regardless of who's involved in them, so there's no controversy over differing levels of privilege.
The only push-back I anticipate would be from the Dominionists who can't stand seeing church and state separate a little further.
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 188 ms ] threadI do wonder if I would be similarly impressed with it if their stance were the opposite, and whether I would feel comfortable supporting them by using their products and services afterward. Very gutsy decision to come out on a divisive issue like this.
Why?
An example already brought up, is Google stance on issues related to China, where they've not been so resilent in keeping with their own values.
If Google wants to play this hand, thats fine, I even hope they take up bigger causes like human rights, and back it up with actions. But a two paragraph blog post simply will not do for me.
I'd go so far as to state that this comic (and a few things like it, of course, but this is the most memorable) changed the course of my life quite considerably in my senior year, and that that influenced where I am today.
Also, my sexuality SHOULD have nothing to do with my work, but if I were affected adversely by this or other similar discriminatory nonsense, it would most likely affect my work. I daresay the same would apply to anyone regardless of sexuality.
Prop 8 is about more than just marriage, it's about what comes with marriage.
I guess that this provides the cover for Google to discuss these issues in an official channel.
- Health care
- Immigration rights
So, yeah, it shouldn't matter, but it does.
You cannot extinguish this one flame without extinguishing others.
Google is a mediator between users and information. As such, it's really important to have and appear to have as little bias as possible - otherwise it taints the information that is coming through. To be effective as a tool, Google really needs to be transparent and impartial as possible. (See Google in China as a counterexample).
Also, I question how effective this approach would be. I'm not sure many people that oppose gay marriage would be swayed by Google's statement... I mean, Google has a strong brand, but I really doubt people will vote no because "Google says so" in the same way as they would with say, Oprah.
I think there are other advocacy paths that are more effective, and don't spend Google's brand/position in this way.
There is no point taking a risk if there is no reward. I just don't see this as an action that would change people's minds.
I just believe Google has much better avenues for advocacy than this approach.
I would be surprised if this is noticed by the national media.
A company isn't just a profit machine. People live and work there to a degree. He probably saw some injustices in his company, and wanted to make a strong statement about how employees should be treated.
Of course they could also pour millions into campaigns. But I don't see why they should have to - they chose to make that statement in their blog, and maybe prefer to spend the millions on other things. What is wrong with that?
The reward is equal treatment for our gay brothers and sisters. The reward is doing the right thing, even if it means profits go down, not that I think they will. Are we so blinded by success and money here that we can't see a "reward" in helping a fellow human being?
Unfortunately, the law says that the Google Board of Directors has a fiduciary duty to their shareholders. If they decide to use the company in a way that is damaging to their shareholders' interests, they can be sued.
Securities laws were introduced about eight decades ago to protect the small investor. The concern was that the small investor had little control over the actions of a company. Therefore, he had to be protected from the possibility that the managers might take his capital and use it for their own private purposes. The law makes no judgment about whether those private purposes are base or noble. If you want to sell shares to large amounts of people, then you are constrained by law to act in their best interest.
Privately supporting equality for our gay brothers and sisters is one thing. Repurposing a publicly-held web services company to do so is quite another.
I didn't make the previous statement but I don't think that is what was meant. The point is that shareholder laws state that the purpose of the company is to make money for all shareholders, not to push a social agenda. A company can take a stand on issues but when profit and social issues collide the company is bound to follow profit.
Don't question the mob. The mob is always right.
Leave da bubble! (And also vote no on Prop 8. kthx.)
To have a position from which dissent is not tolerated is the definition of PC. Hence the "correct" part of PC.
Once you escape the bubble that is Hacker News you find an extremely large population of religious people that are for prop 8.
So you have large populations for and against. Thus, either position is strongly supported and opposed, there is no correct position that will not be assaulted. Google didn't post on Hacker News, they posted on a public blog.
As a journalist (one who just finished interviewing someone I find personally despicable but who's done something newsworthy and interesting so merits coverage) I like to think that my readers are smart enough to suss out their own positions on the things I write about. It's not my job to decide which of the different views on a topic I cover is "correct" or "right." My job's to describe them and how they relate to one another and let the reader do his or her homework on which one they think is right.
Drew Curtis has a great chapter in his book in which he rails against the media's penchant for giving equal time to "crazy people." He makes a great argument, but the problem is that it comes from an assumption that your readers are too lazy and dumb to make up their own minds about an issue, so we should be selective in how we treat different sides of an argument. That doesn't sit well.
Right, but it's also not your job to draw false dichotomies and go out of your way to imply moral equivalence just so you can slather a patina of "fairness" over your work.
Even the best (especially the best?) journalists have to editorialize, whether they come to grips with that fact or not. The alternative would be to present an infinity of viewpoints on every topic one covers in any piece one writes. At some point one has to exercise discretion on what gets included and what doesn't, on what gets covered in detail and what doesn't. I don't think it's right or realistic to try to abdicate that part of one's journalistic responsibility.
Dedicating half of your story to, for instance, a crazy windbag representing a tiny minority for the (professionally misguided and misinterpreted) purpose of an unbiased piece is where the insanity comes in. If in researching a story you find that there are some dissenting views, you include a quote from them somewhere in the piece, but you don't turn your piece into that one guy or one group versus the original focus of the story. That's sloppy and misrepresenting the issue because you've mistaken "unbiased reporting" with "50/50 equal time for two views."
What a strange analogy. Evolution is a natural phenomena, while marriage is a state-regulated union. There is a set of reasons apart from tradition why legal marriage exists, and very little in that set would apply with any frequency to "gay marriage". The most obvious reason, of course, is that the division of labor between the sexes is inevitably derivative of the constraints created by pregnancy.
Brin doesn't really argue beyond this,
we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality.
But this is an error. It's an easy error to make.
UPDATE
@downvoter, if equality isn't a fuzzy premise, where is the line drawn between things that should and should not be equal?
For instance, why shouldn't everyone have an equal opportunity to participate in the Olympics? Why shouldn't everyone have an equal opportunity to be a CEO on Wall Street?
It's because they do not have the functionality that these positions require, as mynameishere pointed out regarding marriage. Claiming equality merely glosses over these important distinctions and does not bring any substance to the argument.
Sure, maybe same sex relationships can be artificially generative, but this is no where near the capability or likelihood to equal the basis for traditional marriage.
So, same sex relationships should not have the same benefits that are accrued by a generative relationship, since they do not require them and are thus just squandering resources.
Emotional issues are important, but they should not be the bottom line in a situation that clearly has a functional basis. However, the pro side seems to be mainly emotive in their driving arguments.
You are claiming that this is the primary reason why we have state-regulated marriage? Two words: [citation needed].
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/366152/marriage
This also sets a dangerous precedent if those who present the arguments are convinced they know which one is right. If it is legitimate for them to favor one over the other, then they end up dictating what is "right" for the masses, which is essentially censorship.
A way to try & look at it from a position where you see something as this as an undeniable truth is to imagine a debate in a different time or place. Equal voting rights for women/minorities was once controversial in the US & Europe, How HIV infection occurs is controversial in some places currently. Would you be able to give equal time to all positions in these cases?
Being right doesn't preclude bias.
"Impartiality" on whether to treat people with justice or not doesn't scan.
If we're going to redefine marriage as two people who love each other and want a long-term commitment, then there is no logical reason n=2 and 2 alone.
You shouldn't be limited to one partner in terms of love/sex/living together/whatnot if you so desire. Why the hell should I care? But let's say that your job offers healthcare for you and your partner - if you have 18 partners, that's a hell of a different cost from one partner.
Likewise, let's say that you slip into a comma. Who has say over that feeding tube? That's already complicated! Let's say I'm some rich jerk trying to skirt the inheritance tax. Well, spouses are one way around it. Well, clearly my kids are also my spouses! Who gets to visit you at the hospital and who doesn't? Well, spouse 1 says your friend Joe should come, but spouse 2 hates Joe. Does it work by majority voting? What if they can't find all your spouses and you're dying and Joe really wants to see you?
So, if you think of marriage as the government telling you that you can only love/have sex with/live with one person, it seems oppressive if you desire something else. If you see marriage as this standard government contract that says you are allowed to designate one other individual for partner benefits, hospital visitation, inheritance, etc. then it makes sense.
The problem is that our society equates marriage with love/sex. Marriage should probably be seen as a contract. As such, you can see how it wouldn't really work to designate 6 people as having the right to determine whether you stay on life support. Yes, you could simply create individual contracts specifying everything that marriage entails, but that's tedious, expensive, prone to error and requires everyone who deals with you to have a lawyer to interpret that agreement - and they're not going to want to spend hundreds of dollars for a lawyer and tons more in liability to interpret your individualized contracts so they'll just deny you. Marriage is a standard convenience contract and shouldn't be confused with love or sex.
//I'm really interested to see if you disagree with this or how you think things like benefits/hospital visitation/whatnot should work in poly relationships (yeah, sociology student ;-))
Where it gets more complicated is in things like the tax code - it seems advantageous to society to offer tax breaks to married couples, with the idea being that this will help them have more resources for raising children. Of course this is predicated upon the notion that a husband-wife team is the best way to raise children (which I happen to believe). If gay marriage is strictly equal to straight marriage, those sorts of policies would seem to disproportionately favor gay couples (who tend not to have children) over straight ones (who generally do).
The opposite of this is why many people are advocating allowing same sex couples to participate in marriage. It is difficult to assemble exactly the parts of the marriage rights/responsibilities that you want in a legally binding way. Just getting the whole package with the label "marriage" is a big benefit.
Actually, this is done all the time.
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22board+of+directors%22+star...BondBook's Backers Pull the Plug, Citing Lack of Critical Mass ... The board of directors reached this decision because current market conditions in the ...
After fifty years of futile funding, it’s time to pull the plug. ...
I would send this business plan to my board of directors for approval with my .... We pull the plug when we find that the startup is not going as per the ...
rounds of financing while reserving the option to pull the plug if the experiments ...
1) People don't want to pay for it. Well, last I checked we weren't adding up figures. This is a definition change. The economics of it are free to work in various ways. For instance, companies could offer n-couple insurance with scaling rates.
2) Who makes executive decisions? ie, Who Pulls The Plug. I'd think you'd set this up the same way any n-party organization, like a board of directors, would. You could just vote. Or go by age. Or by gender. Seems like your marriage contract would be the place to put this.
We allow lots of people to form agreements with n-people. We allow people to live with whomever they choose. Why not allow these agreements to have the force of marriage? I can form a multi-billion-dollar business deal with 7 women but we can't all call each other spouses? It's just stupid. And it's cruel. Especially to me. :)
You can set up whatever legal arrangements you want. But marriage is a sensible default for the majority of people, thus specifically written into specific laws to make our society function more smoothly. If you want a custom arrangement that is less in demand, that is going to have some higher costs and less convenience for you. But that is true of many things, heavily customized products are often more costly and inconvenient than just buying the show room floor model.
I think this is what the post you responded to is arguing for, not some prohibition on non-standard living arrangements.
I think finding n > 2 people willing to share each other is more than a little problematic.
Besides, if you really love someone, like enough-to-marry-her lot, do you need to have anyone else?
On the other hand, would you be willing to be married to a woman with 6 other husbands?
Everyone is so indifferent to everyone else in this day in age. Why shouldn't Google (at least their executive board) be able to say that they feel strongly that gay marriage is a right that should be had?
Your style of thinking is a dangerous subconcious attitude that has crept across our nation since the latter half of the 20th century. Stand up for what you believe, because if you don't you may lose out on more than just your rights.
Don't forget that couple that got offended at the removal of "bride" and "groom" on their wedding license: http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/1239279.html
And how would a person who was supporting Prop8 (say, a practicing Orthodox Jew, a Tibetan Buddhist, a Muslim, a Sikh, or a Christian, all faiths which explicitly proscribe homosexual behavior) feel about working at Google after hearing this?
1) Said Orthodox Jew, Muslim, Christian, etc., while privately disapproving of gay marriage, recognizes that his right to be offended ends where my rights begin. Said employee does not wish to shove his own personal brand of "morality" down everyone else's throats by codifying discrimination into the State Constitution, and therefore has no issue with Google's stance on the matter.
Or,
2) Said Orthodox Jew, Muslim, Christian, etc., is upset with his employer because said employee feels he should be entitled to infringe upon the human rights of others. Said employee is free to leave Google, as he is doubtless of little value to the company, or to society in general.
And for those saying companies don't take sides or make announcements, lets name a couple. Chick-fil-a is closed on Sundays. Why, because the founder is a hard-right Christian who thinks everyone should go to church or they go to hell. I worked there when I was a teenager, firsthand experience.
How about Dominos? The founder built a town outside of Naples in Florida strictly for Christians. Ava Maria, I think its called.
And don't forget SC Johnson, "a family company". Jeesh.
There are good reasons for keeping one's personal life personal. If Sergey's comments cause a lot of controversy, I wouldn't be surprised if Google saw successful shareholder lawsuits. Using your company to comment on social issues is not acting in the fiduciary interest of your shareholders.
Never. Neither does In-N-Out, another privately owned "openly" christian company.
Staying private is one good way to alleviate issues with upset share holders and continuing to passively support the owners beliefs. This is fine as long as the company still respects the rights of the share holders, customers and employees.
As many have already stated, and i'll reiterate. There are two issues being discussed here. 1) gay rights. [no question they should have equal rights] 2) entangling support for social issues with a public company [this is where people have problems].
All the publicly held multi-national companies that I know of offer benefits to a homosexual partner. But they do it through the normal workflow of HR. The problem is Google does everything differently. Including making this announcement. So the question remains is this an acceptable way to do it? Google thinks so. (now my libertarian free market tendancies come in to play) If you support the way they did it, buy some more Google and give them a positive blog article. If you disagree sell it or short it and go use duckduckgo or yahoo.
You're surely aware of how divisive this issue is by just looking at the polling on this matter. By taking a hard stand on a very divisive issue on behalf of your whole company, you are spending an enormous amount of your Google brand and influence on this issue. Right?
According to gaydemographics.org, there are less than 100,000 gay couples in California. Let's assume all of them want to get married. Let's also assume, which I think is reasonable, that those gay couples wanting to get married are already cohabiting, have plenty of food, have shelter, have access to world class health care etc - and after this huge expenditure of Google influence and brand change, that will be the same - but they might have a marriage certificate.
So, I just wonder why you chose that issue over this issue - that of AIDS orphans in Africa (unfortunately that label often hides the fact that these are real living breathing children). According to one.org, there are 12 million children who have lost BOTH parents to AIDS and are on their own now. This is a rapidly growing problem and there are estimated to be 25 million AIDS orphans by 2010. The sheer scale of this disaster is mind-boggling - yet it's mostly an information problem that needs to be solved. These children need parents. There are many couples around the world that are eager for children. Who better than Google to find a solution? For many of these children, adoption would mean hope where now there is only despair. As impactful as a marriage certificate would be to 100,000 gay couples in one of the richest states of the richest country - I'm guessing an adoption certificate would be tremendously more valuable to these children who are truly destitute. And I'm also guessing this would be much more inspirational and unifying to Google's share-holders and users.
In deciding on where to spend your resources, I would suggest watching this: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global...
and reading this (the irony is not lost on me): http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118124139854628069.html
I can understand the draw to be edgy and controversial, but sometimes the causes which are most worthy also are the least popular. I applaud the work the Google Foundation is doing, don't get me wrong - but please consider the costs vs benefits to Google in working towards these two pieces of paper I mentioned: the gay marriage license for wealthy westerners or the adoption certificate for a destitute, yet living breathing child who has lost both parents in Africa.
Cheers, Matt
Edit: Here's what I'm referring to: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04...
The point is that Sergey has many "public good" issues to choose from. Some issues will have far greater impact on relieving suffering in this world - especially for those who have little or no voice themselves. Some issues will have a much smaller impact, especially for those who already have a lot of power and are wealthy and very vocal about their issues. Some issues will be very divisive among Google shareholders and users. Some issues will be very uniting.
It's really a matter of choosing what to do with your resources - and Google is a public company now - not a privately owned company by Larry and Sergey. Employees and shareholders are on both sides of this issue - what may be 'obviously the right thing to do' for some of his shareholders is 'obviously the wrong thing to do' for others. This is a divisive move for his company on an issue trying to help already very powerful and wealthy advocates. To spend brand capital so heavily and unilaterally like this when you could be doing so much good elsewhere and at the same time build unity among shareholders and strengthen your brand - just seems like a poor decision.
If Google has nothing to do with AIDS orphans in Africa - that's their choice. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Bono, etc would normally have "nothing to do with AIDS orphans in Africa", yet they have chosen to.
They're a corporation. They make money offering us products that we like. They've made a very GOOD set of products, and I still use several daily. That's the end of my relationship with them. If they're supporting gay marriage, that's great of them, I'm proud of them, but it doesn't affect my using their product. They are not obligated to do anything more, and your getting snotty about their not doing something OBLIGATED is pretty awful and self-righteous.
Gates and Buffett and Bono are doing good stuff. Be happy for them. Don't use them to denounce other companies.
a system or arrangement of intricate or interrelated parts <the calculus of forces in world affairs — Martin Mayer>
A moral calculus is a moral system. The moral calculus is the moral system.Compared to orphans in Africa, yes, I'm going to sound rich and spoiled, but Proposition 8 is here now and it needs to be dealt with now. There are other NGOs and others trying to deal with crises worldwide (and I do donate as much as I can in every way to them), but I have to do my own bit to get rid of this deranged proposition November 4th because I really, really want to have the ability to get married to another woman and still have the same rights as, say, my heterosexual parents do. So forgive me and lots of others (Brad Pitt? Ellen DeGeneres? Steven Spielberg?...) for caring so much about something that affects us deeply.
For what it's worth, I may have access to world class healthcare, but it's costing me an arm and a leg. Should I be unable to afford it, well, I don't even want to go there.
(In the end, I'm not really disagreeing with Matt here. I don't think they're exclusive of each other, but I think Sergey thought Prop 8 was a way more pressing issue that could potentially end soon, and Google's support could only help. I would not mind seeing an easier way to adopt children since I plan to do so in the future, but honestly Google isn't gonna turn into an adoption agency anytime soon and I'm sure many people already use Google to find out more about the whole adoption process to begin with.)
Now, if we were talking money, which afaik Google has not donated to any no-on-prop-8 campaign, then I would agree with the open letter Matt wrote, but a public statement? From Google?
I'm not saying AIDS orphans aren't a pressing issue as well, but organizations and companies better fit to attempt to make an impact on that and many more humanitarian crises are working right now to do so and have been for a while, and I really don't think Google doing what they did for prop 8 for AIDS orphans instead would change much. Google did something like "Donate to $x charity!" link on their frontpage for previous crises like hurricane katrina and the recent devastating earthquake in China, and I bet that would have a larger impact if said charity were one like MSF etc. working to treat and stop AIDS or some adoption agency specializing in AIDS orphans. Or to AIDS research. Or something. Feature a new one every week. Sponsor a child. Adopt a child. Anything. Now that's a cool idea (although one would have to wonder how many people would pay attention, what kind of usability impact it would have on the site, and how many people would just see if they could remove that on their personalized page..).
The world sucks, honestly, but just because one problem is a lot worse than another doesn't mean that the lesser problem should be pushed aside for the sake of the larger problem. They're not exclusive, and some entities are just better fit to help on one than another.
Comparing someone's efforts with what they could have done is a way to deflate and discourage them. While I don't think Sergey will care about your attitude (or even be aware of it), I care.
It's not that Sergey can only ever make this one comment in his life, and he has to pick the very best use of it. He can support more than one cause - and perhaps the journey of a thousand miles starts with the ground under your feet?
Sergey holds a special place in the world since he is one of the wealthiest ($15+ billion) and holds major control over one of the wealthiest companies in the world ($135+ billion - more than even Coca Cola). Most of us would say that places considerably more responsibility in his hands when it comes to taking on world problems. Just a sliver of his wealth can change the lives of millions.
So the letter really is an attempt at a wake-up call for Sergey. The homosexual marriage movement is wealthy, well-supported, and has a very loud megahorn. Using a public company to support a divisive political measure for already wealthy and vocal adults when there are children languishing elsewhere without a voice, just seems like a misplacement of Google's power.
People often see public figures as deities, and abdicate their own center of action to these gods. Saying "the government/corporations/rich should do something" strengthens their power and diminishes yours.
But they aren't gods. They aren't that powerful.
Second, although AIDS orphans are tragic, a general "we support AIDS orphans" blog post would be considered rhetorical and would not get garner much additional support for AIDS orphans. However, voting is coming soon and Google's position on this will change votes in CA.
Third, yes theoretically I suppose that Google is "spending an enormous amount of Google brand and influence" ... but practically, they're spending ten minutes of Sergey's time to write a blog post.
Google is not going to lose business -- you can't use the Internet without seeing their ads. I also doubt that its brand name will be tarnished much -- some people may despise the move, but a lot of others will like Google even more (including myself). Many companies already provide full benefits to same-sex couples -- isn't this already publicly affirming them?
AIDS orphans in Africa is a completely unrelated problem, so your throwing it into the discussion is a cheap strawman argumentation. Also, not everybody agrees with Lomborg. Also, are you sure Google is not doing anything for the cause of AIDS orphans? They might have donated money and stuff.
Also, how much money has it cost to draw up the proposal for the anti-gay-marriage bill and organize the ballot? Why was that money not spent on AIDS orphans? Why were there enough people annoyed about gay marriage to warrant wasting a lot of public money on that useless debate? That seems much more scandalous to me than somebody wasting a couple of minutes to write a blog entry.
What are fundamental human rights?
http://www.google.com/search?q=nonsense+on+stilts+natural+ri...
And it is not about feel-goodness, either. We try not to bother our neighbours too much because in turn they won't bother us, either. If you take away some rights from the next person, expect the same rights to be taken away from you the next day.
Because there are big problems, one should not solve the small problems? Because I know of aids, I should not give a dollar to the local begger?
Please stop this bullshit about aids orphans in Africa - it's just propaganda by the charity organisations who want you to give them money. Children are children everywhere in the world. Those aids orphans are not abandoned by Africans - every human being has the nurturing instinct. Neighbours are not letting orphans starve in Africa. Africa does not NEED you to solve this problem - it is a large problem, but it's not a critical problem.
There are WORSE things, but they are not sexy. There are men who work their entire life shoveling coal for hardly any money to survive, but nobody cares about them. They are not cute, they are not small, so they are abandoned.
Don't let those charity fat cats shape your perception of where help is needed. THINK first! And everyone cannot fight the same battle, we have to diversify and fight different battles. So if you see someone doing nothing, then ask him to do something. If you see people already helping in one way, don't try to make them do what you are already doing, otherwise all these other problems will get ignored.
Look at Bill Gates - they open this "charity" and then invites all his friends to save on their taxes by donating money in there. Utter bullcrap. Charities are the new Tax Havens. And they just hit people like you with propaganda on what needs to be done. It's all about:
Aids, Cancer, Malaria, Darfur, Earthquake in Sichuan, Tsunami, Pandas, Eagles, Dolphins, Whales, Cats & Dogs, Zimbabwe.
The media topics are almost always the same, but are you telling me you really think that the bulk of the worlds suffering is in any of those topics? Are Dolphins more worthy than Hyenas?
Charity is a big-industry, and they use marketing techniques to get money from people. And in marketing, you need to get a clear brand - Darfur is a brand, Aids is a brand, Starving Children are a brand. They don't run billboards with real and unsexy problems in the world.
I spent a lot of time in Africa and in China, and the people I really respect are very small - I met this American couple who have been running a haven for monkeys in the border of Cameroun for the last 20 years. They make a real difference - they have put everything they have into that project, and they have saved so many animals. But these large charities will collect millions and do nothing there! I've met doctors who go to villages and treat the poor people there for free. Those are REAL heroes! They touch disgusting wounds and look at wretched people without flinching. They are people to look up to, people to admire.
Not cigar smoking men sitting in offices in New York and meeting with advertising agencies on how best to create a fundraiser for the new batch of teenage stars.
I would just ignore these people if I could, but when I see them influencing otherwise intelligent people, it really pisses me off.
THINK! If people are asking you for money, don't believe everything they tell you!
Don't be so quick to trivialize cancer and aids. I assure you: if you ever have to see someone close to you suffer and ultimately die of one of those nasty diseases, the problem of getting a marriage license for gay people will pale in comparison.
Sometimes the media serves a good purpose. Not all the time, but sometimes. I personally think that cancer and aids, darfur (last i checked something like 400,000 people, mostly innocent, were massacred), are much weightier issues, and therefore deserve the bulk of media attention.
This is not to discredit the honorable work of people working on relatively small societal problems such as gay marriage, but in most of the above problems, the core argument is that lives are being lost. Think about that.
But Darfur is just wierd. In this age of Cameras, Camera People, Live streaming, how come 400,000 people have died, and there are no videos of actual combat? Darfur is the strangest "war" I've ever heard of - it seems to be a theoretical war. I've never met the people running from there, I've never seen the videos of the actual war, I've never seen real photographic evidence of any massacres.
People want to constantly hear about wars in Africa. But that age has suddenly ended. All the wars in Africa have ended, what's just left is just local clashes and conflicts between ethnic groups, and various organisations who have a vested interest in there being conflicts in Africa push up these topics. Do some real research, you'll see how wierd the Darfur war comes across compared to Sierra Leone or Liberia. Also, research the role of China in the region.
Cancer sucks, but cancer has been there since the beginning of time. People get it, people die. The only reason so much focus is given on it is that it is the one disease that being rich has no effect on. So the rich people have vested interest in getting rid of cancer before other diseases like Malaria.
Aids is of course a problem, but seriously, remember 10 years ago? 1998? The news about Aids was the same panic as right now. But the thing is this - for an exponentially growing disease, with drugs that are ensuring that the people infected stay alive longer, should it not have been more devastating than it turned out?
The Aids projection seem to be staying at roughly the same number. I'm not saying it's not there, I'm just saying that it's not an explosive epidemic.
Perhaps if you did more research you would actually find that its kind of hard to get videos of actual combat. Even if you could get said footage,how easy do you think it is to publish stuff like this when there is a suppressive government? Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
And i'm not arguing about whether or not these are problems. I'm saying that they are bigger problems than the one posted.
Have you heard of the phrase, stop while you're ahead.
I followed your rebuttal essentially stating that one should not lose sight of small problems for the larger ones, but your derivative spiel about charities and about Darfur is incoherent babble.
Seriously.
Darfur was a non-issue in the US/ world-media until perhaps 2006, and even now, most Americans (and perhaps Germans as well?) don't know much about Darfur, don't care, and most importantly to your argument, they don't donate time or money to the issue. So what charities exactly are benefitting by distributing the 'propaganda' about the 'war' in Darfur.
It's not war, it's genocide.
Are you one of those who also didn't believe Holocaust Germany happened? Not enough evidence for you?
Stick to a logical argument backed up by either logic and data, or please do not argue here again. I'm tired of seeing your pointless rants where you spew this ridiculous, utter, nonsense.
What other pointless rants are you talking about?
(And by the way, I've been several times in the general conflict zone area. What are your info sources that make you so sure I am wrong?)
While Google surely puts more thought into how its practices affect society than the average giant corporation, it is hardly a charity and I don’t think this statement should be any indication that it plans on becoming one. "Don't be evil" is still a long way on the altruism scale from becoming a humanitarian NGO.
...
Is it, though, appropriate for a head of a public company to officially align said company on a piece of controversial (and not strictly relevant to the business) legislation? Well, perhaps not. In this situation however, I think it was an admirable and fitting action. It reinforces Google’s "not business as usual" stance and commitment to social awareness and doing good. Of course, though, there will be many who see this as the opposite of "doing good."
The values of tolerance, diversity, and meritocratic inclusion are, though, so fundamental to the company (and, when at its best, the Valley and the tech industry in general) that this seems like a natural and reasonable move. Though I agree there is certainly room for argument, particularly over specifics, here, many will surely see opposition to Prop. 8 as reflective of the above values. I took Sergey’s blog post as more a statement of "live and let live" and respect for all than as a focused and specific endorsement of gay marriage.
I don't work at Google but I do live in the Bay Area and I'm confident that the employee culture at the company is such that those with strong feelings against gay rights are used to keeping their position largely to themselves. In other words, conservative Christian/Jewish/Muslim/Sikh/etc. individuals who work there have, I’m sure, resigned to keep their religious convictions a personal matter in order to effectively and civilly participate in a diverse environment. Consequently, I would be surprised if this pronouncement causes much of a stir even from pro-Prop. 8 Googlers.
Please, isn't Google made up of 99% Democrats? I'm all for gay marriage, but that is a misrepresentation. One Republican does not make great diversity.
More significantly, I disagree with Google's taking a position on this issue. I think corporations should think seriously about taking positions in domestic, cultural issues. Civil rights issues? Go for it. Changing the definition of religious terms? Out of bounds. I'm not religious, but this seems to make the most sense in my own life. Google should do the same.
If Google wants to wade into politics, then welcome to the party. I'm sure they are comfortable with the results of becoming political -- when people with opposing views make and change the laws in order to diminish Google's political power. That's the way politics works. I'm also concerned with idealists who only whine about things that are easy and never take a stand where they could make a real difference or where it could really hurt. What about billions in China not getting the full internet? Well, to listen to Google that's a much more complex subject.
Right.
Gays nor straights should have to turn to the government to have their unions blessed.
But since straights have such advantages given to them as a result of our legal system, it would be silly not to have the rights given to all.
Marriage is NOT a religious construct. It is a construct granted because of other dependent bodies of law, including taxes, health care, child custody, property rights.
Without marriage laws to assist, it is more difficult to have our courts administer the other dependent laws. You are therefore denying gays equal access to the legal system and its protections as a result.
You have the right to believe in whatever you want.
You do not have the right, in MY country, to deny other human beings rights or protections that others have.
Go to church all you want. Just leave me out of your bigotry.
Marriage is deeply a religious idea. Religions and their ideas of marriage pre-date all existing governments and other social structures. Therefore it would be silly to make an argument that marriage is government-based: it's not. Governments simply codified and wrote into law those commonly-held ideas of marriage. Later on, as society became more complex, sure, other rights were given based on these definitions.
Civil Unions offer all of the advantages of marriage without getting into a cultural war (unless you want to do that).
Sounds like you enjoy feeling very self-righteous about your beliefs, ie, the whole "in MY country" routine. I wouldn't want to deny rights to anybody. Why don't you calm down a bit and realize that you're trying to argue with somebody who basically agrees with you?
And don't call me a bigot. You don't know me, and based on your post you don't even understand my position on the issue. It's an ad hominem.
You are a bigot. You wish gays to be set aside as "different".
This is not 1960 and we are not talking about African Americans. Once civil unions are defined there is no way they can be treated any differently than other legal relationships, such as limited power of attorney.
Think this through. Please. Stop using a civil rights metaphor. It's not. It's more a question of the licensing power of the state and the nomenclature of the privileges involved.
If I thought for a minute that civil unions were "separate but equal" I would not support them. But I do not feel that way. It's just rhetoric.
Since the gist of my argument was "let's not fight over something we can solve" perhaps we just add the term "civil union" wherever the term marriage appears. Or perhaps we have a constitutional ammendment that makes the two phrases equal. For instance, I don't think you could go back in the historical record and change terms. The answer to that question may be based on how you make laws.
Another poster made a comment about 3 or more people in a union. I believe this follows naturally as well from an extension of the term "marriage". Things like multiple partners seem just fine in the 21st century. At least to me, but I'm a libertarian. Since the term seems to be opening up, as a hacker I say make the new definition in one place to be equal to anywhere else the term "marriage" was used.
Religion is just the handbook for a society (like the "turnkey" instructions manual for a McDonalds branch), therefore it includes marriage.
Also, I am confused: you are not religious, yet you style yourself as a supersensitive guy respecting the feelings of religious people. How about respecting the feelings of your son?
I suppose you don't believe in imprisoning criminals then?
Personally I despise the hypocrisy of the state when it forces a certain value system on us with the marriage laws (like tax breaks for married couples - so the state takes a stance against unmarried couples for moral reasons).
Couldn't both of those goals be accomplished without getting into a cultural war over the term "marriage"?
If "civil unions" are legislated to having the same rights as marriage - then that solves the equality problem.
Also, "civil unions" can have a much looser definition. So if there is a threesome of men that really love each other and want to make a life commitment to each other and have equal rights as a married couple, they could do so. However, with gay "marriage" that would not be possible unless it also included plural marriage - and given our nation's history that's pretty unlikely.
"Civil Unions" just seem to be much more flexible in preserving rights of people in minority situations. Even for non-homosexuals. I had good friends who were cousins in their 50's and had lived together non-sexually for over 30 years. They were inseparable and they shared all their resources. When one of them had a brain tumor and was in the hospital, fortunately because they lived in Germany, it was no issue, but if they had lived in the US, there would have been issues with visiting, etc from what I hear. For them "marriage" would not be something they wanted obviously, but it would have made their lives much easier in many situations if they could have had a "civil union".
So, I'm all for having equal rights and government out of the bedroom, but gay marriage just doesn't seem to be the right solution for those two goals. 1) It leaves out other very legitimate situations where companions - either non-sexual or plural arrangements would not have equal rights, and 2) it starts a divisive cultural war that could be avoided. Peace and love right?
Why should polygamy or polyandry be outlawed? If multiple people feel they love each other enough that they wish to be bound by the legal act of marriage, who are you to say otherwise? Who does it hurt?
This concept of marriage and single sex partners is not only anti-evolutionary, but is only backed by religious nonsense. Granted some animals wish to be this way, but why should anyone say others cannot?
The only push-back I anticipate would be from the Dominionists who can't stand seeing church and state separate a little further.