Yep on CNBC i believe( I hate that channel,it's just ridiculous). What was stupid is that one journalist said T.Cook was gay,others insisted he wasnt.Like "noooooooooooo he's not!" multiple times.
That sums up the whole NBC network for me.
Frankly,nobody cared about Jobs sexual life,and he did a good job at shielding his family from the media frenzy.
So the portrait painted by the article and it contents should always be taken at face value, without any nuances or context?Wouldn't that make the reader uncritical or even naive?
And make the "Apple" brand away from PRISM, NSA and others not to mention that they want to keep the "cool" and "open" words attached to the "Apple" brand as well.
Of course with all due respect to Tim Cook which opened for the first time and will probably inspire other people.
But to me everything is connected.
EDIT: For those who downvoted please explain what's wrong in this comment.
honestly I could care less. I really just don't care who is gay or not. I really don't give one whit to those who think its some special event when they do.
your personal life, keep it personal, its no one's business and it certainly is not something to exploit for personal gain or to guilt another with
You either didn't read the article or simply failed to understand from the article why he did it. He's not trying to exploit anything for himself or his company but instead of the betterment of minorities.
Being in such a progressive community (i.e. young nerdy people), it's easy to forget that this is an enormous deal for some people. A friend of mine recently came out as transgender and the general response was "oh, cool, good for you". It's hard to fathom what it's like for people who aren't in such a supportive environment.
There are undoubtedly many people who will no longer purchase Apple products because of this, and I don't know society can fix this with anything but time.
Even at my fraternity at school, a kid sent a very long heartfelt message that he was dropping because he was gay. Which was followed by a a series of messages from everyone else saying either "we know, we support you unconditionally" or cracking the occasional good-spirited but crass joke. He later served as an officer and was a member until graduation. While at a liberal college, it's easy to forget the challenges people of different orientations face in many places throughout the country.
There seems to have been a cultural shift in the United States as of lately. Just a few years back most companies was afraid of "choosing" side, and kept things pretty neutral. But look at recent Disney movies and Coca-Cola commercials. They all give the impression that from a marketing perspective it's better to take a stand.
It's funny because Frozen was a massive hit in Japan by all accounts. There it had nothing to do with coming out. Instead women really loved the women power and could relate to having to conform to a certain image etc. So perhaps that's the greatness of Frozen. Each culture makes it their own.
The last two Disney movies I watched (Frozen and Maleficent) both were resolved not by romantic love of a man and woman, but with the the love between two women. I am NOT saying Ana and Elsa were lesbians, but that Disney seems to be moving away from the prince/princess formula - that the ultimate feat of existence is getting married to someone of the opposite gender. If this is a "homosexual agenda" or not, I say good riddance. That crap is life poison to impressionable young girls.
>> The last two Disney movies I watched (Frozen and Maleficent) both were resolved not by romantic love of a man and woman, but with the the love between two women.
Have not see Maleficent, but I have heard nuts claiming Frozen was some kind of pro-gay film. It is resolved by (non-romantic) love between family members. I saw the movie twice in theater with my kid and couldn't find ANY indication of gay-ness. Anna ends up going after a man. The main plot is about self acceptance and embracing who you really are. While that metaphor can easily be applied to being gay (in todays world), I suspect the only people who instinctively made the connection are either gay or terribly anti-gay.
I haven't seen Maleficent either; but, that was exactly the impression I came out of the movie. That said, I have a gay friend and he said it was a movie about homosexuality and coming out of the closet and accepting yourself.
I didn't read into it that at all. I don't know which intended meaning Disney had when they adapted the story into a script and animation; but it seems to resonate with different people differently (as is often the case with movies).
I saw it in staunch contrast to the historical Disney "Princess" narrative, where happily-ever-after doesn't mean marriage, remarking how they openly mocked the idea of falling in love with someone and marrying them after a single day.
I'd have to ask him directly, but he could have easily seen the movie from Elsa's perspective, the woman imbued with a gift, or curse. Both perspectives are presented in the movie, if memory serves me, and it entirely depends on the person speaking at the time. The parents thought it was a curse. The trolls saw it differently. Whatever the reality of her situation, she fled, and then accepted who she was, and eventually defeated the parts of her gift that had made it so sad to have.
Perhaps, then, it is both. It was a movie that was a push away from the 'True Love's Kiss' story of Disney olde, as much as it was a story about accepting who you are. And the whole story is bound together by the very real presence of the two sister's familial love for one another.
Sure - frozen has fantastic messages for girls. But a 1 second glimpse of a family and the love between two sisters is very far from Disney making a statement on homosexuality.
a) "they're trying to convert our children!" paranoia
b) general disapproval.
There are at least two more:
c) dispassionate acknowledgement
d) outright support
I absolutely, strongly support the LGBT community's agenda of making gay marriage legal, everywhere.
Just because one hateful group of people uses a phrase in one particular way, doesn't mean we need to give them ownership of it, nor assume that everyone using the same term feels the same way they do.
No... They simply acknowledge that the roughly 4% of the population that identify with the LGBT community exists. It's a pretty far push from acknowledging existence to "pushing homosexuality on everyone." I'll leave as an exercise to the reader to identify the mental gymnastics required to come up with the phrase: "pushing homosexuality on everyone"
The fact that some religious groups have taken a particular stand doesn't make it "not pushy" to force other groups to follow.
EDIT: for example, a lot of religions don't have a problem with pork, but some do. It would be pushy to require a kosher or halal deli to serve pork. Likewise, there are some who want to require, say, Southern Baptist churches to perform same-sex weddings; that's pushy.
> "There's nothing in the bible saying they can't do that"
... in your understanding of the Bible. Not every Christian group agrees with the way you understand it.
Also keep in mind that many Christian groups rely on more than just the Bible for authority (both Catholics and the Orthodox hold a very high view of tradition, compared to the Protestant view of tradition as dangerous.)
There are also religious groups that aren't Christian which also have objections to performing same-sex weddings.
Anyway, thank you for so beautifully illustrating my point.
They believe they have defenses for their interpretations, and that's all that should matter from a religious liberty perspective. Neither you nor I nor the government qualify as the final arbiter of "true Christianity" or "correct Bible interpretation" (or "true Islam" or "true Mormonism" or any of the other religions which might object to same-sex marriage.) It's not my place, or yours, or the government's, to force our understanding of what the Bible says onto groups that think the Bible (or the Pope or the Synod) says otherwise.
If members of the community wish to perform acts which are against a particular church's beliefs, they don't need to perform those acts in that church (and if you want bacon, you don't need to shop at a kosher deli.) There are plenty of alternatives -- like you said, other churches that will happily perform those ceremonies for them, or even the courthouse.
EDIT: just so there's no misunderstanding: I support your right to have whatever relationship you want to have with whatever consenting adult(s) you want to have it with. But none of us have the right to tell anybody else that they have to participate in the celebration of any relationship. (If a church wants to turn away Brittney Spears because her understanding of marriage offends them, that's also their right.)
Someone upthread suggested that all that's going on is "acknowledging existence" of homosexuals, and that one must engage in mental gymnastics to use phrases like "pushing homosexuality on everyone".
I don't have a problem with pressure. I have a problem with people saying that nobody is pushing when some people actually are. Thank you for being honest about trying to pressure and compel religious groups to change. (I, too, often pressure my own religion for change -- though I prefer compelling arguments to financial threats.)
"pay taxes ... just like everyone else" is a little bit misleading. Organizations pay taxes if they operate for-profit, and don't if they operate not-for-profit.
We don't allow for-profit, tax-paying corporations to discriminate. Why, then, do we think the appropriate response to a religious organization being discriminatory is to treat them as a for-profit organization? It seems to me that tax law isn't the right tool to be wielding; it's very philosophically inconsistent.
More than that, it seems to me that the government's responsibility should be to allow for maximum diversity of opinion and practice. The government has a compelling interest in stopping systematic violence (whether motivated by race, gender, sexuality, or any other factor.) The government has a compelling interest in stopping systematic economic discrimination. But I don't see a compelling interest in eliminating all forms of discrimination everywhere. I think it's a Good Thing (TM) that religious organizations can decide who is and isn't a part of them. Even if that means some religious organizations are racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. they should have that right within their own doors. (Some religious groups have even more extreme requirements for marriage. Because Mormons believe in eternal marriage, they won't "seal" a divorced or widowed woman who has already been "sealed" before. It's discriminatory, but well within their rights as an organization.)
For what it's worth, I'm not trolling. I'm making principled arguments, some of which you disagree with. I appreciate your taking the time to make principled arguments in response, even if you've since deleted them.
The original comment I responded to was someone claiming there's no "pushing" going on. As you clearly demonstrated, you're willing to "pressure" religious groups -- there's nothing wrong with that, but more people should be honest about it. From my perspective, the appropriate types of pressure are internal pressure (ie, members changing the group's ideas) or competitive pressure (other organizations that already are on the opposite side), not tax pressure.
I'm not sure who "they" is talking about in this thread, so I might be a little off here, but it definitely goes beyond acknowledging existence. People have acknowledged homosexuality for thousands of years (that's why there is a word for it). What the LGBT community wants is acceptance that it is a acceptable form of sexual expression.
I definitely feel like there is some amount of "pushing homosexuality on everyone" that has been going on the past five or ten years. It's no longer socially acceptable to think that homosexuality is wrong or an unhealthy sexual expression. Even donating to an anti-homosexuality lobby can get you pressured to resign [1]. Depending on the state you live in, you may have to accept gay marriage, even if it violates what you feel like marriage is. I don't know if sex-ed in schools is teaching it yet, but if not, I assume it is just a matter of time. If homosexuality is an unhealthy expression of sexuality, you won't want your kids exposed to that, but, no choice.
For people who agree that LGBT is acceptable, this probably feels like progress. For people who view LGBT as unhealthy sexual expression, the net effect feels a lot like "pushing homosexuality" on us.
It's not that easy though. 'Marriage' has stopped meaning 'a lifelong union for the goal of producing and raising children, breakable only under certain very constrained circumstances, and therefore upon which spouses, children and society may rely as a foundation' and has started meaning 'legal recognition of the fact that two people currently enjoy one another's company and wanted to have a big party.'
Due to this change in society, it is difficult and becoming more so to marry in the older sense. The more people who adopt the latter meaning, the fewer will retain the older. And even those who think they do are inevitably influenced by the rest.
I don't care much more about two homosexuals claiming to have married one another than I do about someone claiming to be a prophet or the reincarnation of Galileo; what worries me is the continued removal of any meaning from marriage.
Marriage becoming more like "legal recognition of the fact that two people currently enjoy one another's company and wanted to have a big party.", is nothing whatsoever to do with gay marriage. That social aspect has been picking up steam for centuries. You might as well blame 1960's Hollywood or even Henry VIII, for that one.
Also, the lifelong nuclear family is something that only really appeared after the wars. Pre-war there was no antibiotics and the rates of female death were so high that single parent families were much more common than they are today. If your worries about developments in marriage are that it will reduce the stability for the upbringing of children, I would like you to consider which eras you are choosing for comparison, as we are now living in an era that supports longer childhoods than seemingly at any other point in history.
edit - for the complaint that it is difficult to find more traditional people as spouses, may I point out that there are a number of other people who seem to be making that complaint. Presumably you could find their parental address, so that you can appear in person to make a formal request to their father to begin courting. Oh, and remember to bring some cattle.
Kinda makes you wonder a little bit our current distinctions and their actual relevance to the human condition.
"you may have to accept gay marriage, even if it violates what you feel like marriage is"
What you feel like marriage is has nothing to do with what it actually is, which is a very well-defined legal construct outlined by the state. Your feelings are valid in a different context perhaps, but when it comes to the legal definition it's not a compelling part of the argument. In that context, a great many arguments have been heard in court and gay marriage bans have been roundly rejected, many in a bipartisan decision.
"If homosexuality is an unhealthy expression of sexuality, you won't want your kids exposed to that"
Kids are going to be exposed. Gay people exist, and kids will and do meet them. Some 2-6% of the kids in that sex ed class are going to be gay themselves. Not saying parents shouldn't have a voice in this, just pointing out that prohibition is dangerous. You can't hide the word gay from children, and denied knowledge often only serves to generate greater curiosity. I would hope some clinical information about how to be healthy and gay isn't asking too much of these fragile creatures, but perhaps heterosexuality is really hanging from a thread? Somehow I doubt that.
> For people who view LGBT as unhealthy sexual expression, the net effect feels a lot like "pushing homosexuality" on us.
I suppose it does. But if one of your children should happen to be gay, you've left no question, from what you've written, that you won't hesitate to push heterosexuality on them.
We care more about them finding a path to self-acceptance than we do about your prejudice.
> But if one of your children should happen to be gay, you've left no question, from what you've written, that you won't hesitate to push heterosexuality on them.
I doubt anyone can do anything to change a paraphilia; pushing normative sexuality on someone is unlikely to be productive.
But I don't think self-acceptance is a good goal either. There are many unhealthy things in each of us; we shouldn't accept them, but rather should fight against them. I'm naturally lazy; I like to eat a lot; I'm selfish; I talk over others—I have to struggle against each of those deficiencies.
If one were to say, "I support legal equality for LGBT couples compared to straight couples", as well as "I question the health of LGBT acceptance in society", would you find their opinion repugnant?
If so, then you're pushing LGBT on everyone.
For the record, I truly support legal equality, and don't see how accepting LGBT in society is harmful. But the above example is a reflection of many more people than the echo chamber at HN would like to acknowledge.
1. What I find repugnant doesn't push anything on anyone.
2. My comment had nothing to do with what you or I do, it had to do with the above comment about Disney and Coke showing LGBT people in shows and ads.
By this logic, your logic, they have been "pushing" straight, black, hispanic, white, Christian, Jewish, youth, and elderly on us for years. Having the individual (or couple) on the show/ad does not in and of itself "push" anything. That's absurd.
People don't call civil rights or women's rights "agendas," they call them "movements." Agenda is pejorative, pertaining to "underlying intentions"; whereas movement directly refers to the act of changing, and in other fields such as music indicates a progression or forward dynamic. Portraying gay people in media could have an advertising "agenda" (e.g. they have an intention of selling things by appearing gay friendly or progressive with respect to modern culture rather than an intention of advancing gay rights), but are still progressive in that media portrayals of gay people actually is a change, or forward progression, for a minority group.
Edit: Woah, my mistake! I thought you were responding to my statement above. My apologies. What is the etiquette on HN for this? Is it editing out my comment, which, given my misunderstanding of the context, is irrelevant to your statement?
[ Did you read (critically) the comment I was responding to?
I mostly agree with your statement, except for the implication you may be making that agenda always has this pejorative meaning. It simply doesn't. If you want to understand people, you should not assume that it always does. And we should not police people for choosing to bring the non-pejorative acknowledgement of the fact that groups have purposes and goals.
If LGBT groups did not have agendas, they would not be worth supporting. ]
Hey, no problem. My issue is one of language itself. As someone who takes the english language very seriously, I don't ignore when someone makes the choice to use a particular word. Between our two comments, we have used the following set of words to roughly address the same concept (advancement of LGBT rights): [agenda, movement, purpose, goal]. Of these, only "agenda" has a secondary definition referring to underlying intentions or motives (even consider the word motive - "a reason for doing something, especially one that is hidden").
Writing is an act of art, and reading is an act of interpretation. These secondary definitions come into play when determining what someone means. Agenda is not purely pejorative, and it's true LGBT groups have agendas - they have plans of things to be done - they have motives - reasons for doing something. However, these attributes of LGBT groups could also be described with words that do not have any negative aspects, such as goals, plans, purposes, etc.
>If you want to understand people...
I assume people understand the words they use and intend to use them. If people use words without precision, how can they expect to be understood?
As for etiquette... no idea ha. Made the same mistake myself.
>> Agenda? People only use that term when they're trying to imply something is somehow pushing homosexuality on the weak minded.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Most individuals have agendas, and all organizations have (or should have) agendas.
We should all be able to talk honestly about various agendas without having to toe some manipulative lines concerning presumed hidden meanings.
Just because many homophobes, rightwingers, etc constantly harp on the 'homosexual agenda' as if its some scary monster, doesn't mean that LGBT rights organizations don't have agendas.
You're being pedantic, the term "(The) Homosexual Agenda" as distinct from any other use of the word agenda is what I was talking about. There are organisations representing homosexuals that have agendas, but that isn't the same thing.
The main difference is that Swedes spell it Lutfisk and Norwegians Lutefisk. Lutfish is just as traditional and (un)popular in both Norway and Sweden, and as far as I can tell the base recipe is basically the same in both countries. The only difference between the regions are the condiments and side dishes it is served with.
> Had a Swedish guy (shop owner) living with another guy and they both had a bunch of kids. Described the other guy and kids as his "family."
This is quite a stretch. As the father of a young child I have seen Frozen more times than I am proud to admit, and while it could be that the large man in the sauna is the shopkeeper's husband, he could just as easily be the shopkeeper's son, while the smaller woman in the scene is the shopkeeper's wife.
Even if you assume this to canonically be a gay relationship in a Disney movie (and it would, I suppose, be the first), it's a tiny throwaway moment in the life of a minor character which is easy to miss completely. This is hardly "taking a stand" as the grandparent post suggested.
A minor throwaway moment in the life of a minor character is a huge improvement over the status quo of complete absence just a handful of years ago. There were gay characters in media, but most of them were walking stereotypes.
The shopkeeper ahs a few lines and is on screen for a few minutes. The family is onscreen for perhaps one or two seconds. Certainly less than 5 seconds. There is absolutely no mention of the nature of the family in the film.
This is the example being used to show Disney is "progressive"? An ambiguous possibly gay family that gets less than 5 seconds screen time?
Saying that this miniscule gesture is hetter than nothing is missing the big point. It's the twenty first century - Disney should have had gay characters and even gay leads by mow.
And for all its progressiveness Frozen still has a scene where mental illness is linked to danger using stigmatising language.
Yeah, what's the deal with your use of the loaded dog whistle term "agenda"? Listen to Fox News much?
And with your presumption that the answer you're likely to get on HN might be "handwavey nonsense"?
Or are you implying that Fantasia's Sorcerer and Micky Mouse are gay just because they wave their hands around to conjure up colorful butterflies, broomsticks, comets, waves and storm clouds?
I got the impression that DanBC's question was genuine, and meant the opposite of what you accuse him of implying.
People have been accusing Disney of "pushing the gay agenda" (negatively) for years -- but those same people have not been able to point to concrete examples of people with same-sex attraction, they've only been able to point to BS like Mickey Mouse having a high voice. Now in this thread people are suggesting Disney is "taking a stand" (positive phrasing of the same issue) -- but they still seem to be lacking concrete examples. It seems inappropriate to credit Disney for "taking a stand" (or to criticize them for "pushing an agenda") without being able to point to an unambiguous, romantically-involved same-sex couple.
I suspect DanBC is like me -- I'd like to see an unambiguous example before categorizing Disney as "taking a stand".
Disney have been taking a stand for years now. There have been Christian boycotts of Disney for well over a decade, mainly because of their support for same-sex couples.
I don't have any data to back it up, but I guess it's just companies following the trend on public opinion? They didn't before because the majority was against it, they do now because the majority is for it. Not sure if that means taking a stand, though.
It's because the 'for' crowd is enthusiastic, so advertisers want to channel a little of their enthusiasm to promote a product. The 'against' crowd is largely apathetic and doesn't associate with 'anti' particularly strongly compared to the 'pro' crowd.
On the flip side, anything perceived as anti-gay in business blows up with negative press and talks of boycotts. With Apple's demographic, this will definitely be considered a plus.
If they won't buy Apple products because the CEO is gay, they probably shouldn't buy any computers at all, seeing as the entire field is built on the work of a gay man.
On one hand, we have a man who worked with the Nazis, and on the other, we have a man persecuted and chemically castrated by the British government for his sexual orientation, who many believe committed suicide as a result.
This isnt a bigotery contest hey? I was talking from the point of view of someone who has the greatest respect for what Turing has done.I mean that's a shame that everything he has done for his country mattered very little when he was judged for being gay.
Bigotry is a wrong word to use (afaik) in a historical context. It simply means 'what we consider unacceptable by today's social norms'.
It was absolutely stupid and unjust (since most upper classes were involved in buggery in school anyways) - but calling it bigoted is like saying 'it was so yellow of them to do'.
No. No. In fact, in past times ( of kings and queens), one man was killed in a battle and his brother was given a much higher title because you cannot give the honorable title to a deceased individual.
If there is a standard distribution of gay men and women in the population, wouldn't that be true of any product? Sure, it could be higher in tech fields however there is a high probability of a gay man or woman building most the products we use.
To be honest, I for one know very little about the important persons in <enter orthogonal branch of science here>, gay or not. We might all know about the terrible fate of Alan Turing, but I don't expect non-cs people to know.
(Thanks to gpvos for the correction of faith->fate. )
>>> seeing as the entire field is built on the work of a gay man.
That's a rather inaccurate, cringe worthy and generic statement. If your saying only one person contributed to the field of computers in 2014, that's sad.
We tend to glorify individuals in the eyes of media and forget [1]others who contributed to where we are today in technology.
Edit: Thanks to oneplusone, I realised that he was speaking about Alan Turing. But why base a field on only one person regardless of sexuality. Why is sexuality the issue in the first place?
George Boole, Charles Babbage, John von Neumann, Grace Hopper
- To name a few great contributors. Yes Alan Turing is considered the father of computer science but with out the knowledge of others before him (and even during his time) we could be living in a different world right now.
Even the late, great Isaac Newton said - [1]"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
To put it a different way: Turing was necessary, but not sufficient. We needed him, and the entire field is built on his work. But his is not the only contribution; indeed, many others needed to also contribute to be sufficient for the field we know today.
In this light, it seems the original comment is correct.
Turing made great contributions, and had a great mind. But we did not need him, or any other particular individual.
What do you think would have happened if Turing had never been born?
Perhaps we would never have had a single individual who contributed as much, all at once, as Turing did... but the sum total of his contributions WOULD have been made by other people, eventually.
Well, that statement is generally true, but Turing appeared in a very sensitive moment of history (WWII) and was critical for a very special task (The decryption of the Enigma Machine). Computer science would probably be fine without him, but maybe history would have beeen quite different, so we needed him.
> Turing made great contributions, and had a great mind. But we did not need him, or any other particular individual.
> What do you think would have happened if Turing had never been born?
And yet, he was born, and he did contribute, and we remember him for that, and we remember what his peers did to him in response. And we learn a lesson from that.
Why is what controversial? Your preceding sentence? It isn't. Why do you think its controversial? And why do you think its related to my sentences?
The only thing which might be controversial (but really shouldn't be) is the observation that people make foolish and illogical claims when they let their passions drive them to hyperbole. For example, claiming that computer science NEEDED Turing. That without Turing, we would not have computer science.
Its simple. Worship him all you want for what he actually did, but please don't fall prey to the belief that "without so-and-so, X would NEVER have been developed". Or "without so-and-so, we would still be doing Y".
Nonsense. Some other person or group of people would have made those contributions.
This has nothing to do with how horribly he was treated. And if you want to highlight the sickness of the world by pointing out the genius of one of the victims of our diseased culture, that's cool, but we can do that without going off into a fantasy land where some individual was uniquely, in all the world, uniquely capable of making the contributions they made.
Why should the work product of an individual be restricted only to people who agree with his choices? If someone doesn't buy Apple products because the CEO is gay, they're saying they don't want to send money to people promoting a homosexual lifestyle, not that they can't respect his work and not that they don't appreciate it.
Do you agree with all of the life choices made by every innovator throughout the centuries, many of whom were very religious and almost assuredly would've been anti-gay had such a movement existed in their time? It may make sense to deprive these people of money now if you disagree with them, but it doesn't make sense to discharge all the output of their life's work once there's no more threat of them actually receiving direct monetary aid from your purchases, and it doesn't make sense to denigrate the product on its own basis, independent from the behavior or ideals of the original creator. We should recognize good wherever we can find it.
>There are undoubtedly many people who will no longer purchase Apple products because of this
I disagree. First, I think it was widely assumed that he was gay, and if it wasn't, he was accidentally outed during a live TV broadcast a few months ago by a CNBC reporter [1]. Second, the people that think this way probably already avoid Apple products, as both Tim Cook and Apple have been vocal on gay rights for quite some time. Finally, the one thing that these kinds of people hate more than those that disagree with their worldview is being personally inconvenienced. If they're already invested in the Apple ecosystem and are used to the iOS UX, they're going to keep paying Tim Cook for a new device every year.
Wow. That doesn't sound like an accident - you don't say someone "is fairly open about being gay" unless you're damn sure they are. What an unpleasant person.
Except a bug in production software can disclose that same thing, except on a much more massive scale than a human? Almost any mistake a human can make can be translated into software and expanded by many magnitudes with a software bug.
If your job was to blather on air day after day for however many hours you'd probably say a couple dumb things too. Everyone has "known" Tim Cook was gay forever so it's not a hard mistake to make.
How did everyone know? Or even, guess? I assume there are a few factors which generally correlate with being gay, such as never being seen dating a girl or trying to stick with gay fashions?
I knew because NPR told me. I knew he was gay before I knew it was supposed to be a secret, so if I were on that panel I would have said pretty much the same thing.
Hey, how awesome of you to drag stereotypes into this …
If you had read the article it should become quite clear to you why quite a few people knew and some people even wrote about it.
Since in general journalists will avoid to publish the sexual orientation of someone unless that person made public statements about it, most journalists just didn’t write about it. (I think that’s exactly the right guideline to follow. It is awesome when people come out to help others who are struggling, but this is still a personal decision and I don’t think journalists should make that decision for people. There should never be an obligation to come out.)
> Hey, how awesome of you to drag stereotypes into this ...
Is it criticism? Because if it is, it's misplaced. I did read the article. I am myself gay. According to the other answers, it seems it was known "in the scene". Do you mean everyone who's gay should either be in the scene or stop asking questions?
> it should become quite clear to you why quite a few people knew
It didn't become clear to me. Does that mean I don't get social clues? Does that mean I'm not fluent in English? Does that mean I miss a brain cell? People are different, we don't all understand things, so even if it seems unbelievable to you, please still answer the question.
There once was a time where, if you were gay, or were close to people who were, you'd pick up hints about others who were gay. These hints would come from others who were gay, or gay-friendly. And they would be passed along like that.
As you moved closer to circles of power, you'd know more and more powerful people who were gay. But there was a code: you didn't bring it up publicly, or with outsiders. (Unless you wanted to be cruel.)
With this knowledge came power. You could read people and situations, understand hints and special relationships. It's a kind of x-ray vision.
But, if you were not gay, and were not close to people who were, you would be completely unaware. You might assume you didn't know anyone who was gay!
Such people were surprised when Rock Hudson (who everyone knew) was outed as gay just before he died of AIDS in 1985. They were surprised when other public figures were outed the same way, even (seriously!) "obvious" cases like Liberace.
We are now somewhere between that world (which was complex and had fascinating intrigues) and a different world (which is more open and fairer).
Source: before I met my wife, I didn't know anyone who was gay. But in fact, I was just ignorant that I already did.
I knew because of all of the gay people who participated in a particular active social scene. It was common knowledge in that gay community, and had been since he took over at apple.
I never really questioned it, because... because it was common knowledge. No one ever mentioned that he wasn't out, so I wrongly assumed he was fully out until I heard about that newscaster who messed up.
I figured (wrongly) that the reason it was never mentioned publicly was because no one thought it was comment-worthy. I naively thought "oh good, look how far we've come".
I would wonder why I'd never heard it right from the only person qualified to say, find that he hadn't said it, and doubt the credibility of the person who reported it as true. But I also know what it's like to be afraid of being outed to people you're not out to, so maybe it's different if you don't have that fear.
It is interesting to read this. Not that I have any evidence, but I was under the impression that Apple was already more attractive to the gay community than the other companies...I would not be surprise if this will increase this section of their target market.
Apple, Google, and Microsoft all rank very high as inclusive companies, along with many of the big tech companies. When it comes to buying phones and other gadgets, from my circle of friends, the gay community is pretty much aligned with the general population in terms of the mix of choices. While we're happy to see a CEO be openly gay, it's not going to change our buying habits.
I guess I could be wrong, but I know I certainly won't to exchange my Xperia Z3 for an iPhone just because Cook came out.
You'd have to be a weirdly obsessive anti-gay to spend your spare time perusing Out magazine or lists of most influential homosexuals, though I suppose such people do exist and you'd also have to be pretty weirdly obsessive to refrain from purchasing from a corporation on account of the sexual orientation of a member of its management team.
I'm gay, politically aware, and posting on HN on a MacBook and had no idea, though frankly I also don't browse LGBT power lists.
I don't think so. I'm not the poster you were replying to, I don't care if he's gay, and I don't go read such lists either. The CNBC 'outing' came up either on my facebook trends or on HN, that's the only two ways I get news these days.
I think the issue was that although Tim Cook was not secretive about being gay, he had never publicly spoken about it. The CNBC guy got a lot of flak, but as many mentioned, there are several other places where Cook was identified as a gay man before that clip, so the backlash was a little unfair. It can be awkward to differentiate between public knowledge and "open secrets" when someone hasn't officially come out.
Don't overestimate the progressiveness of young men. Look at how terrible so many of the HN comments are whenever there's a submission relating in any way to women.
I feel there is a big difference between gay equality and what a lot of young men feel like is a shrill feminism that seems to be much more about axe grinding, political correctness, censorship, and entitlements than any sort of drive towards a true equality. After you've been called a potential rapist several times in an academic or workplace setting just for your gender, you stop sympathizing with the modern feminist movement.
I think purposely conflating gay rights and feminism is more than a little disingenuous. LGBT movements empower both genders, feminism empowers only one.
I think its very possible to be socially progressive in thought but not be a cheerleader for the modern feminist agenda. These things don't necessarily contradict each other.
> After you've been called a potential rapist several times in an academic or workplace setting just for your gender, you stop sympathizing with the modern feminist movement.
So, there are some bad feminists around. [1] When people are absurd, feel free to 'absurd' right back at them (i.e. "Sure, I'm a potential rapist - as much as you are a potential murderer!").
"Dropping sympathy" for the feminist movement as a response a few bad feminists that you've encountered is not really justified, or rational.
> I think purposely conflating gay rights and feminism is more than a little disingenuous. LGBT movements empower both genders, feminism empowers only one.
I'm not following the reasoning here. Both movements are about equality; one focuses on gender, the other on sexual identity/orientation. They are very much two sides of the same coin (the humanEqualityCent).
> "Dropping sympathy" for the feminist movement as a response a few bad feminists that you've encountered is not really justified, or rational.
When you are made to feel unwanted, excluded, and otherwise not welcome it is natural to go elsewhere in search of inclusiveness. This is a far more common reaction than that of adopting sympathy for those excluding you. No aspect of this should be surprising to a feminist.
> When you are made to feel unwanted, excluded, and otherwise not welcome it is natural to go elsewhere in search of inclusiveness.
Sure, but the GP wasn't talking about a particular group rejecting them, but rather "stop sympathizing with the entire modern feminist movement". That's an extreme reaction to disliking a subset of the movement's followers.
> This is a far more common reaction than that of adopting sympathy for those excluding you. No aspect of this should be surprising to a feminist.
Nobody's asking for personal sympathy or contribution, but rejecting Feminism due to a few bad Feminists is stupid. Especially if you claim to have been aligned with the Equality argument beforehand. How does that even work?
(attempt to reverse engineer a thought process leading to this)
1) thinking "Hey, men are dicks towards women. That ain't right. We need to equalize things as much as possible!"
2) meets bad feminists, receives abuse
3) thinking "Fuck it - Equality, yes, but not for you; I don't like you. NVM on the whole Feminism issue."
Absurd. You didn't really believe in equality in the first place. Demanding and supporting equality should have nothing to do with your personal likes and dislikes.
When a person's entire exposure to a group consists wholly of a few bad members, they are likely to figure that sample representative. They are not likely to keep re-sampling until they find a desirable sample. It's irrational to expect otherwise.
Why do you expect otherwise? Why do you feel compelled to couple it with insults?
> When a person's entire exposure to a group consists wholly of a few bad members, they are likely to figure that sample representative.
But Feminism isn't a group; it is an idea. If some of the followers misbehave, you should still be able to believe and support in the idea.
To me, supporting ideas only when you "like" the (majority of?) people supporting them is akin to supporting free speech but only for the positions that you believe in.
(edit)
> Why do you feel compelled to couple it with insults?
I'm not sure where you're reading that. The "You" at the end was directed at the fictional person that I'm attempting to emulate with the 1/2/3 reasoning, not you.
Feminism is an idea. Feminists, or the people who adhere to that idea, are a group. If every single adherent of an idea you encounter is an abhorrent person, most people will stop and consider if they want to associate with those people. Typically the answer is "No".
Most people will also wonder if something about the idea turns people into abhorrent people or if something about the idea is only attractive to abhorrent people. In either case, it is not something to which our notional person is likely to be attracted.
In short - the people who adhere to an idea are seen as commentary on the idea.
In a world of intellectual purity and abstraction, yes, that is the case.
In the real world, it can be used as a fig leaf to justify a variety of abusive behaviors. For some people, that encompasses the whole of their experiences.
> In the real world, it can be used as a fig leaf to justify a variety of abusive behaviors.
We disagree that this actually changes the meaning of Feminism.
Yes, some horrid people need an excuse to dish out abuse and Feminism often becomes that excuse (I'm thinking about everyone who's ever used the potential-rapist argument).
Does this taint Feminists, the group? Maybe a little, yes.
Does this taint Feminism, the idea that genders should be as equal as possible? Well, IMHO, no.
The Soviet Union wasn't and China isn't really communist or socialist by most sane definitions of those terms, but good luck disassociating yourself from them if you label yourself a communist today.
Feminism was about seeking equal rights and equal opportunities for women. In the West it largely achieved that goal (we're not there yet, but consider where we started). Thanks to tumblr, twitter and the blogosphere echo-chamber, the feminism most people become aware of online is very different from that.
Worse yet, there is no such thing as "the feminist movement" (anymore) by a long shot. It's become a broad term that encompasses everything from egalitarians to misandrists. And any criticism of the later group is always portrayed as a criticism of the former (which is why we end up with this entirely pointless MRA/SJW shitstorm-on-demand situation we have now).
Nobody is forcing egalitarians to call themselves feminists. But clinging to that label and pretending it hasn't changed its meaning is no different from trying to distance your communism from Stalin or your nationalist socialism from the Nazi party.
I accidentally posted my first reply in the wrong place, above.
I prefer that definition, yes. But the important part of my sentence was "locked in". I was referring to people who are incapable of acknowledge that the word feminism is abused, not just by anti-feminists, but also by some self-proclaimed feminists.
If someone really thinks that feminism can only mean 'equal rights', period, end of conversation, talk to the hand - then conversations with people pointing out problems in the feminism movement will suffer from equivocation fallacies.
It should be the case. In practice, it is often not the case. If you doubt this, search 'feminist' on youtube, watch a dozen random videos, and try to identify the issues and beliefs which the speaker sees as intrinsically 'feminist' ones, and ask yourself whether those issues and beliefs are really in support of equality. Its a bit of a mixed bag.
I'm not trying to attack feminism, as I strongly believe in equality and we have a lot of work to do. And obviously there are anti-feminists who have always tried to distort the messages of feminists, and fabricate their own. But these days, those manipulators don't have to try very hard.
I don't see how we can fix this, though. The commercial approach to a similar problem would be absurd in this case: creating centralized certification body regulating which 'feminist goals/speakers/blogs/books/lines-of-argument/etc' are deemed 'truly feminist'.
As near as I can tell, the body feminist is continually attempting that kind of effort. Unfortunately, the result resembles a bar-brawl-cum-religious-congress more than it does an effective certification body.
> I'm not following the reasoning here. Both movements are about equality; one focuses on gender, the other on sexual identity/orientation. They are very much two sides of the same coin (the humanEqualityCent)
I don't follow his reasoning either, as stated, but there is a question of subcultures, subcultural values, specific ideologies within the movement, and most importantly: composition.
There are many ways that these two movements differ. And while both movements attract some unpleasant people who damage the reputation of the movement as a whole, the way this plays out in feminism is a little different from how it plays out with LGBT rights.
So its not surprising to me that some people might (based on their personal experiences) think that one is toxic and the other isn't.
> LGBT movements empower both genders, feminism empowers only one.
I suppose this is a common misconception, but it is not true. Feminism also frees men from restrictive gender roles. It is feminism that says that men are allowed to cry, to hug one another, to have dreams and hopes and fears.
Giving up some privileges -- privileges which are not right for us to have anyway -- is a small price to pay, I believe, for becoming whole human beings.
This is not true in my experience. I don't make an effort to follow any gender roles. When I, ten years ago was 15, I showed up for exit ceremony in drag for laughs. And people around me are cool with it. Except one person who has said that I was "not a man". And called me "ett hen," an expression which roughly translates as "genderless abomination".
She calls herself feminist and is responsible for the women’s' network's equal rights week at my university this year.
If some people don't want to buy Apple products because of this, that would be a foolish choice. What may be worse than that would be some people trying to color everything Apple makes with this background and attempting to denigrate the products with "jokes" that aren't.
Far too many need to believe that people won't buy the products because of his sexuality to bolster their own feelings of superiority than would actually not buy the products. Looking the anti-religious zealotry within this thread is evident of that, far too many just believe the worst in others because they are themselves too bigoted/closeminded to think otherwise.
Where are you getting "There are undoubtedly many people who will no longer purchase Apple products because of this, and I don't know society can fix this with anything but time." from ?
I had absolutely no idea, but CEO's sexuality tend to not even cross my mind. I'm glad that these days people can safely talk about this, hopefully soon it won't even be news.
Perhaps, but I remember watching comedians and entertainers on TV when I was a kid who it seemed pretty obvious were gay, but when the fact came out publicly they were subject to terrible discrimination and public humiliation. For those of us that really don't care about a person's sexual orientation perhaps it's easier to see it clearly, but it seems to me that a lot of people with prejudices have difficulty telling, and are resistant to calling someone out as gay perhaps because to them it seems such a terrible thing. We need to remember that for many people with prejudices gay and Paedophile are basically synonymous. Bearing that in mind perhaps helps explain why they find it so shocking. As always, ignorance is a powerful driver of prejudice.
I wish we lived in a society where people weren't pressured into "publically acknowledge" their sexual orientation just because it's different than the norm. You don't see heterosexual CEOs publically acknowledging they are banging their wife, why should it be different for other sexual orientations? Just let everyone be.
I sorta agree, but I think the core paragraph explains his motivations better:
[I]f hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it’s worth the trade-off with my own privacy.
Announcing that you're straight is never going to be controversial, but we're currently in a cultural stage where announcing things like this continues to normalize the reality of diverse types of sexuality and, ironically, over time that should make it less of a big or negative deal to some people.
We would all like for that to be the case. Unfortunately, as long as members of the GLBT community have to worry about being physically attacked, even in "safe" places like San Francisco and other progressive cities, it's important for people who are in a position to be able to speak out safely to do so.
This is important because gay people have not been allowed representation or public acknowledgement. Until this month there were 0 openly gay CEOs but hundreds of openly straight CEOs in the public eye.
It's important for mere visibility and representation of MOGAI people in general. Everyone is generally assumed to be heterosexual by default, so people who are het don't need to make public announcements about it.
> I wish we lived in a society where people weren't pressured into "publically acknowledge" their sexual orientation
As someone who has come out, I'd like to note that I was never "pressured" into publicly acknowledging my sexuality. In fact, the general message from the wider culture was "please STFU and don't talk about it".
No, I looked at history, saw that coming out was an important and useful thing I could do to contribute to the movement aimed at getting equal rights for gay people and that formed part of a pretty rational decision to do so.
The lies and bigotry aimed at gay people thrived for so long precisely because nobody knew any gay people. That's exactly why coming out was (and still is) necessary. One of the reasons the gay rights movement has been so spectacularly successful over the last 40+ years is because the lives of actual gay people is a living testament to the falseness of the vicious stereotypes spread by homophobic pricks.
You don't see straight people coming out because they don't need to. Gay people came out because the alternative is persecution, mixed with a whole lot of personal misery.
While everyone already knew, the act of public announcement is one of great meaning and catharsis. Coming out is an important event for a gay person, and for a prominent person such as Tim Cook, for our society as well. As an ally, congratulations for having the courage to be who you are.
Me three. Mostly because I just don't give a fuck about people's personal lives. Even celebrities. I see people in commercials that everybody seems to know and I have no clue.
I guess I live under a rock. Good thing I get HN under here.
Because it isn't a big deal! I'm glad we're coming around to the reaction to a major public figure coming out is "meh."
Injustice won't be over the day little black boys and girls and little white boys play together. It will be over the day anyone even thinks anything of it. Unfortunately, we have both overt and covert (even accidental) discrimination still to deal with.
But our grandparents faced firehouses and dogs, while we face op-eds and Twitter feeds. For the first time in history we have the communications technology to bind humanity together into a single global people.
Someday there will be a gay president. Someday there will be a black female president. I hope that by the time that day comes, it will be little noted nor long remembered.
But I think his message is aimed at younger people. "I'm a mellow kinda guy who is respected in the world of business. And i'm gay." You don't have to fit the stereotype of being flamboyant , out, loud and proud to be gay.
You and I know that. Any functioning adult in a largish city knows that. Maybe some kids in isolated communities without personal role models (family, family friends, teachers, etc., who are gay and run-of-the-mill kinda people) don't know that.
OK, thanks for posting this, because I thought I was going crazy for a second. My thought was, "Yeah what? Of course he is gay. Everyone knows that? He might be the first gay CEO of a trillion-dollar valuated company!"
At least I know I'm not crazy now and that it was in magazines and such at least a year ago.
> You subscription to Out magazine must have lapsed.
Heh, I thought this was a joke at first. It's kind of funny that lots of people didn't know, yet he has literally been featured as #1 in Out Magazine. I guess it does still fit, that he hasn't personally, publicly acknowledged it, even if others have acknowledged it publicly.
As a man who is straighter than most measuring rulers, you'll forgive me if I missed that issue. :-) Myself, I had heard murmuring, but I never cared enough to confirm. Just kind of "meh, ya gotta figure there's at least one Fortune 500 CEO who's gay. Now to the issue at hand: how's my AAPL stock doing?"
Now, I'm not saying that isn't an important announcement. I have to admit that even Mr. Straighter-than-Straight over here found his eyes kind of welling up while reading Tim's words. Powerful stuff, and a great example for those coming of age while dealing with who they are. But as a person whose portfolio is weighted way too heavily in AAPL, and an owner of lots of stuff with apples on them, I no more care about who Tim Cook shares his bed with than I do about what sports team he favors. That's his own business, and doesn't affect me in the slightest.
In summary, not everyone knew it if only because some of us don't care enough one way or the other to find out.
Coming out is an important event for any minority -- at least in the cases where the membership of the minority can be (or has to be) kept a secret. Not being able to tell anyone your true feelings can feel like an enormous burden, driving some people even to the point of suicide.
And like you say, it takes courage to be who you really are. To not feel the weight of your mask every day. For myself, I think it would be false courage in this day and age to 'come out' as a pedophile. 'Pedophile' here means that I feel emotionally and sexually attracted to children, just as gays have that attraction to men. A lot of people are immediately repulsed by that word, and just assume you are a monster and a child abuser/rapist. I think those stereotypes mainly exist because pedophiles are invisible in our society. It is very likely that everybody knows somebody with that orientation, but because it is so risky to 'come out' nobody recognizes that pedophiles are very regular people too.
I have come out to some very close friends and my parents, who luckily all accepted that I am who I am (I live in a European country, so that might help). I'm a bit gay as well, and I have a 5+ year relationship with my boyfriend, who also is a pedo (and somewhat more gay than I am).
Still, every time when I receive a compliment or encouragement from someone, a thought flashes through my mind: what if they knew who I 'really' am?
I appreciate the market's crude honesty in evaluating the business impact of events, and I understand why a drop would happen. However, I hope that people aren't evaluating the business impact of this information at 6B, and that it is only a sad coincidence.
Apple, among other tech companies, has been championing gay rights pretty publicly for a few years now. Also they've had quite a stance on renewable energy and rebuffed investors that were climate-change deniers.
I think the type of people that would boycott Apple over this, have already boycotted apple over the other things.
Way to go, Tim! It's a shame that he had to 'come out', but I hope that being the CEO of one of the world's biggest companies will help the LGBT cause.
Strangely enough I'd see pictures of him at some gay pride thing and it never even occurred to me he might be gay. I think, more accurately, it didn't trigger anything in my brain that thought it mattered either way. Obviously this is the way it should be!
It seems like Tim Cook isn't under any pressure to publicly announce this, so it seems he's doing it as a way of leveraging his position to help others who are experiencing adversity. Some will say this is a stunt for Apple, and no doubt it does draw attention to Apple in a way, but I think you'd have to be pretty cynical to say that this is anything more nefarious than an admirable gesture.
It got a reasonable amount of attention, but I think a lot of journalists (correctly, IMO) felt that speculating on someone's sexuality where they hadn't talked about it publicly was a bit inappropriate.
However there is the Nick Denton school of thought.
Denton ( of Gawker Media ) routinely shames public personalities for being clandestine about their sexuality.
The rationale for doing so is such that if no one calls them out, that the worldviews these public personalities profess never get the perspective, those views deserve. The backdrop of the person's sexuality and the influence it had on the shaping of those views is lost, Denton believes. [1]
[1] Gawker Kicks Open the Closet, but Its Disclosure
Barely Reverberates
My impression was that Denton mostly does that with people who essentially work to oppress gay people (right-wing politicians, Fox journalists, and so on and so forth), and, yeah, I'm fine with that.
For people who aren't doing anything particularly wrong, though, especially those in positions where being openly gay is severely against the norm (as with Cook, who is, I believe, the first openly gay Fortune 500 CEO _ever_), it seems inappropriate. Say Cook had been outed back when he was COO; would he have become CEO? I'd like to say yes, but it would have been a brave move for the board.
Deciding that you can in fact out other people in some circumstances confirms that the enlightened claims of individual ownership of sexual identity are a political fiction. If it's deemed a person is "hypocritical" then you feel free to socially assign a label to that person's sexuality. "Outing" is only possible if society decides someone is "gay," not the person.
>>> it didn't trigger anything in my brain that thought it mattered either way
This. It doesn't matter at all. Its great that people are embracing their sexuality, but there was no need to come out to the press about it. It doesn't change the way I see Apple as a company or even Tim Cook. He is still the same person before and after this article.
>> there was no need to come out to the press about it
Sure there was. Here's Cook on why it was worth caming out to the press about it:
"So if hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it’s worth the trade-off with my own privacy."
It doesn't matter... depending on what social circles you're part of, and/or where you live. That's a crucial distinction.
I think it's very understandable to underestimate the degree of suffering involved, and how much this can be improved over time through publicly voiced support, especially when it comes from influential figures.
Many of us make this mistake in regards to women or ethnic minorities too. And those of us who are good looking do it to those who are less pretty, and those who us who have always been popular do this to the unpopular.
The best kind of empathy, I believe, concerns not just your feelings toward others, but also the context that these others are in.
Yeah at first I though it was another stunt for Apple because seriously how is his sexual orientation is important? Then I though how actually we still need public figure like him, that there's still way too much people who doesn't want to accept other sexual orientations.
Let's hope that this will help many more people understands that there's nothing abnormal with having another sexual orientation.
I recently spoke to some gay religious people and it struck me as very odd. I'm biased, of course. I tend to think religion gets far more forgiveness than it deserves in a huge number of contexts. It was interesting though, in a bunch of ways.
When I hear a statement like this it makes me think of Africans converting to Mormonism or Jews joining European far right movements. I realize that there are perspectives through which this is not contradictory. Mormonism had views of Africans that only lagged behind mainstream opinions by a decade or two. The far right parties are more interested in Islam or African migration these days…
Still, I can't help it. It give me the heebie jeebies.
I recently read an article in English talking about homophobia being widespread in Russia "despite the Russians having lived through the progressive social experiment of communism".
Calling it a "progressive social experiment" gives it far more forgiveness than it deserves in my opinion...
From which I conclude that it's easy to forgive when we basically like the idea/movement/etc., and easy to see undeserved forgiveness when we basically dislike it.
I think there's a related point though where socialism or any political ideology never really got near religion: becoming part of people's identity. People without a shred of personal beliefs nearer to Catholic cannon than to Protestantism or secular perspectives will continue thinking of themselves as Catholic.
If you are Catholic it's easier to forgive Catholicism than it is to forgive The Church. Nationalist creed (I am French or American) is the only thing that comes close.
I think there's also a taboo about criticizing people's religious identity and by extension their religion that was learned many wars. Stalinism is publicly criticized in a ways that Christianity or Islam would never be.
But regarding this comment, it's the personal level that gets me. Homosexuals place in 2014 was achieved despite objection and obstruction of the overwhelming majority of our religious institutions and text. They are now partially and begrudgingly coming around to where the public already is. They are being patted on the back for any lukewarm embrace of homosexuals. Gays taking them back is offensive to me. It's like a wife embracing an abusive husband that almost killed her when he gets out on parol.
I would agree with you but only when you look at religion from a broad perspective. If you actually speak to people who are religious you will quickly find that there are a lot of things they don't believe or follow in their religion. Eventually religions catch up, although that takes too long (similar to how laws often take too long to catch up to what most people do and think should be legal).
I think the key is that the 'fundamental' people you often hear about that think 'homosexuality is an abomination' are a small minority. The people who are fine with it usually aren't seen on the news because their opinion isn't inflammatory.
Indeed, the mark of a well thought out and carefully crafted message that's not just personal, but also about necessary PR.
If that's what it takes to get people on-board this generation, I don't mind. But I hope lines like that can be omitted one day. Doesn't it just look incredibly silly?
>Indeed, the mark of a well thought out and carefully crafted message that's not just personal, but also about necessary PR.
If that's what it takes to get people on-board this generation, I don't mind. But I hope lines like that can be omitted one day. Doesn't it just look incredibly silly?
Maybe he didn't want to omit it. Maybe it's not PR, but instead his actual feelings. Maybe he is religious. So, it's all cool and all that he's gay (which it is), but he mentions God and now you're all "Why can't he just keep that to himself?"
Or maybe that one day it will no longer be necessary to follow "I'm gay" or "the earth revolves around the sun" with "...but don't worry, there exists an interpretation of your ancient books according to which I would still be compliant with the commands of your God!"
An odd thing to slip in? He is, as far as I've gathered, a deeply religious gay man. If his point is to imply those things are not at odds, then I don't think this sentence's inclusion is odd at all.
Gay people aren't stereotypes who fit into one mold. I used to live next to a gay couple who were the among most conservative people I've ever met. I think that's the exact point of the sentence, to say "we're not all the same; it's just one thing about me" without sounding like an angsty teenager.
That said, it wasn't exactly a secret that Tim Cook is gay. Though it was always handled as more of a "this is something that can inform your understanding of him as a business leader" as opposed to "omg it's a scandal! He's gay and running the biggest company in the world!" His sexuality is probably a bigger deal among Alabama boosters than the tech community though.
To me it came across as purely figurative. IMHO the usual phrases like "thank God it's not raining" are pretty much detached from the religious context.
"Thank God it's not raining" is completely different from saying "... the greatest gifts God has given me."
The first is just a frivolous small talk type comment. Non-religious people would say this. It's part of the common US vocabulary. The second is much more serious, and the speaker is actually thanking God for how he is. A non-religious person would never say it.
Religious people do this type of thing all the time in the US. Just look at 1 example- sports. The amount of American pro-athletes who are religious is astounding. Many athletes will seriously thank God after doing something well in a sporting event.
I'm very very anti-theist and I still have a lot of Christians on my Facebook, and some of them are constantly thanking God or praising Jesus for some good thing that happened in their life.
The amount of cars that have religious stickers on them is incredible. Crosses, the Jesus fish, some Biblical reference, a Christian brand, etc- you see them constantly. Maybe it's not like that in the Bay Area, but that is an exception. I live in Germany now and I've counted a total of TWO cars in 2 years that had any kind of Religious sticker.
So, yeah, Christianity is everywhere in the US. I pray for the day that this is not true.
> The amount of American pro-athletes who are religious is astounding. Many athletes will seriously thank God after doing something well in a sporting event.
This is just a very clever thought pattern to confirm the American mythos of the self-made man and avoid giving credit to teammates, coaches, etc. "God made me great" is a way to take credit for yourself while maintaining the appearance of humility (no one can really call you out on it, either, because it's just your religion). Politicians use it all the time too.
Is it necessary to dismiss belief as somehow self-serving? A bragging athlete is arrogant; a humble one is secretly scheming to take credit. How do you win in that world-view?
If they were truly humble, they'd be thanking their teammates, not a man in the sky. It's offensive to thank god for your touchdown instead of the offensive line. The hand of god didn't descend from the heavens to open that hole you ran through.
I don't think athletes, or anyone else, who express religious feelings are necessarily doing what you say, but I've upvoted you because I agree that some of them are.
> The amount of American pro-athletes who are religious is astounding. Many athletes will seriously thank God after doing something well in a sporting event....I live in Germany now and I've counted a total of TWO cars in 2 years that had any kind of Religious sticker.
FWIW you will see plenty of religious displays in European soccer. Look at the biggest sporting event in Europe this past week: El Clasico between Real Madrid and Barcelona. Watch when Neymar scores a goal and kneels down on the ground and points up at the sky and says thank you (or something like that). Unfortunately Messi didn't score, but he would have done something similar though less dramatic. Granted these guys aren't Europeans, but they're not North Americans either. And other European footballers do similar things.
Why does it hurt your feelings so much? If I had this kind of prejudice and contempt in my heart for an entire group of people, I'd keep it to myself. It's kind of embarrassing to air it publicly like that.
My problem is when your religion encroaches on my life or on others. Their backwards out-dated religious views influence policy in education, health care, and civil rights. Not to mention the countless acts of religious violence and hate that take place daily all across the world. That is why I am adamantly anti-theist and not afraid to admit it.
I have a hard time thinking of anyone as Christian if they ignore the basic tenants of what the Bible says. Homosexuality is very clearly spelled out as wrong. So are plenty of other things of course and the Bible doesn't specify homosexual behavior as any more or less wrong than any other sinful act. Christians shouldn't be treating homosexuals any different than anyone else, but that includes letting people know that God views that behavior as sin.
There is a difference though between commiting a sin then admitting you were wrong and actively promoting a lifestyle that espouses sin. I'd have the same problem with an adulterer who didn't think that their adultery was wrong. In one case, someone messed up - in the other someone is actually ignoring the bible entirely.
I wouldn't say they were ignoring it entirely. Rather, perhaps they were choosing to ignore the parts that they consider outdated and ludicrous (such as the calls to marry in-laws, or stone people for things), and instead consider their "Christian"-ness to be derived from a more forgiving perspective of a certain rabbi who advised people to love their neighbor.
You can believe the christianity idea of "God" but not in the bible as its "word" at the same time. In fact, you can believe in anything at all and still talk about "God". An it would be still valid.
The Quakers are clearly a Christian denomination, but here in the UK at least, they have been holding same-sex marriages since before it was legal and are one of the groups who forced the law change. Partly as it caused the legal theories against it that were based on respecting religious belief to become hopelessly muddled. It became very hard to argue that the law was upholding Christian rights on the definition of marriage while not recognising marriages being held by Quakers.
Millions of Christians don't take the Bible as the literal word of God. Several Christian churches have no problem with blessing the marriage of gay couples.
A Christian is just someone who believes in Jesus Christ as a messiah. You are referring to something much more specific.
Do you mean millions of Christians don't take the Bible as the word of god? Because "If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death" (Leviticus 20:13) doesn't seem to leave the place for a non-literal interpretation which would not condemn gay sex (without some serious mind bending).
A christian is someone that believes in the teachings of Jesus Christ, namely salvation and sanctification. We come to salvation by believing Jesus Christ is God and his teachings are absolute, and that he is the Word of God, the Bible. We come to sanctification by striving daily to know God more, which happens through the indwelling Holy Spirit we receive during salvation and happens by reading and applying the Word of God in our soul, and then outwardly through our body.
Being homosexual or lusting after a women in your mind are equally damning, but rejecting these thoughts and actions and leaving them at the Cross is the message of the Bible.
Lots, possibly most Christians, consider the bible to be a heavily edited political work containing aspects of revelation. Some Christians explicitly deny the bible as a historical work and even go as far as to refuse to base their beliefs on the idea that Jesus had to exist, Jefferson being a notable example. For my money, I am in agreement with him that Paul's stuff shouldn't be trusted as far as you could throw it, but then I am not a Christian.
"I have hard time thinking of anyone as an IOS engineer if they ignore the basics tenants of what Apple documentation states. XYZ is very clearly spelled out as unsafe."
It's funny that there's no moral imperative for christians to stone people who have touched women on their periods, yet there is some sort of moral imperative to let gay people know they are sinning.
Also, how does Red Lobster do so well in the south, let alone pork products...
in Leviticus 18:25, Man laying with another Man is an "abomination".
right before that, in Leviticus 18:19, "'Do not approach a woman to have sexual relations during the uncleanness of her monthly period."
and right before that, in Leviticus 17:15, "'Anyone, whether native-born or foreigner, who eats anything found dead or torn by wild animals must wash their clothes and bathe with water, and they will be ceremonially unclean till evening; then they will be clean."
and my Favorite, Leviticus 19:19 (one page after homosexuality): 'Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material."
That Cotton-Polyester blend you're wearing? You might as well be having gay sex, as far as The LORD is concerned. All of the above are hellworthy trespasses.
so with the above in mind, everyone is ignoring the basic tenants of what the bible says. Therefore, using your logic, you must have a hard time viewing just about anyone as Christian.
One can ignore the Old Testament in its entirety and still be a Christian who believes being gay is wrong - it is addressed, albeit briefly, in the New Testament.
Yeah, but they were straight people who god deliberately turned gay for committing the sin of idolatry, so being gay wasn't the sin but the punishment for having a great art collection.
"For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.
They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.
In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error."
Alongside lechery with men and a few variations of murder, they also include all other types of lechery, along with lying, adultery and impiety.
Though this category in Corinthians is about who will not inherit the kingdom of god, and then in Timothy it is describing who the law is written for, so in either case it is not distinguishing categories of sins, but merely listing them.
Elsewhere in Paul, homosexuality is equated with the greedy, the sexually immoral, thieves, drunks, slanderers, idolators and swindlers, but makes no mention of murderers.
edit - the passage in Corinthians is also interesting as it is in the context of a wider passage banning recourse to civil law in secular courts between believers.
>That Cotton-Polyester blend you're wearing? You might as well be having gay sex, as far as The LORD is concerned.
That's a pretty intense bastardization of biblical theology. It's fun to snicker and say things like that but your logical gymnastics are quite embarrassing to those who understand the correlation between Christ, the Old Testament, and covenant theology.
Point is, the bible states some crazy absurd things that Christians have to ignore because they are confusing at best and disgusting at worst.
You can't explain these passages. No one can:
http://www.evilbible.com/Evil%20Bible%20Quotes.htm
I invite everyone to read Leviticus and not laugh at the things that are hell-worthy. They shouldn't take my, your, or any other logical gymnastics as their opinion; reading the book is sufficient to determine how insane these trespasses really are.
But speaking to the correleation between Jesus and the Old Testament, everyone should also read Isaiah 52:13 through 54. This is the savior foretold in the old testament, and where matthew/john/paul/ringo draw most of their confirmation of Jesus' credentials. Does this sound like the Jesus we all know?
Drawing pictures of things god has made and especially using them religiously is spelled out very clearly as wrong, repeatedly and at length, but the Christians often represent themselves with drawings of a fish and keep drawing pictures of Jesus simply everywhere:
"You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below."
However you can rape the wives of your defeated enemies after battle, which the vast majority of Christians would find horrifying:
"When you go to war against your enemies and the LORD your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives,
if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife.
Bring her into your home and have her shave her head, trim her nails
and put aside the clothes she was wearing when captured. After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month, then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife.
If you are not pleased with her, let her go wherever she wishes. You must not sell her or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her."
There's a lot of basic tenets of the bible that Christians ignore. Wearing mixed fibers, eating shellfish, donkeys and oxen co-working in agriculture.
If you go by basic tenets of the bible, most Christians don't seem to even know what they all are, let alone follow them.
The Calvinists during the reformation were not chipping faces off statues just for shits and giggles. Old testament teachings such as practicing iconoclasm, have been a regular feature of many Christian denominations. And fire and brimstone preachers still regularly preach Deuteronomy and Leviticus from pulpits in Christian churches. The idea that Christianity can disown the old testament is frankly ridiculous, apart from in those sects where they no longer preach from it.
And there are members of the Church who experience same-sex attraction but strive for a life of chastity, who have a powerful message for those who long to "move beyond the confines of the homosexual label to a more complete identity in Christ."
See, for example, Tina's, Jonah's and Blake's testimonies:
And there are members of the Church who experience heterosexual attraction but strive for a life of chastity, who have a powerful message for those who long to "move beyond the confines of all labels to a more complete identity in Christ."
And fair play to them if it is what they believe.
It doesn't work for everyone though, as is eminently obvious if you look to scandals over the years across all religious groups who swear selected members to chastity.
I guess it depends on how you look at it. He's a "son of the South" and a self-described religious man, so this makes sense.
But this also makes sense from a PR perspective because according to American political polls being an atheist is "worse" than being black, gay, a women, etc. It's apparently largely unforgivable to be godless.
So, some may be surprised to learn he's gay, but then take some solace in the fact that he still praises the same god they do. In a way this is the perfect way to assuage the exact audience this revelation might offend because, you know, God loves all his children.
This really won't be a big deal. Some extreme groups will make some noise, but that's about it. I was in the Marine Corps when they repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Everyone thought it'd be a big deal. They repealed it...nobody cared.
I've never come across a poll that asks, "Which of these do you consider worst: being gay, black, female, or atheist?" but I doubt the answer to a question like that would be useful anyway.
I'm a little amused by you guys trying to work out all the "PR" angles Cook could be trying to exploit by mentioning his faith without even considering that it's is a genuinely important part of who he is.
Per your first paragraph, they usually frame it as, "Would you vote for a candidate with the following background:" as a way to gauge personal feelings on a matter.
Those, I've seen. But saying you wouldn't vote for a presidential candidate who is atheist is a lot different than saying that it's "unforgivable" to be atheist, or that atheists are worse than blacks, gays, and women.
Maybe I'm just being pedantic but I don't think a poll about how people would vote for the president is a good indicator of how people feel about atheists in comparison to other groups of people. I don't even think the latter is quantifiable.
> Maybe I'm just being pedantic but I don't think a poll about how people would vote for the president is a good indicator of how people feel about atheists in comparison to other groups of people. I don't even think the latter is quantifiable.
People have tried in comparison to other religions:
I'm not trying to get into semantics. I attend Catholic mass every Sunday and identify as part of the Catholic community, but that doesn't mean I let centuries old teachings dictate my own personal beliefs. That is the difference between church and faith. If I were to make the same statement Tim made, I would be making it from my viewpoint, not that of you or anyone else.
Why don't you identify yourself simply as a "religious person" and consider yourself part of the worldwide community of religious persons? I don't understand how you can not agree with a particular faith's concept of "God" while still considering yourself belonging to said faith.
Again, my objection is one of incomprehension. How can one reject the teachings of a religion while still identifying with said group?
Not particularly. Religious people frame things in religious terms.
I'm an atheist and a gay man. I think being gay is a good thing in my life. That is to say, if there were a pill I could take that would turn me straight, I wouldn't take it.
Despite harassment and discrimination (which still happens, even in happy tolerant cities like London—most recent incident, 3 weeks ago, someone shouting "queers!" out of the window while I was walking down the street late at night holding hands with a guy), the point is that in spite of huge amounts of cultural and religious programming to the opposite, a lot of gay people have found themselves embracing their sexuality and considering it not just a not-bad thing but an actively good thing in their life.
That's what Cook is getting at: that sentiment can be expressed in secular terms (like I just have) or in religious terms.
Er, why? Because it conflicts with other people's opinions of what God values? Hate to say this, but religious people say things of the general form "I consider X among the greatest gifts God has given me" (or something with similar meaning) where X conflicts with the view of God's priorities held by some other religious people all the time.
Am I the only one that always finds it funny when athiests (myself included) use the name of a religious deity when making an exclamation?
That being said, it is really difficult for most people to get past the cognitive dissonance that comes from being mass-denied "salvation" by the followers of a religion (Islam, Christianity, Hinduism) for being a homosexual, and yet, still believing in the invisible man in the sky that supposedly dictated these edicts.
Disclosure: I'm LGBTQ, athiest, and will defend to the death the right for anyone to believe in things I do not.
It's funny on the surface, but really a lot of it is just another form of profanity: something you say when exasperated or surprised. I have an agnostic friend, not religious in the least, who is always saying 'good lord!'. He's not actually invoking jesus in any way, it's just a saying that sound good to him. Dara O'Briain says in one of his stand-up events that "catholicism is the stickiest religion in the world. In Ireland, even the atheists are catholic". He's really talking about the cultural crossovers from the observance of catholicism, not actual belief in the religion itself.
For the record, I am a strong atheist, and I think people should be able to speak about ideas freely, including ideas I disagree strongly with, but I'm not willing to actually die for someone else's right to speak a bunch of nonsense about a man in the sky and how many raisins you get for following him. :)
First they came for the Raisin God believers, and I said nothing, because I do not believe in the Raisin God....
I think we know the rest of it. suffice it to say that I react violently to a censorship of belief, even if I do not share them. I'm a little saddened to think that I might be in a minority.
"(...) and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me". I can only imagine the reactions if the same was said by a heterosexual person, about heterosexual orientation... :)
That's the entire point being made here though - being straight isn't a particularly large challenge in today's society. What Tim is saying here, is that much of his empathy, and ability to appreciate minorities, and the oppressed, derives directly from being a member of a heretofore marginalized group. And, his ability to appreciate the importance of diversity, and to truly understand Dr. King and his message, is a result of that, "gift from god."
I understand that point. The impact of something such as this on your shaping is incommensurable; I can only imagine how much being part of a minority (particularly, one which is prejudiced, mocked and even attacked) shaped his way of understanding and appreciating difference.
However, I can't agree with putting it in "that" way ("among the greatest gifts God has given me"). Even taking into account how much such a thing will shape a person, it seems exaggerated (to me). It sounds like he is who (and where) he is because of his sexual orientation. He was, however, born in a developed (and rich country); he had food, parents and housing; he also education (and a good one, in great schools) and the privilege of working at IBM and Apple.
I was responding to your comment about why this statement would have been controversial if it had been "being heterosexual among the greatest gifts God has given me", and explaining why taking pride in being in the Majority/Dominant group (I am proud to be White, I am proud to be Straight, I am Proud to be a Man) is so different than taking pride in being a member of a marginalized group.
Clearly there were a lot of things that put Tim Cook in the position that he is, far, far, far more important than his orientation; I.E. the fact that he is on earth, that he is human, born after 2000 BC, etc... are all more significant, but now we're going down a different rabbit hole than your original comment.
You mean like the bits about the "great gift" of holy matrimony and God's intention "man and wife" to be joined "as one flesh" that crop up at basically every single Christian wedding?
So are you're saying that expressing the Christian view that God intends for men and women to only have sexual relationships within [a heterosexual] marriage, that such marriage should be the basis under which children are raised, that marriage should be a singular unending union, expressing such things won't cause one to be vilified, on HN say?
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest there probably isn't one person posting on HN that has ever interrupted a wedding to complain that all the man and wife stuff is a bit heterosexist.
Surprisingly, HN - atheists included - is both capable of celebrating people's happiness when they express views on the amazing "god-given" nature of their romantic relationships, like Tim Cook did, and disapproving of people making statements to the effect that other people's romantic relationships are wrong, like Tim Cook didn't.
Equating the two is a desperately poor excuse for an argument.
So Tim just came out an idiot. He thanks god for making him gay, the same god who hates gays decided in his infinite wisdom to make him an object he hates. If he does not see the irony in that statement, then I have to wonder about the intelligence of the person.
Isn't that what we have been told through the centuries that every word in the bible is inspired by god himself, and even (if you buy into the bullshit) god himself (i.e. Jesus) saying how every word of the law must be fulfilled.
Biblical literalism is largely an American Protestant thing. It's very recent (on the time-scale of Christianity). The Catholic church doesn't subscribe to that view- they've endorsed evolution for decades, for one thing.
Of course not. I'm an atheist, anti-theist in fact, and I know perfectly well the history of the bible how it was written, and that it is not the word of imaginary god etc.
I am just saying what the religious people say it is. And this is the irony.
You know when in the worlds only constitutional secular democracy it becomes impossible to actually be secular and be elected, when school boards constantly try to teach stultifying pseudoscience to our children, when demand for equal time for creationism and evolution or outright refusal to teach evolution in biology classes becomes the norm, when even coming out as gay or atheist in large parts of the country can get you in trouble at home or at work or the street, then remaining silent and polite is the worst thing to do.
Yes there are a few secular states, but less of those that have complete separation of church and state guaranteed by the constitution. USA is the oldest and most well known one.
There's a big gap from the "only" to "the oldest and most well known".
I'm actually a citizen of a constitutional guaranteed secular democracy where politicians very rarely speak about gods or religion, where decriminalizing abortion² was done by popular referendum, where all drug consumption is decriminalized² and where self-proclaimed Christians are generally pro-divorce and pro-contraception.
Just because the US had a head start centuries ago, you shouldn't assume you're exceptional today.
¹ (I can't remember the last time it was mentioned. There's certainly no "god bless you" or any other clichés that you're supposed to say)
² (good or bad, they are issues on which religion - and especially Christianity - heavily influences choice)
I'm sorry to tell you this, but your ignorance of religion and monotheism is astounding. Reading your comments it is very apparent that you take any mention of a belief in God to mean a follower of the American branch of reformist protestant Christianity with biblical literalism.
That is a very broad brush, as the fundamentalists literalists are a tiny part of Christianity and of broader monotheism. They make up about a quarter of American Christians, which is a much higher proportion than any other country in the world.
A lot of people associate that branch of Christianity with all monotheism simply because they tend to be noisy and dominate political issues. You'll rarely find that view outside of the USA, and of the overall global monotheist population the literalists are a tiny percentage.
The biggest critics of the literalists and their views are in fact other Christians. Even the Catholic church, which itself is a conservative branch of Christianity - accepts evolution, the age of the universe and other dominant issues associated with fundamentalist Christians in the USA such as the rights of homosexuals.
To associate all Christians or monotheists as meaning fundamentalist is no different to the bigots and wackos who believe that all Muslims are Salafist jihadi. Tim mentioned nothing more than a belief in God, it is a huge and unsubstantiated leap to conclude from his single word that he is a fundamentalist literalist.
There would be a lot more tolerance in this world if people who hated at least understood what it was they were hating. I see your views as being as ignorant and fundamentalist as the very views you disagree with.
You know I don't really care if people are literalist fundamentalist bible thumpers or unitarians, muslims or even deists. They are all wrong, and they all believe in things unsupported by evidence or completely debunked lies. I only care about what is true, and I don't have any reservations about telling people what they believe isn't true, esp. when they bring it out to the open and implicitly invite the discussion on it.
There are two kinds of beliefs. One is based on evidence, logic, reason, testable repeatable experiments. Rational mind has no option but to accept their truthfulness (sometimes after laborious examination of evidence or step by step verification of logical deduction). You could go on and deny obvious truth, but that leads to cognitive dissonance and is rather mentally taxing. The other belief is opposite, it is not based on any evidence at all and it is called faith. You are believing things without having sufficient or any evidence for it. Note also that all religions are faith based. If they were based on evidence, religion would be a branch of science, it would be a scientific theory (which is the highest pedestal a scientific hypothesis can be placed upon, only mathematics has theorems).
There is now strong evidence that theistic gods i.e. gods that care about human beings, that interfere in their lives, that tell you what you should do, what you should eat, on what days, who you may sleep with and in what position, gods who break the known laws of nature for their people, god who stops the motion of the sun around earth so certain people in the Bible can finish their work, god who takes "our" side in a war, a god that gives itself body so it can kill it to save the humanity are man made invention.
Religion comes to us from other human mammals who not only know there is a god, but they also know his mind what he wants us to do. And how do they know? Revelation of course, god told them something often times contradictory what he told others. And the religious never even seek evidence for their extraordinary claims. But revelation is useless and unreliable as a way to discover truth
Revelation can only ever be relevant to the person to whom something is revealed. As soon as that person shares and relates the revelation to someone else, it becomes a testimony at that point. And then it becomes a matter of trusting that person for the claim they are making. Also, the person to whom something is revealed should be apprehensive and wonder which is more likely that laws of nature have been bent in their favor no less, or if perhaps they are under apprehension.
Revelations are dime a dozen. Numerous people have claimed that something has been revealed to them. Even worse different people have claimed same god has revealed things that are contradictory to the things god has revealed to other people. In Christianity god reveals himself as a human, he dies on the cross, and resurrects. In Islam, Jesus is not only not the son of god, he never died on the cross and never resurrected. Believing otherwise will have you condemned to hell. In Christianity god says love your enemies, in Islam he says kill your enemies and apostates. Yet it's the same god, and both sides claim divine revelation for the "wisdom" they preach.
Content of revelation paints a picture of a god who is quite frankly incompetent, stupid and has morals lesser than average decent human being today. And most importantly he leaves it to chance what you will believe about him and if you will be damned to eternity.
What religion you get indoctrinated into has very little to do with its truthfulness, but everything to do with where you were born. If you were born in Saudi Arabia for example you would be a Muslim defending Islam right now. Yet both Islam and Christianity and Judaism (the three desert dogmas) all claim to posses the true and perfect words of the creator of the universe.
And isn't it incredibly stupid of a supreme, intelligent, omnipotent, omnipresent being to demand bel...
It doesn't surprise me that you also make an assumption about what I believe, considering you sprayed a dozen comments of bile about what Tim Cook believes based on almost nothing.
How about you drop the faux intellectual superiority and just accept what others choose to believe - be it their religious beliefs, political or sexual orientation?
That is the very definition of tolerance - and, ironically, the exact thing that Cook standing up for.
I don't make any assumption about what you believe. When ever I say "you" in the text above you could replace it by "religious people" and this is the intended reading (if you believe X you are doing Y). Of course I accept what others choose to believe, how could I not. I have to hold people to their word. But of course this is not what you are really saying, you are really saying why don't you stop criticizing what people believe, because their irrationality and superstition is just as good as your reason. Of course everyone is free to believe what they want to, but we are also free to criticize them and ridicule stupid beliefs.
Tim Cook on the other hand is a Christian of the Southern (Alabama) brand.
Criticism? Don't flatter yourself. A prerequisite for criticism is being informed, and you not only have little clue to what I or Tim Cook believe, but you have mischaracterized Christianity, Islam and all monotheism - 3.6 billion people and their views stereotyped broadly.
I don't have answers for myself, so i'm not going to pretend to have answers for 50% of the world population. I'm certainly not going to assess their beliefs on the basis that what I might believe is somehow more correct than what anyone else believes.
Intelectual or theological superiority combined with moral authority is what leads to intolerance and hate. I'd rather somebody believe in the easter bunny or pray to Kim Kardashian 5 times a day and be tolerant of others than be closer to my own agnostic view and attempt force it on others because they are more correct.
Religion is about certainty, but there are multiple religions.
It seems obvious that if people are capable of believing different certainties, then no version can be reliably considered true. Yet there are people who are killing each others children for the kind of Christian they are, let alone Muslims killing Christians, as we speak in fact, because they both believe in opposite certainties. Yet neither side is losing any sleep worrying if the other side might be correct.
Yet it is people like me who point out this most salient of facts that the problem in your mind. This makes you either a complete idiot or a hypocrite.
Faith is the problem. Believing things without evidence is the root cause of most evil on this planet.
As someone who was raised in an intellectual atheist family, spent my younger years believing as such and has since converted to Christianity, I find the tone of this kind of "Anyone who believes in anything is stupid.....but I'm all inclusive and caring" rhetoric to be a contradiction in terms. I have personally only experienced it from people who have been wounded by Christians in some way. I think that sucks and I am sorry that there are so many people wounded by Christianity. Yet, that doesn't make Christianity untrue, it just means some of its adherents are jerks (like any other belief system).
As Mahatma Ghandi said; "I like your Christ but I do not like your Christians, your Christians are so unlike Christ". Look at the person and work of Jesus if you want to know about Christianity, not us broken individuals who attempt to follow him.
On another note, the argument that you know the method therefore the agency doesn't exist has always seemed illogical to me. I know how Toyota puts its cars together, that doesn't mean that Toyota doesn't exist.
We have different beliefs and I'm not here to argue, just presenting a different point of view. You have the right to say what you say and believe what you believe, I will even defends those rights for you. I just hope that you will be willing to do the same for me.
I don't say anyone who believes anything. That would be stupid. I say anyone who believes things unsupported by evidence. We don't have to search the entire universe to find Christian god absent, we just have to look at the evidence put forward by Christians to be inadequate. You presumably don't believe in Zeus or Thor, or Mythras or Isis or Horus or any of the other gods that died with the civilizations that created them, and this is presumably because you find the evidence for these inadequate.
> On another note, the argument that you know the method therefore the agency doesn't exist has always seemed illogical to me. I know how Toyota puts its cars together, that doesn't mean that Toyota doesn't exist.
This is because people have used gods in the past as necessities needed for explanation of natural phenomena. Of course these explanations are not such thing at all, because you now have an ever bigger problem, by positing an intelligent being you are making bigger assumption than the phenomena you are trying to explain and now have a larger problem to solve, possibly leading to infinite regresses. All the above paragraph is saying is we don't need the hypothesis of deistic god ether. The evidence against theistic gods is much stronger though, and the idea can be dismissed completely.
Let me put it this way. You speak of god, but did you invent the concept, or did you hear about it from someone else? And if you heard about it from someone else, what evidence did they show you that convinced you with absolute certainty that there had to be such a thing.
Nice response - I don't want to hijack this thread by going through this with a fine tooth comb but a couple of points:
1) The God of the bible pursues relationship with the people he created, every other god is some form of "be holy, zen like, detached or well behaved enough and I might relate to you".
2) I've never used God as the only explanation to natural phenomena - condemning my argument by what someone else has said is equivalent to me condemning your argument because soviet/maoist leaders said illogical things in the name of atheism - it wouldn't be fair to you if I did that.
3) On a philosophical level, there is no such thing as absolute certainty. We all have to take faith in something. I have walked across a certain bridge 10 times and it has never collapsed. I will walk across it tomorrow having faith that it wont collapse extrapolated from past evidence. I believe animals evolve over time but I have never seen a fish sprout legs.
None of us have absolute certainty about anything we have to make our best analysis of the facts before us. I analysed the facts heavily and believe that the God of the bible is more plausible than any other explanation of our existence.
> None of us have absolute certainty about anything we have to make our best analysis of the facts before us. I analysed the facts heavily and believe that the God of the bible is more plausible than any other explanation of our existence.
I don't agree with this view at all, and I would like to see an example of one such fact that is best "explained" by positing a supernatural agent. Invoking supernatural to explain something is not really explaining anything, and even worse, to rule out any possibility of it ever being explained. Because anything supernatural must by definition be beyond the reach of a natural explanation. It must be beyond the reach of science and the well-established, tried and tested scientific method that has been responsible for the huge advances in knowledge we have enjoyed over the last 400 years or so. To say that something happened supernaturally is not just to say we don’t understand it, but to say we will never understand it so don’t even try.
Science takes exactly the opposite approach. Science thrives on its inability, so far, to explain everything, and uses that as the spur to go on asking questions, creating possible models and testing them, so that we make our way, inch by inch, closer to the truth. If something were to happen that went against our current understanding of reality, we would see that as a challenge to our present model, requiring us to abandon or at least change it. It is through such adjustments and subsequent testing that we approach closer and closer to what is true.
What would you think of a detective who, baffled by a murder, was too lazy even to try to work at the problem and instead wrote the mystery off as supernatural? The whole history of science shows us that things once thought to be the result of the supernatural, caused by gods (both happy and angry), demons, witches, spirits, curses and spells, actually do have natural explanations: explanations that we can understand and test and have confidence in. There is absolutely no reason to believe that those things for which science does not yet have natural explanations will turn out to be of supernatural origin, any more than volcanoes or earthquakes or diseases turn out to be caused by angry deities, as people once believed they were.
Put another way, show me one fact for which scientific explanation no matter how inadequate was once the best explanation but for which relgious/theological explanation is now better one.
Where did the protons and neutrons that initiated the "big bang" come from? What set them in motion?
The balance of the fine tuned requirements of our universe, once understood to be "just so" are now, accepted as having a probability so slim that the likelihood of them occurring in the balances we find them in the known universe is infinitesimal (I'm talking about the gravitational constant, our distance from the sun, gas balance in the atmosphere etc etc). Tweak one of these balances just a little and life would never have occurred. The only answer pure impericists have for this "fine tuning argument" is the multiverse argument - that there are actually billions of universes and we just happen to be in the right one....thats grasping at straws and has absolutely no evidence to support it except that it allows them to continue claiming "there is no intention behind any of it".
You're talking like all Christians are anti-science. Some are, but they're sadly ignorant. Western science began as an attempt to better understand the mind of God. God was not taken to be a convenient excuse to explore nothing but motivation to know him better was given as justification to explore more. I know there are vocal luddites who do what you say but they do not represent all of us.
Unfortunately, none of those questions are improved by positing a god. First, you do not have any evidence that there is a god, but we do have evidence that there is a universe out there. Second, even if I grant you deistic god who may have perhaps started the universe, you still have all your work ahead of you to show that this god is the god of the bible (this is pretty damning when we have so much evidence about invention and evolution of biblical god, which as it turns out is a man made invention, see for example "The evolution of God" by Robert Wright, and "The Early History of God" by Mark Smith).
On the other hand, as I have already said in my previous post, positing a deistic god i.e. an idea that some god might exist who may perhaps have kicked off the universe but no longer takes interest in it is pointless. No one can in principle provide proof there is no deistic god, nor can anyone provide a proof that such a thing exists. At most we can say is such a hypothesis is no longer needed. It presupposes a lot more to assume an intelligent being capable of creating universes who either spontaneously came into being or always existed than to assume the same thing about the universe itself (i.e. dumb matter). This is why Occam's razor cuts such hypothesis as superfluous thing, because it does not explain anything new, but poses more questions.
Basically, what ever you want to say about this deistic god, how it came to be etc. you can just say the same thing about the universe itself. And you would be assuming much less (no intelligence, just dumb matter). And like Pierre-Simon Laplace said, it works without that hypothesis.
And some of the questions you talk about do have scientific answers, like distance to the sun, balance of atmosphere etc. And others have plausible answers that don't require supernatural.
I think reading something like Victor J. Stenger's "The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning" would be useful.
And besides, the false dichotomy you set up, either we have an answer for everything or else Jesus is the Christ and we must therefore all be Christians is just not true. There is a spectrum of options in between. We could not know any answers and Christianity be false (as I maintain it is), or perhaps Hindus have it right etc.
You must get comfortable with not knowing, and seeking rational answers. It is those who are certain and who claim divine warrant for their certainty that belong to the infancy of our species.
Religion was the first and worst attempt to make sense of reality. It was the best we could do at a time when we had no concept of physics, chemistry, biology or medicine. We did not know that we lived on a round planet, let alone that the planet was in orbit in a minor and obscure solar system, which was also on the edge of an unimaginably vast cosmos that was exploding away from its original source of energy. We did not know that micro-organisms were so powerful and lived in our digestive systems in order to enable us to live, as well as mounting lethal attacks on us as parasites. We did not know of our close kinship with other animals. We believed that sprites, imps, demons, and djinns were hovering in the air about us. We imagined that thunder and lightning were portentous. It has taken us a long time to shrug off this heavy coat of ignorance and fear, and every time we do there are self-interested forces who want to compel us to put it back on again. We are pattern-seeking mammals and owing to our intelligence and inquisitiveness, we will still prefer a conspiracy theory to no explanation at all. Religion was our first attempt at philosophy, just as alchemy was our first attempt at chemistry and astrology our first attempt to make sense of the movements of the heavens. But there is a reason why religions insist so much on strange events in the sky, as well as on less quantifiable phenomena such as dreams and visions. All of these things cater to our inborn stupidity, and our willingness to be persuaded against all the evidence that we are...
I'm not going to give your well thought out points the response they deserve but let me respond with a few things.
Of course our interpretation of the bible evolves to some degree because our interpretation of anything reflects our culture. Jesus existed within a culture and so do the people that attempt to follow him. Wouldn't you be concerned if people's biblical understanding didn't evolve in some respect and we all wore togas and sandals to be biblical?
Paragraph two: no one can prove or disprove God therefore default to Occam's razor for the final decision. Occam's razor is useful for statistical thinking but imagine if we applied this "default to occam's razor attitude" with everything? Would Einstein have pursued and refined his general theory? Unlikely, he might have said something like "this is all getting a bit unusual and not what I initially expected, I think I'll just default back". As you suggest he has decided to "assume much less" and completely nullified his pursuit of truth for the sake of intellectual comfort - not having to deal with something that, on the surface, appeared bizarre and unappealing on our first analysis. It isn't fair to do this to ourselves when history has shown that truth is often stranger than we can imagine.
Fine Tuning: Sure, there are scientific answers to these things; "one in a trillion planets happens to be the right distance from the sun" well and good. But to have all these elements, each with such miniscule odds, is far beyond the probability of the known universe many times over. To the point that, folks like Richard Dawkins propound the multiverse theory in which there are billions of universes like our own and we just happen to be in the right one because there is no logical explanation to how all these elements came together just right in the universe that we know....to me its the multiverse that sounds far fetched but I'm willing to analyse it further.
False dichotomy; having investigated many world religions and seen the theme of "be good enough, meditate enough, pray enough and you might reach paradise/nirvana" repeated over and over again, it seems that God is a terrible guy who sits in comfort delivering proclamations that we can't keep up with. That is, until I look at Christ and see that, far from remaining out of the mess, he has entered it in pursuit of us (like a loving father would) and makes payment for us himself. When my child does wrong I pursue him even when he doesn't want to be pursued because I love him. To sit back and say "be good or daddy won't love you" would be horrific and manipulative and not lead to a meaningful relationship. Because the God of the bible treats humanity like a loving father treats his son is the reason I see it as the only other option. If the vengeful and distant gods of Hinduism etc are true then, I'm sorry, but I don't want to know them.
>"You must get comfortable with not knowing" - sorry but I have to disagree here. I don't think I'll ever be comfortable with not knowing. I desperately want the truth and see it as lifes purpose to pursue it. However, there comes a point where I have to leap off from the knowledge I have and make a few assumptions otherwise I am left with nothing to stand on. This is why science has hypothises - we don't have all the answers but we need to believe in something or we have no objective standpoint with which to consider anything true and, as a few despairing philosophy students will tell you "we could just be brains sitting in vats being sent sensory information through nerve endings, we can't prove anything." This is a weak position in which to pursue truth because "you can't prove anything" and so nothing becomes reliable. As CS Lewis has pointed out; "if you see through everything then you really see nothing at all".
Of course I would stand for your freedom to believe what you want and to say what you want. But the freedom to criticize is equally important counterbalance. It so common to see any criticism of religion suppressed and treated as tantamount to racism.
By allowing certain ideas to remain immune from criticism, we risk throwing away all of the advances made since the Enlightenment, and paving the way to a world where bad, unsupported claims are allowed to flourish unchecked. No free and open society can exist for long if certain ideas become sacred cows. If the ideas of any religion are strong or true, then let them defend themselves in the open market place of ideas without the crutch of political correctness.
I agree with everything you say in this comment, however, I could well be in the minority soon. Freedom of religion and freedom of speech were initially given to the masses by people of faith who didn't see value in imposing their faith on others even though, at the time, they held the political upper hand and could have if they wanted to.
My concern is that, when people of non-faith hold the political upper hand (in some places they already do) will they have the moral objectivity to say that all people are of value and their opinions worthy of respect?
This was not the case under previous faithless systems. Soviet Russia and Maoist China saw people as expendable for what was perceived to be the advancement of their greater ideals. The Christian west may have acted like dicks and used God to justify their selfish atrocities, but at least they could be pulled up on a moral objective standpoint (the bible) and be told; "this is not OK because your bible says so". Most have since stopped listening to this kind of questioning however.
Nice talking with you super_mario, would like to hear your thoughts on the discussion I linked to above but we should probably talk somewhere else rather than steal a thread meant for Tim Cook.
I'm a Muslim and can tell you it's wrong. #1 mistake most people make when they find contradictory facts in the religion is not taking the context of the verses or quotes they are examining. Arabic is a very rich language and a direct translation in most cases does not yield the full meaning. We believe in Jesus' _original_ teachings as much as the other prophets. I think the onus is on you to demonstrate why you think that. Also remember that the actions of a terrorists that claim to be Muslim does not reflect the actual substance of the religion.
That's a pretty poor defense in this day and age. Countless books have been written on the topic and I have read many myself, youtube search will easily bring countless imams explaining the death penalty for apostasy and what the hadiths say about how to treat infidels.
so you can't go pretending those things are not there. If you feel embarrassed by barbaric desert god who behaves like 8th century human, then perhaps proper reaction is apostasy and not defense of the bronze age mythology.
Also, presuming you meant "2014 years ago" (the most sensible interpretation of "year 0"), it's pretty universally accepted that the old testament that we know best was written hundreds of years before then.
I don't see anything about any Gods hating gays. Levictus compares men having sex with other men being as big of a sin as cursing your parents or having sex with a woman during her periods, and later in Sodom God decides to murder a town for their lack of charity.
I guess you could reach and say that God hates sinners and homosexuals are committing a sin, but that's pretty silly at least in Christianity everyone is a sinner.
(This is from my understanding of this, which is pretty limited)
I think this is an important point about Christianity and homosexuality. While the bible states homosexuality is a sin, it says a lot of things are sins. But it doesn't have some scale of REALLY BAD sins vs tiny sins. Sins are sins when it comes to Christianity. And the only way to salvation is through Jesus.
A church that would reject members based on sinful behavior would have no members. Where I think it gets tricky is that being a good Christian means that you try to overcome your sins as best as you can (you will never be sin-free), so embracing a sin (such as homosexuality) isn't considered being a good Christian.
The Catholic Church actually only considers homosexual sexual acts a sin. The root of this is a particular belief in natural order and law, ie. all sexual acts that aren't aimed at procreation are considered sins (somewhat different levels of gravity depending on the situation - but this is where the "every sperm is sacred" joke comes from)
Your "aren't aimed at procreation" comment isn't quite correct. The objection, in the context of marriage, is to sexual acts which impair the transmission of life per se.
Sacred Scripture does, in fact, have a scale of "really bad" sins.
For more information, look into the seven deadly sins[1], sins that cry to heaven for vengeance and sins against the Holy Spirit[2].
There is also a passage in one of the epistles of the Apostle St. John:
"If a man knows his brother to be guilty, yet not of such a sin as brings death with it, he should pray for him; and, at his request, life will be granted to the brother who is sinning, yet not fatally. There is a sin which kills; it is not over this that I bid him fall to prayer. Sin may be wrong-doing of any kind; not all sin is fatal." (1 John 5:16-17)[3]
It's actually a fairly recent invention. In the middle ages, various influential priests pointed out that if ever our observation of nature conflicts with our understanding of the bible, clearly our understanding of the bible is lacking.
From a Christian perspective, you could argue that Biblical Literalists have made their own interpretation of the bible into their idol, and closed their eyes to God's reality around them.
In any case, I personally consider Biblical Literalism one of the greatest threats to Christianity. It can only push people away from God.
At the risk of going down an off-topic rabbit hole...
There really is only irony if this god actually hates gays (I'm assuming we're talking about your usual run of the mill Abrahamic deity). It may well be that Tim's theology is a bit more sophisticated.
Sure, isn't that what every believer does, picks out the parts they like and ignore the ones they don't, showing once more they are their own moral guide and they know better than their god what is good and what is not. I wouldn't go as far as call it sophisticated. Sophisticated would be seeing the bronze age ramblings for bullshit that it is and devoting your life to learning what we actually do know of the universe we live in.
But of course this is USA, where pandering to the religious is a must for any public figure, even if they don't agree with it themselves.
> I wouldn't go as far as call it sophisticated. Sophisticated would be seeing the bronze age ramblings for bullshit that it is and devoting your life to learning what we actually do know of the universe we live in.
I don't know about you super_mario, but it looks like Tim is doing a pretty good job with respect to learning about the universe we live in. On the face of it, certainly better than me.
Also, I don't have a dog in this fight, but it may not be a matter of 'knowing better than their god'. It may be that his interpretation of whatever holy books he has read has given him whatever his beliefs are, like every other Christian. Those beliefs however, may well not be at odds with what you assume. We can't say his beliefs are bronze age bullshit - we don't know what they are so we're particularly badly placed to judge, even if judging in this situation was somehow valuable. We would just be adding another belief to the stack which helps no-one.
When ever I hear people speak of god doing something for them, I immediately lose respect for the person. I always hope that perhaps one day they will grow up to the full stature of our species and use the very thing that makes us human, our reason instead of relying on now debunked lies our ancestor apes 2 chromosomes away from chimpanzee invented for themselves to appease, control and understand nature they feared.
> Sure, isn't that what every believer does, picks out the parts they like and ignore the ones they don't, showing once more they are their own moral guide and they know better than their god what is good and what is not.
That doesn't show that. Picking out the parts of what other people say about God that resonate with them and ignoring the parts that do not isn't saying that they know more than God about what is good, but that they trust themselves more than other people about what is good -- and about what God is trying to say.
And very many religious groups stress the importance of personal conscience (though those with strong authority structures often also declare that any person who is really listening to their conscience will come to the same conclusions as the authority does.)
Exactly. Keep in mind that the people insisting that homosexuality is such a terrible sin are putting quite a bit of their own spin on the bible. If you were to determine the contents on the bible based on what a certain brand of American Christian talks about, you'd think it all revolves around Genesis 1 and some bits of Leviticus. The entire New Testament is nowhere in sight.
Well, that would be a matter of opinion; Reform Judaism doesn't think so, for instance, and nor do a lot of liberal Protestant Christian churches, particularly in Europe. Even the Catholic Church is backing away from the idea now.
(Of course, it could also just be a turn of phrase; plenty of people use phrases like "thank God" without literally believing in one...)
According to recent comments from the Pope - he is something of a authority in the religious world I have heard, seems that God has no deep hatred for gays, was involved in the Big Bang and watched observantly life evolved.
You don't really need a superficial reason to hate other humans, if your heart so desire.
They are certainly converging ever closer to the truth. They should just come out and say Jesus never existed as well, and they are not sure there is a god and apologize for being the biggest trolls in the history of humanity. Then they would gain some respect.
This is the organization that to this day stays opposed to reason, advancement of science that meddles into research and politics and tells other people what they must think and do because of what they believe without evidence and that has done the biggest damage to progress of civilization and horrible destruction of ancient civilizations and their achievements, now comes to us with an ingratiating smile, because it had to give up so much power, and says how it stands for progress. But we should not forget how it behaved when it really did think it had god on its side.
> They are certainly converging ever closer to the truth.
What the pope said last week isn't a new position - the Catholic church and evolution have never been in conflict. There was no position for a long time while Catholic scientists worked on evolution, but it was formally accepted in 1950, which in terms of the Catholic church moving on an issue is pretty quick.
No, it isn't a new position, but let's not pretend like Catholic church has accepted evolution either. Catholic church still believes in theistic evolution, i.e. evolution where god must interfere at critical times and not in unguided evolution though natural selection, which is the actual scientific theory. Theistic evolution is not evolution and it is in principle unscientific.
If you really care to find out what Catholic church says about evolution take a look here:
Which ones? There was a meta-research done the other day, where the works of 130+ historians from that era was analyzed; only one made note of even the existence of Jesus, and it's pretty certain that that section wasn't put there by the original author (different writing style, sudden change of topic, etc).
How did he come to that conclusion? What changed? The story for over 2000 years was quite different in most religious organizations. If they had come to that conclusion any number of years ago, people might not have felt the need to hide it. Furthermore, people like Alan Turing might have had a much better life.
I don't share Eich's views, but he's 58 - the cultural concepts that made it difficult for Tim Cook to be public about his sexuality may be the same thing that makes Eich against gay marriage.
Edit: I can't comment due to rate limits, but a poster below hasn't read what I wrote above and is suggesting I am saying the men grew up in different times. I am suggesting the exact opposite: they grew up in the SAME period/culture.
Eich is also 53, the same age as Cook. Both were born in 1961 Where do you get you mistaken certitude from? And why would 5 years age difference matter even if it were true?
No, the opposite - I assume most people know Tim Cook is around the age most CEOs are. Both men grew up in a time where homosexuality was considered to be immoral. Growing up in such an environment ingrains those beliefs, hence gay people coming out in their 50s and other men in their 50s who are surrounded by people that accept gay relationships still not being comfortable with that.
Off topic, it kind of bothers me that I got mischaracterised and couldn't reply for such a long time due to the silly HN rate limit.
I am not saying that I am of that opinion, but it seems valid to me to be of the opinion that marriage should be for the protection of families with the potential to have children (for example). It's just an opinion - isn't that what democracies are for?
Marriage comes with specific rights and obligations (like, presumably most controversial, adoption and "importing" spouses into the country). Somehow society makes rules for who gets those rights and obligations. Would you say for example everybody should have the right to import people into the country? For example why don't I get the right to bestow citizenship onto people whom I really like - do I need to fuck them to prove I love them? Isn't that discriminatory? Or why stop at gay marriage - what about polyarmory?
I am not against polyarmory, but suppose I have 100 lovers all over the world and I want them all to become US citizens? Why can't I just marry them all?
Maybe it would be fair if every citizen would get the license to bring n people into the country, no matter if married or not?
Again, I am not against gay marriage, I just want to demonstrate that there can be aspects that can be argued about.
I don't know enough about adoption to comment. Can everybody adopt children? Or do you have to prove you are a healthy couple, or wealthy enough, or whatever? Personally I think once you argue homosexuals are not fit to adopt, you would have to consider all other sorts of criterions as well (for example surely many heterosexual couples are not fit to have children, or less so than some homosexual couples). Adoption is complex, though.
Gay couples do have the possibility of having children, though. Some good friends of mine (lesbian couple + a close gay friend of theirs) have twins together, with the guy donating sperm to one of the women. They have entered a "holy wow" to raise the kids together as three parents, as if they were all biologically involved.
So this in itself is not an argument; while I acknowledge that this is something that can be argued about, a lot of the arguing on this subject is extremely bigoted and misinformed. As is illustrated by this trio's harsh encounters with a number of government agencies that stick their heads into this arrangement and meet them with an incredibly hostile skepticism.
I suspect people worry more about the "two dads" scenario than the "two mothers" scenario. Afaik the large majority of kids of gay couples are kids living with two mothers, one of them their biological one.
I wonder how many kids live with two dads, one of them their biological one? I would expect the circumstances leading to that situation to be very rare.
Anyway I don't want to argue in favor of the anti-marriage crowd, just point out that some arguments can at least be related to, even if they are misguided. Unfortunately we can not shut misguided people out of politics (or so it seems).
It is inherently discriminatory. But people will go out of their way to rationalize their position, whatever it takes. If one is convinced that gay marriage is bad and that discrimination against gay people is also bad, one will come up with some way to explain how the two are not in conflict.
> How is enforcing legal restrictions against a minority class of people not inherently discriminatory?
That's begging the question: you're assuming that failure to recognise a homosexual relationship is a legal restriction, which really doesn't make sense. I can declare myself King of England, no-one in America will recognise me as such, but that doesn't impose any legal restriction on me.
There's the side issue of all the other things which 'marriage' acts as a legal shorthand for, but that is a side issue.
You're also assuming that discrimination is an inherently bad thing; it is, of course, not. Discriminating between a green and a red light is a pretty useful survival skill whilst driving, for example. Discriminating between reproductive and non-reproductive relationships is also useful; there's a difference.
My own personal view is that marriage is a religious matter, and that the State should no longer recognise it at all. If two men want to say that they're married, that's their right, just as it is mine to declare myself Grand Vizier of the Martian Republic—and no-one should be compelled by violence (which is what the law ultimately is) to heed either them or me.
That's a cool view, but not how it works. The 'side issue' you dismiss is really the center of it: the government denies full participation to a class of people based on a questionable moral stance. Anything less that recognition is a 'back of the bus' argument: if the bus goes to the same place, why do you care if you have to sit in the back?
Well married homosexuals get the right to adopt children (I assume). I don't think it's just a moral stance. Maybe some people really are convinced that having two dads is bad for children psychologically. They would probably be wrong, but it's not a question of morals (unless you dismiss the protection of children's wellbeing as a goal). I am not sure if science has really shown it's not bad for children. I personally don't think so, but I can't blame other people for thinking so.
How does adoption in general work? For example it can happen through "natural causes" that a child has only one dad and no mother. It seems likely that having two dads would be better than just one. But if somebody wants to adopt, they might have to be "better than average"? Like would a single dad have a good chance of adopting? Or does some office consider the likelihood of a child's wellbeing in a family - so presumably they would try to find two parents, not just one, which is discriminatory against singles? And then if the "adoption office" (or whoever is responsible) has the choice between a heterosexual and a homosexual couple, things become difficult?
All that is government meddling in someone else's affairs in the most egregious way possible. Its not as far as taking kids from single parents etc. because they don't fit someone's model of a perfect family, but nearly there.
My cousin has 4 kids, and is married to the love of her life Lisa. Their kids are certifiably the kindest, most considerate kids I know. There's been no psychological damage, at least not at their hands. Ignorant outsiders may say mean things but to blame that on these excellent parents would be twisted logic.
Anywho, the decision about adoption is so far down the road from marriage as to be a red herring.
Sure, that is what I said in another comment: if you argue homosexual couples are somehow unfit to raise children, you would also have to question other people's fitness.
But I think you are wrong about adoption. I think it's one of the main concerns opponents of gay marriage have. What other rights would people be concerned about? The other one I can think of is the right to bring your spouse into your country.
Are people going to the barricades because they don't want gays to be able to visit their partners in hospital? I rather doubt it. Adoption is one of the big issues.
Adoption rules are covered under different laws. Why not attack those rules, instead of marriage? It seems indirect. As you suggest, why not arrest, or execute, or lobotomize as well? Unmarried people can adopt - so what's the connection then?
I think, because the argument is thrown up semi-randomly - See! They might adopt! That would be awful! Just another red herring, saying anything at all that might convince a voter to strike down the right to marry.
Sorry, I have to write a second reply because it really makes me think: what would a possible moral stance against gay marriage even be? I can't imagine a reasonable moral argument against gay marriage? Unless you think homosexuals being together is immoral, but then marriage would be irrelevant (if that was somebody's opinion, they would probably fight on a lower level, like putting gays into jail or whatever, not prevent them from marrying)?
I'm not really well versed in the typical pro and contra arguments, so this made me curious.
The State has no business being involved in morality, so outlawing homosexual activity is outside the State's remit.
The moral argument against homosexual pseudomarriage is that it represents a fundamental misunderstanding about marriage. Marriage is not about a couple's (or a group's) feelings about one another. It's not a way that society shows approval. It is, rather, the formation of the most basic unit _of_ society (I'd argue that the individual is not really a unit of society), and is the means by which children are produced and brought up.
(And yes, there's plenty of heterosexual pseudomarriage too)
But, given that these are all moral arguments, my preference is for the State to absent itself entirely rather for it to take a side and do further damage to an almost destroyed institution.
Its about building a family, which is more than one person. To call its purpose child-raising is silly; folks stay married after the kids are gone. A family can be a grandmother and a grandkid; a Mom and a child and a grandchild; three kids raising one another after the folks die in an accident; two Moms and three adopted kids (like my cousins are). Its arrogant and small-minded to reject any family that doesn't look like yours, and worse yet to try to legislate other families out of existence.
In fact, if marriage is 'almost destroyed' as you posit, then we need more, new styles of family if kids are to have a chance to grow up fed and clothed and loved enough.
I actually agree with your proposal to get the state out of recognizing marriage (from what I suspect is a diametrically opposed political position). But you need to acknowledge that this would mean massive changes in many, many aspects of government policy. In the United States, state recognition of marriage is built into our tax structure, immigration policy, all aspects of social security, the regulation of trusts and estates, health care...the list is pretty much endless. Unless and until we change all of those policies, the failure to recognize same-sex marriages is discriminatory.
> That's begging the question: you're assuming that failure to recognise a homosexual relationship is a legal restriction
When it is a product of specific exclusionary provisions of the law, in the application of legal recognition of a relationship defined in law, then it is a legal restriction.
> I can declare myself King of England, no-one in America will recognise me as such, but that doesn't impose any legal restriction on me.
The rules governing the manner of succession to the British crown and the people who are eligibile to that succession most certainly are legal restrictions, and they most certainly are legal restrictions on most of the people in the world (even if it is a restriction where most of the restricted people don't care.)
> There's the side issue of all the other things which 'marriage' acts as a legal shorthand for, but that is a side issue.
Er, no, its not. Marriage is a legal status. The legal effects of the status are central to the issue, not a side issue.
> Discriminating between reproductive and non-reproductive relationships is also useful
Perhaps, but (a) why should we believe that in the general case, and (b) given the legal effects of marriage, why is marriage specifically an appropriate and valuable venue for such discrimination? About the only legal effect of marriage that is specifically directed to reproduction is the legal presumption of parenthood in which a spouse is presumptively (either rebuttably or conclusively, depending on jurisdiction) assigned parental responsibility for any children produced by the other partner. Arguably, the value of that is largely in providing an assurance that dual parental legal responsibility will be assigned in the absence of any effort to establish (in rebuttable presumption jurisdictions) or independently of (in conclusive presumption jurisdictions) the facts of biological parentage, which is as valid in a same-sex partnership as in an opposite-sex partnership.
It became a common right-libertarian view about the same time as the heterosexual-only marriage policy throughout the US came under serious threat.
Its also kind of interesting as a libertarian view, since marriage is essentially just a convenient prepackaged contractual relationship regarding property rights in the broad sense, and recognizing and enforcing contracts and their impact on property rights is one of the few things that libertarians generally agree is a proper role of government.
> It became a common right-libertarian view about the same time as the heterosexual-only marriage policy throughout the US came under serious threat.
What were the right-libertarian views on marriage in the US prior to that? I'd be surprised if there were libertarians with radically different views.
> Its also kind of interesting as a libertarian view, since marriage is essentially just a convenient prepackaged contractual relationship regarding property rights in the broad sense, and recognizing and enforcing contracts and their impact on property rights is one of the few things that libertarians generally agree is a proper role of government.
I think the general view is that those contracts should not require a "stamp of approval" from the government and should instead be done privately and be enforced like any other contracts. Of course, in practice, a lot of laws would have to be rewritten to get rid of marital status.
We'll first have to pass from the stage were announcement like this are not that courageous (sure might annoy some BS far right minority who nobody cares about), and are actually the in vogue thing to say for kudos and hi-fives.
Which I think is were we are now.
The people who really had the guts, "came out" when it really mattered and made a difference, back in the seventies and eighties.
Like Cook points out, the US is still country in which gay people are subject to life-altering discrimination all the time. Most other countries are even worse.
I suspect you're overestimating how accepted homosexuality is outside of your bubble.
How is that offensive? Clearly homosexuality is much closer to being mainstream as 20-30 or 50 years ago. TV Shows and movies and music trends all make it much more acceptable in the mainstream. All he is saying is that it was much more difficult for people back then to come out, much more than today. That being said, there is clearly some distance to go until it becomes egalitarian. That's how I interpreted the comment. Some people could also use that 'coming out' nowadays to gain some type of social sympathy to their advantage, which was not the case 50 years ago where they would have been ostracized or even killed...
> TV Shows and movies and music trends all make it much more acceptable in the mainstream.
What you see in mainstream media is the mainstream-approved version, but it's nowhere close to representative. Queer As Folk had more diversity in representation in a few seasons than the decade of culture that followed it.
>Like Cook points out, the US is still country in which gay people are subject to life-altering discrimination all the time.
And also a country where if you get that you can be settled for life with suing them for their houses and cars.
The thing is, this "life-altering discrimination" is not unique to gays in the US. You can get it by being different in all kinds of way. Seems like a lot more crackpots than usual (that what you'd get in Denmark or Belgium) operate in the society. I mean, bombs in abortion clinics? Seriously?
>I suspect you're overestimating how accepted homosexuality is outside of your bubble.
Maybe, but my point was Cook's an even more protected bubble. Hyper-rich, CEO of the biggest (or close) company on earth, Valley-based, ...
One has to wonder how - in this world filled with anonymity enabling services like Tor or even Pastebin - it is still possible to hide a secret, out in the open.
This is old news. Felix Salmon spelled it out in no uncertain terms when Mr.Cook was first named CEO, in 2011. [1]
The best place to hide something - not that Mr.Cook himself wanted his sexuality hidden; he merely did not want it to grab all the attention, away from Apple - is still in plain sight.[2]
This also begs the question, if enough vested interests or powerful people want something not to be talked about, is the fact still worthy of its truth value?
This applies to the trivial case at hand - of Mr. Cook's sexuality - as it does to the countless secrets of great gravity that were largely ignored - concerning at least a dozen nations not including the U.S. - that Wikileaks exposed.
Probably because you bring Wikileaks to an unrelated Apple article. There is a time and a place for discussing the failings of the world's governments. A thread discussing a CEO who is able to come out of the closet is not that time or place.
This made me well up inside. Being from a country that considers homosexuality to be illegal (India) and having a close friend who left that country as well as his religion (Islam) solely due to being gay, I applaud this man's spirit.
It is not only the government that must accept equality of different ways, but so must society. Religion, culture and political climates are no reason to deny fundamental human freedoms - the right to have consensual sex with the people of your choice being one of them. Amazing that the one thing that we hold up as a pinnacle of political theory - democracy - is the one that keeps many minorities from exercising their rights. I am sure, for example, that a referendum on Article 377 would fail in most small Indian towns. Someone correct me if I am wrong.
I hope that prominent Indians take this up as well (there are at least a couple of Bollywood directors who are rumoured to be gay as well as at least one business tycoon) and come out of the closet.
Tim Cook faces 2 years in jail in Singapore if he has activity even in a private room.
Three days ago, the Court of Appeal has just judged the law was conform to the constitution, because everyone is guaranteed equal rights no matter their sex, race or religion, and this doesn't include sexuality.
Performing a sexual act is a conscious behavior, wilfully chosen by the participants (except in cases of rape, which is not relevant to this discussion). Law is meant to regulate behaviors. It's valid to make sexual acts illegal. It doesn't violate non-discrimination rights because wilful participation by any person is just as illegal as participation by any other person. Laws that say "this is legal for people with this involuntary attribute but illegal for people with a different involuntary attribute" are discriminatory. If they say "sexual activity with a person of the same sex is illegal", it's equally illegal for everyone, regardless of that person's unchangeable, involuntarily physical attributes. Saying some people can do something (like "only white people can engage in sexual activity with a person of the same sex") while others can't is discriminatory. Making something illegal for everyone is not. It's just normal lawmaking.
We may disagree with Singapore and think that most sexual acts shouldn't be illegal. But how can we go around saying law can't regulate behavior? This is one of my big problems with the gay "rights" lobby of today -- they're trying to make it illegal to legislate basically anything. If you disagree with the law, change the law, don't codify sweeping generalizations that set a precedent of "I was born this way and I can't control it" as an excuse for any illegal behavior.
Only the most basic principles are protected by things like the American Bill of Rights, and the specific behavior must be tested by the courts to see if it conforms to the principles enshrined as fundamental rights.
You see, I'm upset when someone uses some law to forbid what seems normal to me, but this would be subjective. And I agree with you for the major trait of your discourse: To each country, their customs and laws, provided it was legally decided by the People. So it's quite on purpose that I kept my comment strictly apolitical... however clearly opinionated:
I didn't say the Singaporean law is stupid or retarded. I'm underlining the huge leap.
It's up to the reader really to forge an opinion. Let's not forget that Singapore is a very developed country, has major exchanges with our other countries of the western world, include trade, research, patents, high-educated migrants both ways and we have influence both ways. And yet, they don't guarantee some citizenship rights (aka: immediate arrestation and 2 years jail time) on the basis of what you would do in a private room between two consenting adults. Up to the reader to make an opinion.
I think the proponents of same sex marriage would respond that what they are trying to do is not prevent the government from regulating behavior (which, as you say, is the essence of lawmaking), but prevent the government from treating persons in same sex relationships differently from persons in opposite sex relationships. The key question is whether the government can discriminate based on sexual orientation.
In the U.S., the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment prohibits a state from denying any person "the equal protection of the laws." This would appear to forbid discrimination based on any characteristic at all. Of course, governments make distinctions based on people's characteristics all the time. These range from the mundane (persons with poor vision can be required to wear corrective lenses while driving) to the highly consequential (American citizens of Japanese ancestry can be interred during a war against Japan).
The history of the Equal Protection Clause, then, is a long and messy process of sorting out what kinds of discrimination are permissible and what aren't. And there has been a lot of movement, especially during last few decades. Consider that during the lifetime of George Takei, the EPC was interpreted to permit the internment of his family (Korematsu v. United States, 1944) and giving him the right (in California) to marry his husband of the same sex (Hollingsworth v. Perry, 2013).
The current standard is that that you can discriminate on a basis other than certain "suspect" classifications if the discrimination is reasonably related to a legitimate government interest.
In the recent Windsor case, the Supreme Court concluded that the federal Defense of Marriage Act failed to meet even that minimal standard. Many lower courts have invalidated state same sex marriage bans on the same basis.
You can argue that it is the place of the legislature to decide what classifications it can use in lawmaking, but that raises two problems. First, the clause is part of the Constitution and it must impose some limit on the power of state legislatures, and there needs to be a process for interpreting what that limit is. Second, history has shown that the political process doesn't always protect unpopular minorities (though there are also good arguments that courts are not that much better).
I think your logic is good, but your application is lacking. Same-sex "sexual activity" is not what has been outlawed in Singapore. There is no law that fits the description you have outlined and it is essentially a straw-man argument.
The law that exists states explicitly that anal and oral sex, only between members of the same sex, is illegal. Both of these acts have been specifically made legal for a heterosexual pair.
The only difference between these two scenarios? The gender of one participant. A woman may receive anal sex from a man, but a man may not. Discrimination based on gender.
> Same sex sexual activity is not what has been outlawed in Singapore
Besides that I generally approve your comment, let's quote the section that was judged by the Court of Appeal 3 days ago as conform to the constitution:
""" Article 377A
Any male person who, in public or in private, commits, or abets the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 2 years.
Only the most basic principles are protected by things like the American Bill of Rights
"No troops quartered in your house", "you get a jury trial if it involves more than $X", and "powers not taken by the feds are granted to the states" don't seem like 'basic principles' to me. They seem a bit more complex and somewhat arbitrary.
Certainly Article 377 is bad and so was the Supreme Court judgement ("[only] 200 people" being the nadir, see http://www.outlookindia.com/article/The-Unbearable-Wrongness...), but given that people still have issues with religious, caste, same-gotra, etc marriage, might not India have to tackle those first?
(Assuming you're talking about in the Western world)
Do you not see a difference between being gay and being white? Really? Is it not obvious that one group has been historically repressed, attacked, discriminated against, etc. by its 'counter group', whilst the other has been the oppressor? These are about the most simplistic facts in social history, so I find it very difficult to believe you unaware of them; it seems more likely that you're choosing to ignore them in order to push some bizarre agenda. Just be honest and state the point you're actually trying to make.
In this context, when someone says they are "proud to be gay", I think they are strongly inferring the "staying strong in the face of discrimination" aspect since, unfortunately, that's pretty much a given. Also, historically, people have thought being gay is something to be 'ashamed' of, and I think this use of 'proud' is in contrast to that - cf. gay pride marches. No one ever thought being white was something to be ashamed of.
This feeling of guilt is still a social construct and a negative auto-stereotype though, because being white by itself doesn't make anyone responsible for - say - slavery, or Holocaust.
After all, these atrocities were not an effect of being white as such, unless we somehow internalize a notion than whites are in some way genetically inclined towards committing genocide etc.
It is not only out of guilt. In sports or music, many people are ashamed of being white. In the U.S. it is nearly a foregone conclusion that you will not be a good musician or athlete if you are white. White kids who desire to pursue those things definitely can feel shame which has no feeling of guilt attached to it. I'm not trying to make some grand statement about racism or the effects, just giving a pretty cut and dry counter point to the idea that white people never feel shame about their skin color aside from guilt.
I think the notion that "no one ever thought being white was something to be ashamed of [for reason other than guilt]" does not stem from observaton or experience as much as it is an ideological construct - ie. it is needed to fit nicely into a preassumed political theory
> It makes sense to be proud for staying strong in the face of discrimination and hate speech, but being gay itself is not worthy of any pride.
Exactly. If you are an aging gay man who has experienced repression and discrimination and lived your life to the fullest in spite of these challenges, you can be proud.
If you are a rich white man in Silicon Valley who happens to be gay, well ... hooray for you, I guess.
The "skin of a rhinoceros" - I liked that the most, as it reflects the development one makes when being part of a minority, no matter if it is sexual, financial ethnical or political nature.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 424 ms ] threadA month or two ago some journalist accidentally said it on air if I remember correctly.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/cnbc-panel-goes-awkwardly-silent-...
That sums up the whole NBC network for me.
Frankly,nobody cared about Jobs sexual life,and he did a good job at shielding his family from the media frenzy.
Uh, yeah they did. The Lisa Brennan-Jobs paternity thing was a serious black eye for Steve.
https://www.google.com/search?q=steve+jobs+paternity
Of course with all due respect to Tim Cook which opened for the first time and will probably inspire other people.
But to me everything is connected.
EDIT: For those who downvoted please explain what's wrong in this comment.
your personal life, keep it personal, its no one's business and it certainly is not something to exploit for personal gain or to guilt another with
There are undoubtedly many people who will no longer purchase Apple products because of this, and I don't know society can fix this with anything but time.
I'd prefer specific examples rather than just handwavey nonsense.
Have not see Maleficent, but I have heard nuts claiming Frozen was some kind of pro-gay film. It is resolved by (non-romantic) love between family members. I saw the movie twice in theater with my kid and couldn't find ANY indication of gay-ness. Anna ends up going after a man. The main plot is about self acceptance and embracing who you really are. While that metaphor can easily be applied to being gay (in todays world), I suspect the only people who instinctively made the connection are either gay or terribly anti-gay.
Gotta love Elsa, her and Merida are the best.
I didn't read into it that at all. I don't know which intended meaning Disney had when they adapted the story into a script and animation; but it seems to resonate with different people differently (as is often the case with movies).
I saw it in staunch contrast to the historical Disney "Princess" narrative, where happily-ever-after doesn't mean marriage, remarking how they openly mocked the idea of falling in love with someone and marrying them after a single day.
I'd have to ask him directly, but he could have easily seen the movie from Elsa's perspective, the woman imbued with a gift, or curse. Both perspectives are presented in the movie, if memory serves me, and it entirely depends on the person speaking at the time. The parents thought it was a curse. The trolls saw it differently. Whatever the reality of her situation, she fled, and then accepted who she was, and eventually defeated the parts of her gift that had made it so sad to have.
Perhaps, then, it is both. It was a movie that was a push away from the 'True Love's Kiss' story of Disney olde, as much as it was a story about accepting who you are. And the whole story is bound together by the very real presence of the two sister's familial love for one another.
Close enough. Life is about reproducing, or else we would not be here. +1 for impressionable young girls.
Agenda? People only use that term when they're trying to imply something is somehow pushing homosexuality on the weak minded.
a) "they're trying to convert our children!" paranoia
b) general disapproval.
There are at least two more:
c) dispassionate acknowledgement
d) outright support
I absolutely, strongly support the LGBT community's agenda of making gay marriage legal, everywhere.
Just because one hateful group of people uses a phrase in one particular way, doesn't mean we need to give them ownership of it, nor assume that everyone using the same term feels the same way they do.
edit: I just realized I got dragged way off topic by a troll. Whoops.
The fact that some religious groups have taken a particular stand doesn't make it "not pushy" to force other groups to follow.
EDIT: for example, a lot of religions don't have a problem with pork, but some do. It would be pushy to require a kosher or halal deli to serve pork. Likewise, there are some who want to require, say, Southern Baptist churches to perform same-sex weddings; that's pushy.
... in your understanding of the Bible. Not every Christian group agrees with the way you understand it.
Also keep in mind that many Christian groups rely on more than just the Bible for authority (both Catholics and the Orthodox hold a very high view of tradition, compared to the Protestant view of tradition as dangerous.)
There are also religious groups that aren't Christian which also have objections to performing same-sex weddings.
Anyway, thank you for so beautifully illustrating my point.
They believe they have defenses for their interpretations, and that's all that should matter from a religious liberty perspective. Neither you nor I nor the government qualify as the final arbiter of "true Christianity" or "correct Bible interpretation" (or "true Islam" or "true Mormonism" or any of the other religions which might object to same-sex marriage.) It's not my place, or yours, or the government's, to force our understanding of what the Bible says onto groups that think the Bible (or the Pope or the Synod) says otherwise.
If members of the community wish to perform acts which are against a particular church's beliefs, they don't need to perform those acts in that church (and if you want bacon, you don't need to shop at a kosher deli.) There are plenty of alternatives -- like you said, other churches that will happily perform those ceremonies for them, or even the courthouse.
EDIT: just so there's no misunderstanding: I support your right to have whatever relationship you want to have with whatever consenting adult(s) you want to have it with. But none of us have the right to tell anybody else that they have to participate in the celebration of any relationship. (If a church wants to turn away Brittney Spears because her understanding of marriage offends them, that's also their right.)
I don't have a problem with pressure. I have a problem with people saying that nobody is pushing when some people actually are. Thank you for being honest about trying to pressure and compel religious groups to change. (I, too, often pressure my own religion for change -- though I prefer compelling arguments to financial threats.)
We don't allow for-profit, tax-paying corporations to discriminate. Why, then, do we think the appropriate response to a religious organization being discriminatory is to treat them as a for-profit organization? It seems to me that tax law isn't the right tool to be wielding; it's very philosophically inconsistent.
More than that, it seems to me that the government's responsibility should be to allow for maximum diversity of opinion and practice. The government has a compelling interest in stopping systematic violence (whether motivated by race, gender, sexuality, or any other factor.) The government has a compelling interest in stopping systematic economic discrimination. But I don't see a compelling interest in eliminating all forms of discrimination everywhere. I think it's a Good Thing (TM) that religious organizations can decide who is and isn't a part of them. Even if that means some religious organizations are racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. they should have that right within their own doors. (Some religious groups have even more extreme requirements for marriage. Because Mormons believe in eternal marriage, they won't "seal" a divorced or widowed woman who has already been "sealed" before. It's discriminatory, but well within their rights as an organization.)
The original comment I responded to was someone claiming there's no "pushing" going on. As you clearly demonstrated, you're willing to "pressure" religious groups -- there's nothing wrong with that, but more people should be honest about it. From my perspective, the appropriate types of pressure are internal pressure (ie, members changing the group's ideas) or competitive pressure (other organizations that already are on the opposite side), not tax pressure.
I definitely feel like there is some amount of "pushing homosexuality on everyone" that has been going on the past five or ten years. It's no longer socially acceptable to think that homosexuality is wrong or an unhealthy sexual expression. Even donating to an anti-homosexuality lobby can get you pressured to resign [1]. Depending on the state you live in, you may have to accept gay marriage, even if it violates what you feel like marriage is. I don't know if sex-ed in schools is teaching it yet, but if not, I assume it is just a matter of time. If homosexuality is an unhealthy expression of sexuality, you won't want your kids exposed to that, but, no choice.
For people who agree that LGBT is acceptable, this probably feels like progress. For people who view LGBT as unhealthy sexual expression, the net effect feels a lot like "pushing homosexuality" on us.
[1] Brendan Eich, former Mozilla CEO
Due to this change in society, it is difficult and becoming more so to marry in the older sense. The more people who adopt the latter meaning, the fewer will retain the older. And even those who think they do are inevitably influenced by the rest.
I don't care much more about two homosexuals claiming to have married one another than I do about someone claiming to be a prophet or the reincarnation of Galileo; what worries me is the continued removal of any meaning from marriage.
Also, the lifelong nuclear family is something that only really appeared after the wars. Pre-war there was no antibiotics and the rates of female death were so high that single parent families were much more common than they are today. If your worries about developments in marriage are that it will reduce the stability for the upbringing of children, I would like you to consider which eras you are choosing for comparison, as we are now living in an era that supports longer childhoods than seemingly at any other point in history.
edit - for the complaint that it is difficult to find more traditional people as spouses, may I point out that there are a number of other people who seem to be making that complaint. Presumably you could find their parental address, so that you can appear in person to make a formal request to their father to begin courting. Oh, and remember to bring some cattle.
"that's why there is a word for it" Well that particular word actually is far younger than thousands of years: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/homosexuality/
Kinda makes you wonder a little bit our current distinctions and their actual relevance to the human condition.
"you may have to accept gay marriage, even if it violates what you feel like marriage is" What you feel like marriage is has nothing to do with what it actually is, which is a very well-defined legal construct outlined by the state. Your feelings are valid in a different context perhaps, but when it comes to the legal definition it's not a compelling part of the argument. In that context, a great many arguments have been heard in court and gay marriage bans have been roundly rejected, many in a bipartisan decision.
"If homosexuality is an unhealthy expression of sexuality, you won't want your kids exposed to that" Kids are going to be exposed. Gay people exist, and kids will and do meet them. Some 2-6% of the kids in that sex ed class are going to be gay themselves. Not saying parents shouldn't have a voice in this, just pointing out that prohibition is dangerous. You can't hide the word gay from children, and denied knowledge often only serves to generate greater curiosity. I would hope some clinical information about how to be healthy and gay isn't asking too much of these fragile creatures, but perhaps heterosexuality is really hanging from a thread? Somehow I doubt that.
I suppose it does. But if one of your children should happen to be gay, you've left no question, from what you've written, that you won't hesitate to push heterosexuality on them.
We care more about them finding a path to self-acceptance than we do about your prejudice.
I doubt anyone can do anything to change a paraphilia; pushing normative sexuality on someone is unlikely to be productive.
But I don't think self-acceptance is a good goal either. There are many unhealthy things in each of us; we shouldn't accept them, but rather should fight against them. I'm naturally lazy; I like to eat a lot; I'm selfish; I talk over others—I have to struggle against each of those deficiencies.
If one were to say, "I support legal equality for LGBT couples compared to straight couples", as well as "I question the health of LGBT acceptance in society", would you find their opinion repugnant?
If so, then you're pushing LGBT on everyone.
For the record, I truly support legal equality, and don't see how accepting LGBT in society is harmful. But the above example is a reflection of many more people than the echo chamber at HN would like to acknowledge.
1. What I find repugnant doesn't push anything on anyone.
2. My comment had nothing to do with what you or I do, it had to do with the above comment about Disney and Coke showing LGBT people in shows and ads.
By this logic, your logic, they have been "pushing" straight, black, hispanic, white, Christian, Jewish, youth, and elderly on us for years. Having the individual (or couple) on the show/ad does not in and of itself "push" anything. That's absurd.
Sure they do, but they also use terms like "feminazi" and "race realism".
[ Did you read (critically) the comment I was responding to?
I mostly agree with your statement, except for the implication you may be making that agenda always has this pejorative meaning. It simply doesn't. If you want to understand people, you should not assume that it always does. And we should not police people for choosing to bring the non-pejorative acknowledgement of the fact that groups have purposes and goals.
If LGBT groups did not have agendas, they would not be worth supporting. ]
Writing is an act of art, and reading is an act of interpretation. These secondary definitions come into play when determining what someone means. Agenda is not purely pejorative, and it's true LGBT groups have agendas - they have plans of things to be done - they have motives - reasons for doing something. However, these attributes of LGBT groups could also be described with words that do not have any negative aspects, such as goals, plans, purposes, etc.
>If you want to understand people...
I assume people understand the words they use and intend to use them. If people use words without precision, how can they expect to be understood?
As for etiquette... no idea ha. Made the same mistake myself.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Most individuals have agendas, and all organizations have (or should have) agendas.
We should all be able to talk honestly about various agendas without having to toe some manipulative lines concerning presumed hidden meanings.
Just because many homophobes, rightwingers, etc constantly harp on the 'homosexual agenda' as if its some scary monster, doesn't mean that LGBT rights organizations don't have agendas.
Had a Swedish guy (shop owner) living with another guy and they both had a bunch of kids. Described the other guy and kids as his "family."
See point #5 in this article's list: http://mic.com/articles/79455/7-moments-that-made-frozen-the...
Just a heads up so you don't make the mistake in less forgiving Scandinavian company next time ;-)
This is quite a stretch. As the father of a young child I have seen Frozen more times than I am proud to admit, and while it could be that the large man in the sauna is the shopkeeper's husband, he could just as easily be the shopkeeper's son, while the smaller woman in the scene is the shopkeeper's wife.
Even if you assume this to canonically be a gay relationship in a Disney movie (and it would, I suppose, be the first), it's a tiny throwaway moment in the life of a minor character which is easy to miss completely. This is hardly "taking a stand" as the grandparent post suggested.
This is the example being used to show Disney is "progressive"? An ambiguous possibly gay family that gets less than 5 seconds screen time?
Saying that this miniscule gesture is hetter than nothing is missing the big point. It's the twenty first century - Disney should have had gay characters and even gay leads by mow.
And for all its progressiveness Frozen still has a scene where mental illness is linked to danger using stigmatising language.
And with your presumption that the answer you're likely to get on HN might be "handwavey nonsense"?
Or are you implying that Fantasia's Sorcerer and Micky Mouse are gay just because they wave their hands around to conjure up colorful butterflies, broomsticks, comets, waves and storm clouds?
People have been accusing Disney of "pushing the gay agenda" (negatively) for years -- but those same people have not been able to point to concrete examples of people with same-sex attraction, they've only been able to point to BS like Mickey Mouse having a high voice. Now in this thread people are suggesting Disney is "taking a stand" (positive phrasing of the same issue) -- but they still seem to be lacking concrete examples. It seems inappropriate to credit Disney for "taking a stand" (or to criticize them for "pushing an agenda") without being able to point to an unambiguous, romantically-involved same-sex couple.
I suspect DanBC is like me -- I'd like to see an unambiguous example before categorizing Disney as "taking a stand".
http://edition.cnn.com/US/9706/18/baptists.disney/
http://www.bpnews.net/11130
On the flip side, anything perceived as anti-gay in business blows up with negative press and talks of boycotts. With Apple's demographic, this will definitely be considered a plus.
That's one of the greatest shame of UK,it symbolizes bigotery in its purest form.
It was absolutely stupid and unjust (since most upper classes were involved in buggery in school anyways) - but calling it bigoted is like saying 'it was so yellow of them to do'.
"That's one of the greatest shame of UK,it symbolizes bigotery in its purest form."
but I accept I might have read stronger sentiment into that than was intended.
Prime Ministers Apology: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/11/pm-apology-to-a...
Royal Pardon: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/10536246/Al...
(Thanks to gpvos for the correction of faith->fate. )
That's a rather inaccurate, cringe worthy and generic statement. If your saying only one person contributed to the field of computers in 2014, that's sad.
We tend to glorify individuals in the eyes of media and forget [1]others who contributed to where we are today in technology.
[1] http://www.computerhope.com/people/ - list of people who have contributed to computers.
Edit: Thanks to oneplusone, I realised that he was speaking about Alan Turing. But why base a field on only one person regardless of sexuality. Why is sexuality the issue in the first place?
Because Alan Turing is the father of computer science. Basically everything that came after depended crucially on his work.
- To name a few great contributors. Yes Alan Turing is considered the father of computer science but with out the knowledge of others before him (and even during his time) we could be living in a different world right now.
Even the late, great Isaac Newton said - [1]"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_g...
In this light, it seems the original comment is correct.
What do you think would have happened if Turing had never been born?
Perhaps we would never have had a single individual who contributed as much, all at once, as Turing did... but the sum total of his contributions WOULD have been made by other people, eventually.
And yet, he was born, and he did contribute, and we remember him for that, and we remember what his peers did to him in response. And we learn a lesson from that.
Why is this controversial?
The only thing which might be controversial (but really shouldn't be) is the observation that people make foolish and illogical claims when they let their passions drive them to hyperbole. For example, claiming that computer science NEEDED Turing. That without Turing, we would not have computer science.
Its simple. Worship him all you want for what he actually did, but please don't fall prey to the belief that "without so-and-so, X would NEVER have been developed". Or "without so-and-so, we would still be doing Y".
Nonsense. Some other person or group of people would have made those contributions.
This has nothing to do with how horribly he was treated. And if you want to highlight the sickness of the world by pointing out the genius of one of the victims of our diseased culture, that's cool, but we can do that without going off into a fantasy land where some individual was uniquely, in all the world, uniquely capable of making the contributions they made.
https://www.googlestore.com/Google+Redesign/Brands/Android/A...
Quick, homophobes! Burn your Android phones!
Do you agree with all of the life choices made by every innovator throughout the centuries, many of whom were very religious and almost assuredly would've been anti-gay had such a movement existed in their time? It may make sense to deprive these people of money now if you disagree with them, but it doesn't make sense to discharge all the output of their life's work once there's no more threat of them actually receiving direct monetary aid from your purchases, and it doesn't make sense to denigrate the product on its own basis, independent from the behavior or ideals of the original creator. We should recognize good wherever we can find it.
I disagree. First, I think it was widely assumed that he was gay, and if it wasn't, he was accidentally outed during a live TV broadcast a few months ago by a CNBC reporter [1]. Second, the people that think this way probably already avoid Apple products, as both Tim Cook and Apple have been vocal on gay rights for quite some time. Finally, the one thing that these kinds of people hate more than those that disagree with their worldview is being personally inconvenienced. If they're already invested in the Apple ecosystem and are used to the iOS UX, they're going to keep paying Tim Cook for a new device every year.
[1] http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000288253 - about one minute in
If you had read the article it should become quite clear to you why quite a few people knew and some people even wrote about it.
Since in general journalists will avoid to publish the sexual orientation of someone unless that person made public statements about it, most journalists just didn’t write about it. (I think that’s exactly the right guideline to follow. It is awesome when people come out to help others who are struggling, but this is still a personal decision and I don’t think journalists should make that decision for people. There should never be an obligation to come out.)
Is it criticism? Because if it is, it's misplaced. I did read the article. I am myself gay. According to the other answers, it seems it was known "in the scene". Do you mean everyone who's gay should either be in the scene or stop asking questions?
> it should become quite clear to you why quite a few people knew
It didn't become clear to me. Does that mean I don't get social clues? Does that mean I'm not fluent in English? Does that mean I miss a brain cell? People are different, we don't all understand things, so even if it seems unbelievable to you, please still answer the question.
There once was a time where, if you were gay, or were close to people who were, you'd pick up hints about others who were gay. These hints would come from others who were gay, or gay-friendly. And they would be passed along like that.
As you moved closer to circles of power, you'd know more and more powerful people who were gay. But there was a code: you didn't bring it up publicly, or with outsiders. (Unless you wanted to be cruel.)
With this knowledge came power. You could read people and situations, understand hints and special relationships. It's a kind of x-ray vision.
But, if you were not gay, and were not close to people who were, you would be completely unaware. You might assume you didn't know anyone who was gay!
Such people were surprised when Rock Hudson (who everyone knew) was outed as gay just before he died of AIDS in 1985. They were surprised when other public figures were outed the same way, even (seriously!) "obvious" cases like Liberace.
We are now somewhere between that world (which was complex and had fascinating intrigues) and a different world (which is more open and fairer).
Source: before I met my wife, I didn't know anyone who was gay. But in fact, I was just ignorant that I already did.
I never really questioned it, because... because it was common knowledge. No one ever mentioned that he wasn't out, so I wrongly assumed he was fully out until I heard about that newscaster who messed up.
I figured (wrongly) that the reason it was never mentioned publicly was because no one thought it was comment-worthy. I naively thought "oh good, look how far we've come".
http://www.npr.org/2014/06/13/321778926/letters-the-world-cu...
That's where I learned it. I didn't know for a few weeks later that it was supposed to be a secret we didn't say.
I guess I could be wrong, but I know I certainly won't to exchange my Xperia Z3 for an iPhone just because Cook came out.
By who, Apple fanboys? Your average person probably doesn't even know who is Apple's current CEO let alone that he's gay.
Two links from April 2014: Out Magazine - http://www.out.com/out-exclusives/power-50/2014/04/15/what-d...
HuffPo (about the same) - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/27/out-power-50-most-p...
I'm gay, politically aware, and posting on HN on a MacBook and had no idea, though frankly I also don't browse LGBT power lists.
I actually can think of one co-worker who might have some difficulty with this news today...
Time does appear to be healing cultural wounds, even if not quickly enough.
I think purposely conflating gay rights and feminism is more than a little disingenuous. LGBT movements empower both genders, feminism empowers only one.
I think its very possible to be socially progressive in thought but not be a cheerleader for the modern feminist agenda. These things don't necessarily contradict each other.
So, there are some bad feminists around. [1] When people are absurd, feel free to 'absurd' right back at them (i.e. "Sure, I'm a potential rapist - as much as you are a potential murderer!").
"Dropping sympathy" for the feminist movement as a response a few bad feminists that you've encountered is not really justified, or rational.
> I think purposely conflating gay rights and feminism is more than a little disingenuous. LGBT movements empower both genders, feminism empowers only one.
I'm not following the reasoning here. Both movements are about equality; one focuses on gender, the other on sexual identity/orientation. They are very much two sides of the same coin (the humanEqualityCent).
[1] "Are You a Good Feminist or a Bad Feminist?" - Shane Killian https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axuz3JlZIbk
When you are made to feel unwanted, excluded, and otherwise not welcome it is natural to go elsewhere in search of inclusiveness. This is a far more common reaction than that of adopting sympathy for those excluding you. No aspect of this should be surprising to a feminist.
Sure, but the GP wasn't talking about a particular group rejecting them, but rather "stop sympathizing with the entire modern feminist movement". That's an extreme reaction to disliking a subset of the movement's followers.
> This is a far more common reaction than that of adopting sympathy for those excluding you. No aspect of this should be surprising to a feminist.
Nobody's asking for personal sympathy or contribution, but rejecting Feminism due to a few bad Feminists is stupid. Especially if you claim to have been aligned with the Equality argument beforehand. How does that even work?
(attempt to reverse engineer a thought process leading to this)
1) thinking "Hey, men are dicks towards women. That ain't right. We need to equalize things as much as possible!" 2) meets bad feminists, receives abuse 3) thinking "Fuck it - Equality, yes, but not for you; I don't like you. NVM on the whole Feminism issue."
Absurd. You didn't really believe in equality in the first place. Demanding and supporting equality should have nothing to do with your personal likes and dislikes.
Why do you expect otherwise? Why do you feel compelled to couple it with insults?
But Feminism isn't a group; it is an idea. If some of the followers misbehave, you should still be able to believe and support in the idea.
To me, supporting ideas only when you "like" the (majority of?) people supporting them is akin to supporting free speech but only for the positions that you believe in.
(edit)
> Why do you feel compelled to couple it with insults?
I'm not sure where you're reading that. The "You" at the end was directed at the fictional person that I'm attempting to emulate with the 1/2/3 reasoning, not you.
Most people will also wonder if something about the idea turns people into abhorrent people or if something about the idea is only attractive to abhorrent people. In either case, it is not something to which our notional person is likely to be attracted.
In short - the people who adhere to an idea are seen as commentary on the idea.
I would have thought that everyone who believes in gender equality is implicitly a Feminist..
> If every single adherent of an idea you encounter is an abhorrent person
Are you exaggerating for the sake of argument (perfectly valid), or is it that bad for some people?
Both.
Too many people who call themselves feminists actually do not believe in equal rights, and present feminism as a justification for bad behaviors.
If this is how you experience feminism, this is going to influence your notion of what the word feminism actually means, in practice.
Is this not the case?
In the real world, it can be used as a fig leaf to justify a variety of abusive behaviors. For some people, that encompasses the whole of their experiences.
We disagree that this actually changes the meaning of Feminism.
Yes, some horrid people need an excuse to dish out abuse and Feminism often becomes that excuse (I'm thinking about everyone who's ever used the potential-rapist argument).
Does this taint Feminists, the group? Maybe a little, yes.
Does this taint Feminism, the idea that genders should be as equal as possible? Well, IMHO, no.
Feminism was about seeking equal rights and equal opportunities for women. In the West it largely achieved that goal (we're not there yet, but consider where we started). Thanks to tumblr, twitter and the blogosphere echo-chamber, the feminism most people become aware of online is very different from that.
Worse yet, there is no such thing as "the feminist movement" (anymore) by a long shot. It's become a broad term that encompasses everything from egalitarians to misandrists. And any criticism of the later group is always portrayed as a criticism of the former (which is why we end up with this entirely pointless MRA/SJW shitstorm-on-demand situation we have now).
Nobody is forcing egalitarians to call themselves feminists. But clinging to that label and pretending it hasn't changed its meaning is no different from trying to distance your communism from Stalin or your nationalist socialism from the Nazi party.
I prefer that definition, yes. But the important part of my sentence was "locked in". I was referring to people who are incapable of acknowledge that the word feminism is abused, not just by anti-feminists, but also by some self-proclaimed feminists.
If someone really thinks that feminism can only mean 'equal rights', period, end of conversation, talk to the hand - then conversations with people pointing out problems in the feminism movement will suffer from equivocation fallacies.
It should be the case. In practice, it is often not the case. If you doubt this, search 'feminist' on youtube, watch a dozen random videos, and try to identify the issues and beliefs which the speaker sees as intrinsically 'feminist' ones, and ask yourself whether those issues and beliefs are really in support of equality. Its a bit of a mixed bag.
I'm not trying to attack feminism, as I strongly believe in equality and we have a lot of work to do. And obviously there are anti-feminists who have always tried to distort the messages of feminists, and fabricate their own. But these days, those manipulators don't have to try very hard.
I don't see how we can fix this, though. The commercial approach to a similar problem would be absurd in this case: creating centralized certification body regulating which 'feminist goals/speakers/blogs/books/lines-of-argument/etc' are deemed 'truly feminist'.
I don't follow his reasoning either, as stated, but there is a question of subcultures, subcultural values, specific ideologies within the movement, and most importantly: composition.
There are many ways that these two movements differ. And while both movements attract some unpleasant people who damage the reputation of the movement as a whole, the way this plays out in feminism is a little different from how it plays out with LGBT rights.
So its not surprising to me that some people might (based on their personal experiences) think that one is toxic and the other isn't.
I suppose this is a common misconception, but it is not true. Feminism also frees men from restrictive gender roles. It is feminism that says that men are allowed to cry, to hug one another, to have dreams and hopes and fears.
Giving up some privileges -- privileges which are not right for us to have anyway -- is a small price to pay, I believe, for becoming whole human beings.
She calls herself feminist and is responsible for the women’s' network's equal rights week at my university this year.
[I]f hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it’s worth the trade-off with my own privacy.
Announcing that you're straight is never going to be controversial, but we're currently in a cultural stage where announcing things like this continues to normalize the reality of diverse types of sexuality and, ironically, over time that should make it less of a big or negative deal to some people.
...or husbands, but that's the least of your problems.
Here's just one example: http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/16/business/la-fi-0416-...
Do you really need a list?
This is important because gay people have not been allowed representation or public acknowledgement. Until this month there were 0 openly gay CEOs but hundreds of openly straight CEOs in the public eye.
Well done Tim Cook, and my personal thanks.
But, I agre otherwise with your point.
As someone who has come out, I'd like to note that I was never "pressured" into publicly acknowledging my sexuality. In fact, the general message from the wider culture was "please STFU and don't talk about it".
No, I looked at history, saw that coming out was an important and useful thing I could do to contribute to the movement aimed at getting equal rights for gay people and that formed part of a pretty rational decision to do so.
The lies and bigotry aimed at gay people thrived for so long precisely because nobody knew any gay people. That's exactly why coming out was (and still is) necessary. One of the reasons the gay rights movement has been so spectacularly successful over the last 40+ years is because the lives of actual gay people is a living testament to the falseness of the vicious stereotypes spread by homophobic pricks.
You don't see straight people coming out because they don't need to. Gay people came out because the alternative is persecution, mixed with a whole lot of personal misery.
I guess I live under a rock. Good thing I get HN under here.
(I think that is a not-so-funny version of a joke a comedian told, but I can't for the life of me remember which one...)
http://www.out.com/out-exclusives/power-50/2013/04/10/power-...
I think it was one of those things where everyone knew it, but no one talked about it because it just wasn't that big a deal.
Injustice won't be over the day little black boys and girls and little white boys play together. It will be over the day anyone even thinks anything of it. Unfortunately, we have both overt and covert (even accidental) discrimination still to deal with.
But our grandparents faced firehouses and dogs, while we face op-eds and Twitter feeds. For the first time in history we have the communications technology to bind humanity together into a single global people.
Someday there will be a gay president. Someday there will be a black female president. I hope that by the time that day comes, it will be little noted nor long remembered.
Agreed.
But I think his message is aimed at younger people. "I'm a mellow kinda guy who is respected in the world of business. And i'm gay." You don't have to fit the stereotype of being flamboyant , out, loud and proud to be gay.
You and I know that. Any functioning adult in a largish city knows that. Maybe some kids in isolated communities without personal role models (family, family friends, teachers, etc., who are gay and run-of-the-mill kinda people) don't know that.
Edit: The top comment says it better than I can: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8532962
At least I know I'm not crazy now and that it was in magazines and such at least a year ago.
Heh, I thought this was a joke at first. It's kind of funny that lots of people didn't know, yet he has literally been featured as #1 in Out Magazine. I guess it does still fit, that he hasn't personally, publicly acknowledged it, even if others have acknowledged it publicly.
Now, I'm not saying that isn't an important announcement. I have to admit that even Mr. Straighter-than-Straight over here found his eyes kind of welling up while reading Tim's words. Powerful stuff, and a great example for those coming of age while dealing with who they are. But as a person whose portfolio is weighted way too heavily in AAPL, and an owner of lots of stuff with apples on them, I no more care about who Tim Cook shares his bed with than I do about what sports team he favors. That's his own business, and doesn't affect me in the slightest.
In summary, not everyone knew it if only because some of us don't care enough one way or the other to find out.
"His truest loyalty, beyond even Apple, may be to the Auburn Tigers football team, whose memorabilia is said to stud his home and office."
...says Gawker. So now you know that too.
And like you say, it takes courage to be who you really are. To not feel the weight of your mask every day. For myself, I think it would be false courage in this day and age to 'come out' as a pedophile. 'Pedophile' here means that I feel emotionally and sexually attracted to children, just as gays have that attraction to men. A lot of people are immediately repulsed by that word, and just assume you are a monster and a child abuser/rapist. I think those stereotypes mainly exist because pedophiles are invisible in our society. It is very likely that everybody knows somebody with that orientation, but because it is so risky to 'come out' nobody recognizes that pedophiles are very regular people too.
I have come out to some very close friends and my parents, who luckily all accepted that I am who I am (I live in a European country, so that might help). I'm a bit gay as well, and I have a 5+ year relationship with my boyfriend, who also is a pedo (and somewhat more gay than I am).
Still, every time when I receive a compliment or encouragement from someone, a thought flashes through my mind: what if they knew who I 'really' am?
Or they think that other shareholders will think that and lead to a drop in the share value.
I think the type of people that would boycott Apple over this, have already boycotted apple over the other things.
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/10/29/end-of-qe3-means-f...
It seems like Tim Cook isn't under any pressure to publicly announce this, so it seems he's doing it as a way of leveraging his position to help others who are experiencing adversity. Some will say this is a stunt for Apple, and no doubt it does draw attention to Apple in a way, but I think you'd have to be pretty cynical to say that this is anything more nefarious than an admirable gesture.
I'm surprised that a story that was on Techmeme at that time, did not get broader attention, until now.
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/08/25/dont-ignore...
However there is the Nick Denton school of thought.
Denton ( of Gawker Media ) routinely shames public personalities for being clandestine about their sexuality.
The rationale for doing so is such that if no one calls them out, that the worldviews these public personalities profess never get the perspective, those views deserve. The backdrop of the person's sexuality and the influence it had on the shaping of those views is lost, Denton believes. [1]
[1] Gawker Kicks Open the Closet, but Its Disclosure Barely Reverberates
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/28/business/media/gawker-kick...
For people who aren't doing anything particularly wrong, though, especially those in positions where being openly gay is severely against the norm (as with Cook, who is, I believe, the first openly gay Fortune 500 CEO _ever_), it seems inappropriate. Say Cook had been outed back when he was COO; would he have become CEO? I'd like to say yes, but it would have been a brave move for the board.
This. It doesn't matter at all. Its great that people are embracing their sexuality, but there was no need to come out to the press about it. It doesn't change the way I see Apple as a company or even Tim Cook. He is still the same person before and after this article.
Sure there was. Here's Cook on why it was worth caming out to the press about it:
"So if hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it’s worth the trade-off with my own privacy."
I think it's very understandable to underestimate the degree of suffering involved, and how much this can be improved over time through publicly voiced support, especially when it comes from influential figures.
Many of us make this mistake in regards to women or ethnic minorities too. And those of us who are good looking do it to those who are less pretty, and those who us who have always been popular do this to the unpopular.
The best kind of empathy, I believe, concerns not just your feelings toward others, but also the context that these others are in.
Let's hope that this will help many more people understands that there's nothing abnormal with having another sexual orientation.
I recently spoke to some gay religious people and it struck me as very odd. I'm biased, of course. I tend to think religion gets far more forgiveness than it deserves in a huge number of contexts. It was interesting though, in a bunch of ways.
When I hear a statement like this it makes me think of Africans converting to Mormonism or Jews joining European far right movements. I realize that there are perspectives through which this is not contradictory. Mormonism had views of Africans that only lagged behind mainstream opinions by a decade or two. The far right parties are more interested in Islam or African migration these days…
Still, I can't help it. It give me the heebie jeebies.
Calling it a "progressive social experiment" gives it far more forgiveness than it deserves in my opinion...
From which I conclude that it's easy to forgive when we basically like the idea/movement/etc., and easy to see undeserved forgiveness when we basically dislike it.
I think there's a related point though where socialism or any political ideology never really got near religion: becoming part of people's identity. People without a shred of personal beliefs nearer to Catholic cannon than to Protestantism or secular perspectives will continue thinking of themselves as Catholic.
If you are Catholic it's easier to forgive Catholicism than it is to forgive The Church. Nationalist creed (I am French or American) is the only thing that comes close.
I think there's also a taboo about criticizing people's religious identity and by extension their religion that was learned many wars. Stalinism is publicly criticized in a ways that Christianity or Islam would never be.
But regarding this comment, it's the personal level that gets me. Homosexuals place in 2014 was achieved despite objection and obstruction of the overwhelming majority of our religious institutions and text. They are now partially and begrudgingly coming around to where the public already is. They are being patted on the back for any lukewarm embrace of homosexuals. Gays taking them back is offensive to me. It's like a wife embracing an abusive husband that almost killed her when he gets out on parol.
I think the key is that the 'fundamental' people you often hear about that think 'homosexuality is an abomination' are a small minority. The people who are fine with it usually aren't seen on the news because their opinion isn't inflammatory.
If that's what it takes to get people on-board this generation, I don't mind. But I hope lines like that can be omitted one day. Doesn't it just look incredibly silly?
Maybe he didn't want to omit it. Maybe it's not PR, but instead his actual feelings. Maybe he is religious. So, it's all cool and all that he's gay (which it is), but he mentions God and now you're all "Why can't he just keep that to himself?"
That seems a little hypocritical to me.
That said, it wasn't exactly a secret that Tim Cook is gay. Though it was always handled as more of a "this is something that can inform your understanding of him as a business leader" as opposed to "omg it's a scandal! He's gay and running the biggest company in the world!" His sexuality is probably a bigger deal among Alabama boosters than the tech community though.
Is it different in US?
The first is just a frivolous small talk type comment. Non-religious people would say this. It's part of the common US vocabulary. The second is much more serious, and the speaker is actually thanking God for how he is. A non-religious person would never say it.
Religious people do this type of thing all the time in the US. Just look at 1 example- sports. The amount of American pro-athletes who are religious is astounding. Many athletes will seriously thank God after doing something well in a sporting event.
I'm very very anti-theist and I still have a lot of Christians on my Facebook, and some of them are constantly thanking God or praising Jesus for some good thing that happened in their life.
The amount of cars that have religious stickers on them is incredible. Crosses, the Jesus fish, some Biblical reference, a Christian brand, etc- you see them constantly. Maybe it's not like that in the Bay Area, but that is an exception. I live in Germany now and I've counted a total of TWO cars in 2 years that had any kind of Religious sticker.
So, yeah, Christianity is everywhere in the US. I pray for the day that this is not true.
This is just a very clever thought pattern to confirm the American mythos of the self-made man and avoid giving credit to teammates, coaches, etc. "God made me great" is a way to take credit for yourself while maintaining the appearance of humility (no one can really call you out on it, either, because it's just your religion). Politicians use it all the time too.
FWIW you will see plenty of religious displays in European soccer. Look at the biggest sporting event in Europe this past week: El Clasico between Real Madrid and Barcelona. Watch when Neymar scores a goal and kneels down on the ground and points up at the sky and says thank you (or something like that). Unfortunately Messi didn't score, but he would have done something similar though less dramatic. Granted these guys aren't Europeans, but they're not North Americans either. And other European footballers do similar things.
quick google: http://www.albatrus.org/english/religions/pagan/origin_fish_...
To whom? lol
You can be an adulterer and a Christian. You can commit any sin imaginable and still consider yourself a Christian. Homosexuality is no different.
A Christian is just someone who believes in Jesus Christ as a messiah. You are referring to something much more specific.
Being homosexual or lusting after a women in your mind are equally damning, but rejecting these thoughts and actions and leaving them at the Cross is the message of the Bible.
Also, how does Red Lobster do so well in the south, let alone pork products...
right before that, in Leviticus 18:19, "'Do not approach a woman to have sexual relations during the uncleanness of her monthly period."
and right before that, in Leviticus 17:15, "'Anyone, whether native-born or foreigner, who eats anything found dead or torn by wild animals must wash their clothes and bathe with water, and they will be ceremonially unclean till evening; then they will be clean."
and my Favorite, Leviticus 19:19 (one page after homosexuality): 'Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material."
That Cotton-Polyester blend you're wearing? You might as well be having gay sex, as far as The LORD is concerned. All of the above are hellworthy trespasses.
so with the above in mind, everyone is ignoring the basic tenants of what the bible says. Therefore, using your logic, you must have a hard time viewing just about anyone as Christian.
"For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.
They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.
In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error."
Though this category in Corinthians is about who will not inherit the kingdom of god, and then in Timothy it is describing who the law is written for, so in either case it is not distinguishing categories of sins, but merely listing them.
Elsewhere in Paul, homosexuality is equated with the greedy, the sexually immoral, thieves, drunks, slanderers, idolators and swindlers, but makes no mention of murderers.
edit - the passage in Corinthians is also interesting as it is in the context of a wider passage banning recourse to civil law in secular courts between believers.
That's a pretty intense bastardization of biblical theology. It's fun to snicker and say things like that but your logical gymnastics are quite embarrassing to those who understand the correlation between Christ, the Old Testament, and covenant theology.
But speaking to the correleation between Jesus and the Old Testament, everyone should also read Isaiah 52:13 through 54. This is the savior foretold in the old testament, and where matthew/john/paul/ringo draw most of their confirmation of Jesus' credentials. Does this sound like the Jesus we all know?
"You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below."
However you can rape the wives of your defeated enemies after battle, which the vast majority of Christians would find horrifying:
"When you go to war against your enemies and the LORD your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives,
if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife.
Bring her into your home and have her shave her head, trim her nails
and put aside the clothes she was wearing when captured. After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month, then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife.
If you are not pleased with her, let her go wherever she wishes. You must not sell her or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her."
There's a lot of basic tenets of the bible that Christians ignore. Wearing mixed fibers, eating shellfish, donkeys and oxen co-working in agriculture.
If you go by basic tenets of the bible, most Christians don't seem to even know what they all are, let alone follow them.
See, for example, Tina's, Jonah's and Blake's testimonies:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA4gpJUpvpc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbAqzGsjl30
Those videos are featured by the Courage apostolate:
http://couragerc.org/courage/#testimonies
This comment is not intended to be inflammatory; my intention is simply to share an alternate perspective.
And fair play to them if it is what they believe.
It doesn't work for everyone though, as is eminently obvious if you look to scandals over the years across all religious groups who swear selected members to chastity.
But this also makes sense from a PR perspective because according to American political polls being an atheist is "worse" than being black, gay, a women, etc. It's apparently largely unforgivable to be godless.
So, some may be surprised to learn he's gay, but then take some solace in the fact that he still praises the same god they do. In a way this is the perfect way to assuage the exact audience this revelation might offend because, you know, God loves all his children.
This really won't be a big deal. Some extreme groups will make some noise, but that's about it. I was in the Marine Corps when they repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Everyone thought it'd be a big deal. They repealed it...nobody cared.
I'm a little amused by you guys trying to work out all the "PR" angles Cook could be trying to exploit by mentioning his faith without even considering that it's is a genuinely important part of who he is.
A Gallup one recently: http://www.gallup.com/poll/155285/atheists-muslims-bias-pres...
Maybe I'm just being pedantic but I don't think a poll about how people would vote for the president is a good indicator of how people feel about atheists in comparison to other groups of people. I don't even think the latter is quantifiable.
People have tried in comparison to other religions:
http://www.pewforum.org/2014/07/16/how-americans-feel-about-...
And:
http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/section-3-political-p...
The context of the statement is a message to the general public, in America. The language he used has a particular meaning in the context.
Again, my objection is one of incomprehension. How can one reject the teachings of a religion while still identifying with said group?
I'm an atheist and a gay man. I think being gay is a good thing in my life. That is to say, if there were a pill I could take that would turn me straight, I wouldn't take it.
Despite harassment and discrimination (which still happens, even in happy tolerant cities like London—most recent incident, 3 weeks ago, someone shouting "queers!" out of the window while I was walking down the street late at night holding hands with a guy), the point is that in spite of huge amounts of cultural and religious programming to the opposite, a lot of gay people have found themselves embracing their sexuality and considering it not just a not-bad thing but an actively good thing in their life.
That's what Cook is getting at: that sentiment can be expressed in secular terms (like I just have) or in religious terms.
The world has a wide range of people, and they don't fit into neat little boxes.
Jesus Christ, atheists are the worst (as can be seen here in this thread). And I say that as an atheist …
That being said, it is really difficult for most people to get past the cognitive dissonance that comes from being mass-denied "salvation" by the followers of a religion (Islam, Christianity, Hinduism) for being a homosexual, and yet, still believing in the invisible man in the sky that supposedly dictated these edicts.
Disclosure: I'm LGBTQ, athiest, and will defend to the death the right for anyone to believe in things I do not.
For the record, I am a strong atheist, and I think people should be able to speak about ideas freely, including ideas I disagree strongly with, but I'm not willing to actually die for someone else's right to speak a bunch of nonsense about a man in the sky and how many raisins you get for following him. :)
I think we know the rest of it. suffice it to say that I react violently to a censorship of belief, even if I do not share them. I'm a little saddened to think that I might be in a minority.
Someone in the thread actually claimed this:
> I am also an atheist which, today, in the US, is worst than being gay in some circles.
They're not even remotely close in terms of persecution. And I use that word lightly when referring to the modern atheist.
However, I can't agree with putting it in "that" way ("among the greatest gifts God has given me"). Even taking into account how much such a thing will shape a person, it seems exaggerated (to me). It sounds like he is who (and where) he is because of his sexual orientation. He was, however, born in a developed (and rich country); he had food, parents and housing; he also education (and a good one, in great schools) and the privilege of working at IBM and Apple.
Clearly there were a lot of things that put Tim Cook in the position that he is, far, far, far more important than his orientation; I.E. the fact that he is on earth, that he is human, born after 2000 BC, etc... are all more significant, but now we're going down a different rabbit hole than your original comment.
The evidence seems to be against you.
Surprisingly, HN - atheists included - is both capable of celebrating people's happiness when they express views on the amazing "god-given" nature of their romantic relationships, like Tim Cook did, and disapproving of people making statements to the effect that other people's romantic relationships are wrong, like Tim Cook didn't.
Equating the two is a desperately poor excuse for an argument.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_and_homosexuality
I am just saying what the religious people say it is. And this is the irony.
whut? There are several, and most don't have the problem you're talking about. Which one are you talking about?
I'm actually a citizen of a constitutional guaranteed secular democracy where politicians very rarely speak about gods or religion, where decriminalizing abortion² was done by popular referendum, where all drug consumption is decriminalized² and where self-proclaimed Christians are generally pro-divorce and pro-contraception.
Just because the US had a head start centuries ago, you shouldn't assume you're exceptional today.
¹ (I can't remember the last time it was mentioned. There's certainly no "god bless you" or any other clichés that you're supposed to say)
² (good or bad, they are issues on which religion - and especially Christianity - heavily influences choice)
That is a very broad brush, as the fundamentalists literalists are a tiny part of Christianity and of broader monotheism. They make up about a quarter of American Christians, which is a much higher proportion than any other country in the world.
A lot of people associate that branch of Christianity with all monotheism simply because they tend to be noisy and dominate political issues. You'll rarely find that view outside of the USA, and of the overall global monotheist population the literalists are a tiny percentage.
The biggest critics of the literalists and their views are in fact other Christians. Even the Catholic church, which itself is a conservative branch of Christianity - accepts evolution, the age of the universe and other dominant issues associated with fundamentalist Christians in the USA such as the rights of homosexuals.
To associate all Christians or monotheists as meaning fundamentalist is no different to the bigots and wackos who believe that all Muslims are Salafist jihadi. Tim mentioned nothing more than a belief in God, it is a huge and unsubstantiated leap to conclude from his single word that he is a fundamentalist literalist.
There would be a lot more tolerance in this world if people who hated at least understood what it was they were hating. I see your views as being as ignorant and fundamentalist as the very views you disagree with.
There are two kinds of beliefs. One is based on evidence, logic, reason, testable repeatable experiments. Rational mind has no option but to accept their truthfulness (sometimes after laborious examination of evidence or step by step verification of logical deduction). You could go on and deny obvious truth, but that leads to cognitive dissonance and is rather mentally taxing. The other belief is opposite, it is not based on any evidence at all and it is called faith. You are believing things without having sufficient or any evidence for it. Note also that all religions are faith based. If they were based on evidence, religion would be a branch of science, it would be a scientific theory (which is the highest pedestal a scientific hypothesis can be placed upon, only mathematics has theorems).
There is now strong evidence that theistic gods i.e. gods that care about human beings, that interfere in their lives, that tell you what you should do, what you should eat, on what days, who you may sleep with and in what position, gods who break the known laws of nature for their people, god who stops the motion of the sun around earth so certain people in the Bible can finish their work, god who takes "our" side in a war, a god that gives itself body so it can kill it to save the humanity are man made invention.
Religion comes to us from other human mammals who not only know there is a god, but they also know his mind what he wants us to do. And how do they know? Revelation of course, god told them something often times contradictory what he told others. And the religious never even seek evidence for their extraordinary claims. But revelation is useless and unreliable as a way to discover truth
Revelation can only ever be relevant to the person to whom something is revealed. As soon as that person shares and relates the revelation to someone else, it becomes a testimony at that point. And then it becomes a matter of trusting that person for the claim they are making. Also, the person to whom something is revealed should be apprehensive and wonder which is more likely that laws of nature have been bent in their favor no less, or if perhaps they are under apprehension.
Revelations are dime a dozen. Numerous people have claimed that something has been revealed to them. Even worse different people have claimed same god has revealed things that are contradictory to the things god has revealed to other people. In Christianity god reveals himself as a human, he dies on the cross, and resurrects. In Islam, Jesus is not only not the son of god, he never died on the cross and never resurrected. Believing otherwise will have you condemned to hell. In Christianity god says love your enemies, in Islam he says kill your enemies and apostates. Yet it's the same god, and both sides claim divine revelation for the "wisdom" they preach.
Content of revelation paints a picture of a god who is quite frankly incompetent, stupid and has morals lesser than average decent human being today. And most importantly he leaves it to chance what you will believe about him and if you will be damned to eternity.
What religion you get indoctrinated into has very little to do with its truthfulness, but everything to do with where you were born. If you were born in Saudi Arabia for example you would be a Muslim defending Islam right now. Yet both Islam and Christianity and Judaism (the three desert dogmas) all claim to posses the true and perfect words of the creator of the universe.
And isn't it incredibly stupid of a supreme, intelligent, omnipotent, omnipresent being to demand bel...
How about you drop the faux intellectual superiority and just accept what others choose to believe - be it their religious beliefs, political or sexual orientation?
That is the very definition of tolerance - and, ironically, the exact thing that Cook standing up for.
Tim Cook on the other hand is a Christian of the Southern (Alabama) brand.
I don't have answers for myself, so i'm not going to pretend to have answers for 50% of the world population. I'm certainly not going to assess their beliefs on the basis that what I might believe is somehow more correct than what anyone else believes.
Intelectual or theological superiority combined with moral authority is what leads to intolerance and hate. I'd rather somebody believe in the easter bunny or pray to Kim Kardashian 5 times a day and be tolerant of others than be closer to my own agnostic view and attempt force it on others because they are more correct.
It seems obvious that if people are capable of believing different certainties, then no version can be reliably considered true. Yet there are people who are killing each others children for the kind of Christian they are, let alone Muslims killing Christians, as we speak in fact, because they both believe in opposite certainties. Yet neither side is losing any sleep worrying if the other side might be correct.
Yet it is people like me who point out this most salient of facts that the problem in your mind. This makes you either a complete idiot or a hypocrite.
Faith is the problem. Believing things without evidence is the root cause of most evil on this planet.
As Mahatma Ghandi said; "I like your Christ but I do not like your Christians, your Christians are so unlike Christ". Look at the person and work of Jesus if you want to know about Christianity, not us broken individuals who attempt to follow him.
On another note, the argument that you know the method therefore the agency doesn't exist has always seemed illogical to me. I know how Toyota puts its cars together, that doesn't mean that Toyota doesn't exist.
We have different beliefs and I'm not here to argue, just presenting a different point of view. You have the right to say what you say and believe what you believe, I will even defends those rights for you. I just hope that you will be willing to do the same for me.
> On another note, the argument that you know the method therefore the agency doesn't exist has always seemed illogical to me. I know how Toyota puts its cars together, that doesn't mean that Toyota doesn't exist.
This is because people have used gods in the past as necessities needed for explanation of natural phenomena. Of course these explanations are not such thing at all, because you now have an ever bigger problem, by positing an intelligent being you are making bigger assumption than the phenomena you are trying to explain and now have a larger problem to solve, possibly leading to infinite regresses. All the above paragraph is saying is we don't need the hypothesis of deistic god ether. The evidence against theistic gods is much stronger though, and the idea can be dismissed completely.
Let me put it this way. You speak of god, but did you invent the concept, or did you hear about it from someone else? And if you heard about it from someone else, what evidence did they show you that convinced you with absolute certainty that there had to be such a thing.
None of us have absolute certainty about anything we have to make our best analysis of the facts before us. I analysed the facts heavily and believe that the God of the bible is more plausible than any other explanation of our existence.
I don't agree with this view at all, and I would like to see an example of one such fact that is best "explained" by positing a supernatural agent. Invoking supernatural to explain something is not really explaining anything, and even worse, to rule out any possibility of it ever being explained. Because anything supernatural must by definition be beyond the reach of a natural explanation. It must be beyond the reach of science and the well-established, tried and tested scientific method that has been responsible for the huge advances in knowledge we have enjoyed over the last 400 years or so. To say that something happened supernaturally is not just to say we don’t understand it, but to say we will never understand it so don’t even try.
Science takes exactly the opposite approach. Science thrives on its inability, so far, to explain everything, and uses that as the spur to go on asking questions, creating possible models and testing them, so that we make our way, inch by inch, closer to the truth. If something were to happen that went against our current understanding of reality, we would see that as a challenge to our present model, requiring us to abandon or at least change it. It is through such adjustments and subsequent testing that we approach closer and closer to what is true.
What would you think of a detective who, baffled by a murder, was too lazy even to try to work at the problem and instead wrote the mystery off as supernatural? The whole history of science shows us that things once thought to be the result of the supernatural, caused by gods (both happy and angry), demons, witches, spirits, curses and spells, actually do have natural explanations: explanations that we can understand and test and have confidence in. There is absolutely no reason to believe that those things for which science does not yet have natural explanations will turn out to be of supernatural origin, any more than volcanoes or earthquakes or diseases turn out to be caused by angry deities, as people once believed they were.
Put another way, show me one fact for which scientific explanation no matter how inadequate was once the best explanation but for which relgious/theological explanation is now better one.
The balance of the fine tuned requirements of our universe, once understood to be "just so" are now, accepted as having a probability so slim that the likelihood of them occurring in the balances we find them in the known universe is infinitesimal (I'm talking about the gravitational constant, our distance from the sun, gas balance in the atmosphere etc etc). Tweak one of these balances just a little and life would never have occurred. The only answer pure impericists have for this "fine tuning argument" is the multiverse argument - that there are actually billions of universes and we just happen to be in the right one....thats grasping at straws and has absolutely no evidence to support it except that it allows them to continue claiming "there is no intention behind any of it".
You're talking like all Christians are anti-science. Some are, but they're sadly ignorant. Western science began as an attempt to better understand the mind of God. God was not taken to be a convenient excuse to explore nothing but motivation to know him better was given as justification to explore more. I know there are vocal luddites who do what you say but they do not represent all of us.
I believe this debate is relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tU3-crvTDc
On the other hand, as I have already said in my previous post, positing a deistic god i.e. an idea that some god might exist who may perhaps have kicked off the universe but no longer takes interest in it is pointless. No one can in principle provide proof there is no deistic god, nor can anyone provide a proof that such a thing exists. At most we can say is such a hypothesis is no longer needed. It presupposes a lot more to assume an intelligent being capable of creating universes who either spontaneously came into being or always existed than to assume the same thing about the universe itself (i.e. dumb matter). This is why Occam's razor cuts such hypothesis as superfluous thing, because it does not explain anything new, but poses more questions.
Basically, what ever you want to say about this deistic god, how it came to be etc. you can just say the same thing about the universe itself. And you would be assuming much less (no intelligence, just dumb matter). And like Pierre-Simon Laplace said, it works without that hypothesis.
And some of the questions you talk about do have scientific answers, like distance to the sun, balance of atmosphere etc. And others have plausible answers that don't require supernatural.
I think reading something like Victor J. Stenger's "The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning" would be useful.
And besides, the false dichotomy you set up, either we have an answer for everything or else Jesus is the Christ and we must therefore all be Christians is just not true. There is a spectrum of options in between. We could not know any answers and Christianity be false (as I maintain it is), or perhaps Hindus have it right etc.
You must get comfortable with not knowing, and seeking rational answers. It is those who are certain and who claim divine warrant for their certainty that belong to the infancy of our species.
Religion was the first and worst attempt to make sense of reality. It was the best we could do at a time when we had no concept of physics, chemistry, biology or medicine. We did not know that we lived on a round planet, let alone that the planet was in orbit in a minor and obscure solar system, which was also on the edge of an unimaginably vast cosmos that was exploding away from its original source of energy. We did not know that micro-organisms were so powerful and lived in our digestive systems in order to enable us to live, as well as mounting lethal attacks on us as parasites. We did not know of our close kinship with other animals. We believed that sprites, imps, demons, and djinns were hovering in the air about us. We imagined that thunder and lightning were portentous. It has taken us a long time to shrug off this heavy coat of ignorance and fear, and every time we do there are self-interested forces who want to compel us to put it back on again. We are pattern-seeking mammals and owing to our intelligence and inquisitiveness, we will still prefer a conspiracy theory to no explanation at all. Religion was our first attempt at philosophy, just as alchemy was our first attempt at chemistry and astrology our first attempt to make sense of the movements of the heavens. But there is a reason why religions insist so much on strange events in the sky, as well as on less quantifiable phenomena such as dreams and visions. All of these things cater to our inborn stupidity, and our willingness to be persuaded against all the evidence that we are...
I'm not going to give your well thought out points the response they deserve but let me respond with a few things.
Of course our interpretation of the bible evolves to some degree because our interpretation of anything reflects our culture. Jesus existed within a culture and so do the people that attempt to follow him. Wouldn't you be concerned if people's biblical understanding didn't evolve in some respect and we all wore togas and sandals to be biblical?
Paragraph two: no one can prove or disprove God therefore default to Occam's razor for the final decision. Occam's razor is useful for statistical thinking but imagine if we applied this "default to occam's razor attitude" with everything? Would Einstein have pursued and refined his general theory? Unlikely, he might have said something like "this is all getting a bit unusual and not what I initially expected, I think I'll just default back". As you suggest he has decided to "assume much less" and completely nullified his pursuit of truth for the sake of intellectual comfort - not having to deal with something that, on the surface, appeared bizarre and unappealing on our first analysis. It isn't fair to do this to ourselves when history has shown that truth is often stranger than we can imagine.
Fine Tuning: Sure, there are scientific answers to these things; "one in a trillion planets happens to be the right distance from the sun" well and good. But to have all these elements, each with such miniscule odds, is far beyond the probability of the known universe many times over. To the point that, folks like Richard Dawkins propound the multiverse theory in which there are billions of universes like our own and we just happen to be in the right one because there is no logical explanation to how all these elements came together just right in the universe that we know....to me its the multiverse that sounds far fetched but I'm willing to analyse it further.
False dichotomy; having investigated many world religions and seen the theme of "be good enough, meditate enough, pray enough and you might reach paradise/nirvana" repeated over and over again, it seems that God is a terrible guy who sits in comfort delivering proclamations that we can't keep up with. That is, until I look at Christ and see that, far from remaining out of the mess, he has entered it in pursuit of us (like a loving father would) and makes payment for us himself. When my child does wrong I pursue him even when he doesn't want to be pursued because I love him. To sit back and say "be good or daddy won't love you" would be horrific and manipulative and not lead to a meaningful relationship. Because the God of the bible treats humanity like a loving father treats his son is the reason I see it as the only other option. If the vengeful and distant gods of Hinduism etc are true then, I'm sorry, but I don't want to know them.
>"You must get comfortable with not knowing" - sorry but I have to disagree here. I don't think I'll ever be comfortable with not knowing. I desperately want the truth and see it as lifes purpose to pursue it. However, there comes a point where I have to leap off from the knowledge I have and make a few assumptions otherwise I am left with nothing to stand on. This is why science has hypothises - we don't have all the answers but we need to believe in something or we have no objective standpoint with which to consider anything true and, as a few despairing philosophy students will tell you "we could just be brains sitting in vats being sent sensory information through nerve endings, we can't prove anything." This is a weak position in which to pursue truth because "you can't prove anything" and so nothing becomes reliable. As CS Lewis has pointed out; "if you see through everything then you really see nothing at all".
Reli...
By allowing certain ideas to remain immune from criticism, we risk throwing away all of the advances made since the Enlightenment, and paving the way to a world where bad, unsupported claims are allowed to flourish unchecked. No free and open society can exist for long if certain ideas become sacred cows. If the ideas of any religion are strong or true, then let them defend themselves in the open market place of ideas without the crutch of political correctness.
My concern is that, when people of non-faith hold the political upper hand (in some places they already do) will they have the moral objectivity to say that all people are of value and their opinions worthy of respect?
This was not the case under previous faithless systems. Soviet Russia and Maoist China saw people as expendable for what was perceived to be the advancement of their greater ideals. The Christian west may have acted like dicks and used God to justify their selfish atrocities, but at least they could be pulled up on a moral objective standpoint (the bible) and be told; "this is not OK because your bible says so". Most have since stopped listening to this kind of questioning however.
Nice talking with you super_mario, would like to hear your thoughts on the discussion I linked to above but we should probably talk somewhere else rather than steal a thread meant for Tim Cook.
Your interpretation of Islam is flat-out wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infidel#Islamic
so you can't go pretending those things are not there. If you feel embarrassed by barbaric desert god who behaves like 8th century human, then perhaps proper reaction is apostasy and not defense of the bronze age mythology.
Also, presuming you meant "2014 years ago" (the most sensible interpretation of "year 0"), it's pretty universally accepted that the old testament that we know best was written hundreds of years before then.
I guess you could reach and say that God hates sinners and homosexuals are committing a sin, but that's pretty silly at least in Christianity everyone is a sinner.
I think this is an important point about Christianity and homosexuality. While the bible states homosexuality is a sin, it says a lot of things are sins. But it doesn't have some scale of REALLY BAD sins vs tiny sins. Sins are sins when it comes to Christianity. And the only way to salvation is through Jesus.
A church that would reject members based on sinful behavior would have no members. Where I think it gets tricky is that being a good Christian means that you try to overcome your sins as best as you can (you will never be sin-free), so embracing a sin (such as homosexuality) isn't considered being a good Christian.
Being gay in itself is not a sin.
See, for example, Humane Vitae:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanae_Vitae#Highlights
For more information, look into the seven deadly sins[1], sins that cry to heaven for vengeance and sins against the Holy Spirit[2].
There is also a passage in one of the epistles of the Apostle St. John:
"If a man knows his brother to be guilty, yet not of such a sin as brings death with it, he should pray for him; and, at his request, life will be granted to the brother who is sinning, yet not fatally. There is a sin which kills; it is not over this that I bid him fall to prayer. Sin may be wrong-doing of any kind; not all sin is fatal." (1 John 5:16-17)[3]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins
[2] http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/what-are-sins-that-cr...
[3] http://www.newadvent.org/bible/1jo005.htm
From a Christian perspective, you could argue that Biblical Literalists have made their own interpretation of the bible into their idol, and closed their eyes to God's reality around them.
In any case, I personally consider Biblical Literalism one of the greatest threats to Christianity. It can only push people away from God.
There really is only irony if this god actually hates gays (I'm assuming we're talking about your usual run of the mill Abrahamic deity). It may well be that Tim's theology is a bit more sophisticated.
But of course this is USA, where pandering to the religious is a must for any public figure, even if they don't agree with it themselves.
I don't know about you super_mario, but it looks like Tim is doing a pretty good job with respect to learning about the universe we live in. On the face of it, certainly better than me.
Also, I don't have a dog in this fight, but it may not be a matter of 'knowing better than their god'. It may be that his interpretation of whatever holy books he has read has given him whatever his beliefs are, like every other Christian. Those beliefs however, may well not be at odds with what you assume. We can't say his beliefs are bronze age bullshit - we don't know what they are so we're particularly badly placed to judge, even if judging in this situation was somehow valuable. We would just be adding another belief to the stack which helps no-one.
That doesn't show that. Picking out the parts of what other people say about God that resonate with them and ignoring the parts that do not isn't saying that they know more than God about what is good, but that they trust themselves more than other people about what is good -- and about what God is trying to say.
And very many religious groups stress the importance of personal conscience (though those with strong authority structures often also declare that any person who is really listening to their conscience will come to the same conclusions as the authority does.)
Well, that would be a matter of opinion; Reform Judaism doesn't think so, for instance, and nor do a lot of liberal Protestant Christian churches, particularly in Europe. Even the Catholic Church is backing away from the idea now.
(Of course, it could also just be a turn of phrase; plenty of people use phrases like "thank God" without literally believing in one...)
You don't really need a superficial reason to hate other humans, if your heart so desire.
This is the organization that to this day stays opposed to reason, advancement of science that meddles into research and politics and tells other people what they must think and do because of what they believe without evidence and that has done the biggest damage to progress of civilization and horrible destruction of ancient civilizations and their achievements, now comes to us with an ingratiating smile, because it had to give up so much power, and says how it stands for progress. But we should not forget how it behaved when it really did think it had god on its side.
What the pope said last week isn't a new position - the Catholic church and evolution have never been in conflict. There was no position for a long time while Catholic scientists worked on evolution, but it was formally accepted in 1950, which in terms of the Catholic church moving on an issue is pretty quick.
If you really care to find out what Catholic church says about evolution take a look here:
http://conservation.catholic.org/magisterium_is_concerned_wi...
After all we do the same on small scale every time we bake.
Most historians are of the opinion that Jesus DID exist (though, obviously not that he was the son of God).
Dunno. Probably knows that the church is sliding into irrelevance if it stick to its old ways.
Edit: I can't comment due to rate limits, but a poster below hasn't read what I wrote above and is suggesting I am saying the men grew up in different times. I am suggesting the exact opposite: they grew up in the SAME period/culture.
Off topic, it kind of bothers me that I got mischaracterised and couldn't reply for such a long time due to the silly HN rate limit.
How is that even possible? How is enforcing legal restrictions against a minority class of people not inherently discriminatory?
Marriage comes with specific rights and obligations (like, presumably most controversial, adoption and "importing" spouses into the country). Somehow society makes rules for who gets those rights and obligations. Would you say for example everybody should have the right to import people into the country? For example why don't I get the right to bestow citizenship onto people whom I really like - do I need to fuck them to prove I love them? Isn't that discriminatory? Or why stop at gay marriage - what about polyarmory?
I am not against polyarmory, but suppose I have 100 lovers all over the world and I want them all to become US citizens? Why can't I just marry them all?
Maybe it would be fair if every citizen would get the license to bring n people into the country, no matter if married or not?
Again, I am not against gay marriage, I just want to demonstrate that there can be aspects that can be argued about.
I don't know enough about adoption to comment. Can everybody adopt children? Or do you have to prove you are a healthy couple, or wealthy enough, or whatever? Personally I think once you argue homosexuals are not fit to adopt, you would have to consider all other sorts of criterions as well (for example surely many heterosexual couples are not fit to have children, or less so than some homosexual couples). Adoption is complex, though.
So this in itself is not an argument; while I acknowledge that this is something that can be argued about, a lot of the arguing on this subject is extremely bigoted and misinformed. As is illustrated by this trio's harsh encounters with a number of government agencies that stick their heads into this arrangement and meet them with an incredibly hostile skepticism.
I wonder how many kids live with two dads, one of them their biological one? I would expect the circumstances leading to that situation to be very rare.
Anyway I don't want to argue in favor of the anti-marriage crowd, just point out that some arguments can at least be related to, even if they are misguided. Unfortunately we can not shut misguided people out of politics (or so it seems).
That's begging the question: you're assuming that failure to recognise a homosexual relationship is a legal restriction, which really doesn't make sense. I can declare myself King of England, no-one in America will recognise me as such, but that doesn't impose any legal restriction on me.
There's the side issue of all the other things which 'marriage' acts as a legal shorthand for, but that is a side issue.
You're also assuming that discrimination is an inherently bad thing; it is, of course, not. Discriminating between a green and a red light is a pretty useful survival skill whilst driving, for example. Discriminating between reproductive and non-reproductive relationships is also useful; there's a difference.
My own personal view is that marriage is a religious matter, and that the State should no longer recognise it at all. If two men want to say that they're married, that's their right, just as it is mine to declare myself Grand Vizier of the Martian Republic—and no-one should be compelled by violence (which is what the law ultimately is) to heed either them or me.
How does adoption in general work? For example it can happen through "natural causes" that a child has only one dad and no mother. It seems likely that having two dads would be better than just one. But if somebody wants to adopt, they might have to be "better than average"? Like would a single dad have a good chance of adopting? Or does some office consider the likelihood of a child's wellbeing in a family - so presumably they would try to find two parents, not just one, which is discriminatory against singles? And then if the "adoption office" (or whoever is responsible) has the choice between a heterosexual and a homosexual couple, things become difficult?
My cousin has 4 kids, and is married to the love of her life Lisa. Their kids are certifiably the kindest, most considerate kids I know. There's been no psychological damage, at least not at their hands. Ignorant outsiders may say mean things but to blame that on these excellent parents would be twisted logic.
Anywho, the decision about adoption is so far down the road from marriage as to be a red herring.
But I think you are wrong about adoption. I think it's one of the main concerns opponents of gay marriage have. What other rights would people be concerned about? The other one I can think of is the right to bring your spouse into your country.
Are people going to the barricades because they don't want gays to be able to visit their partners in hospital? I rather doubt it. Adoption is one of the big issues.
I think, because the argument is thrown up semi-randomly - See! They might adopt! That would be awful! Just another red herring, saying anything at all that might convince a voter to strike down the right to marry.
People who continue to make this argument are ignoring a very well-established conclusion in the social science research.
I'm not really well versed in the typical pro and contra arguments, so this made me curious.
The moral argument against homosexual pseudomarriage is that it represents a fundamental misunderstanding about marriage. Marriage is not about a couple's (or a group's) feelings about one another. It's not a way that society shows approval. It is, rather, the formation of the most basic unit _of_ society (I'd argue that the individual is not really a unit of society), and is the means by which children are produced and brought up.
(And yes, there's plenty of heterosexual pseudomarriage too)
But, given that these are all moral arguments, my preference is for the State to absent itself entirely rather for it to take a side and do further damage to an almost destroyed institution.
In fact, if marriage is 'almost destroyed' as you posit, then we need more, new styles of family if kids are to have a chance to grow up fed and clothed and loved enough.
When it is a product of specific exclusionary provisions of the law, in the application of legal recognition of a relationship defined in law, then it is a legal restriction.
> I can declare myself King of England, no-one in America will recognise me as such, but that doesn't impose any legal restriction on me.
The rules governing the manner of succession to the British crown and the people who are eligibile to that succession most certainly are legal restrictions, and they most certainly are legal restrictions on most of the people in the world (even if it is a restriction where most of the restricted people don't care.)
> There's the side issue of all the other things which 'marriage' acts as a legal shorthand for, but that is a side issue.
Er, no, its not. Marriage is a legal status. The legal effects of the status are central to the issue, not a side issue.
> Discriminating between reproductive and non-reproductive relationships is also useful
Perhaps, but (a) why should we believe that in the general case, and (b) given the legal effects of marriage, why is marriage specifically an appropriate and valuable venue for such discrimination? About the only legal effect of marriage that is specifically directed to reproduction is the legal presumption of parenthood in which a spouse is presumptively (either rebuttably or conclusively, depending on jurisdiction) assigned parental responsibility for any children produced by the other partner. Arguably, the value of that is largely in providing an assurance that dual parental legal responsibility will be assigned in the absence of any effort to establish (in rebuttable presumption jurisdictions) or independently of (in conclusive presumption jurisdictions) the facts of biological parentage, which is as valid in a same-sex partnership as in an opposite-sex partnership.
Its also kind of interesting as a libertarian view, since marriage is essentially just a convenient prepackaged contractual relationship regarding property rights in the broad sense, and recognizing and enforcing contracts and their impact on property rights is one of the few things that libertarians generally agree is a proper role of government.
What were the right-libertarian views on marriage in the US prior to that? I'd be surprised if there were libertarians with radically different views.
> Its also kind of interesting as a libertarian view, since marriage is essentially just a convenient prepackaged contractual relationship regarding property rights in the broad sense, and recognizing and enforcing contracts and their impact on property rights is one of the few things that libertarians generally agree is a proper role of government.
I think the general view is that those contracts should not require a "stamp of approval" from the government and should instead be done privately and be enforced like any other contracts. Of course, in practice, a lot of laws would have to be rewritten to get rid of marital status.
On this level both extremes are similar :)
Which I think is were we are now.
The people who really had the guts, "came out" when it really mattered and made a difference, back in the seventies and eighties.
Like Cook points out, the US is still country in which gay people are subject to life-altering discrimination all the time. Most other countries are even worse.
I suspect you're overestimating how accepted homosexuality is outside of your bubble.
What you see in mainstream media is the mainstream-approved version, but it's nowhere close to representative. Queer As Folk had more diversity in representation in a few seasons than the decade of culture that followed it.
And also a country where if you get that you can be settled for life with suing them for their houses and cars.
The thing is, this "life-altering discrimination" is not unique to gays in the US. You can get it by being different in all kinds of way. Seems like a lot more crackpots than usual (that what you'd get in Denmark or Belgium) operate in the society. I mean, bombs in abortion clinics? Seriously?
>I suspect you're overestimating how accepted homosexuality is outside of your bubble.
Maybe, but my point was Cook's an even more protected bubble. Hyper-rich, CEO of the biggest (or close) company on earth, Valley-based, ...
This is old news. Felix Salmon spelled it out in no uncertain terms when Mr.Cook was first named CEO, in 2011. [1]
The best place to hide something - not that Mr.Cook himself wanted his sexuality hidden; he merely did not want it to grab all the attention, away from Apple - is still in plain sight.[2]
This also begs the question, if enough vested interests or powerful people want something not to be talked about, is the fact still worthy of its truth value?
This applies to the trivial case at hand - of Mr. Cook's sexuality - as it does to the countless secrets of great gravity that were largely ignored - concerning at least a dozen nations not including the U.S. - that Wikileaks exposed.
[1] Don’t ignore Tim Cook’s sexuality
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/08/25/dont-ignore...
[2] The Purloined Letter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Purloined_Letter#Plot_summa...
What reason would you have to find even this observation disagreeable?
It's almost as if they'd rather hide their prejudices, than have their prejudices be brought to light.
Three days ago, the Court of Appeal has just judged the law was conform to the constitution, because everyone is guaranteed equal rights no matter their sex, race or religion, and this doesn't include sexuality.
The Straits Times: http://www.straitstimes.com/news/singapore/courts-crime/stor...
The original judgement: https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1348...
We may disagree with Singapore and think that most sexual acts shouldn't be illegal. But how can we go around saying law can't regulate behavior? This is one of my big problems with the gay "rights" lobby of today -- they're trying to make it illegal to legislate basically anything. If you disagree with the law, change the law, don't codify sweeping generalizations that set a precedent of "I was born this way and I can't control it" as an excuse for any illegal behavior.
Only the most basic principles are protected by things like the American Bill of Rights, and the specific behavior must be tested by the courts to see if it conforms to the principles enshrined as fundamental rights.
I didn't say the Singaporean law is stupid or retarded. I'm underlining the huge leap.
It's up to the reader really to forge an opinion. Let's not forget that Singapore is a very developed country, has major exchanges with our other countries of the western world, include trade, research, patents, high-educated migrants both ways and we have influence both ways. And yet, they don't guarantee some citizenship rights (aka: immediate arrestation and 2 years jail time) on the basis of what you would do in a private room between two consenting adults. Up to the reader to make an opinion.
In the U.S., the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment prohibits a state from denying any person "the equal protection of the laws." This would appear to forbid discrimination based on any characteristic at all. Of course, governments make distinctions based on people's characteristics all the time. These range from the mundane (persons with poor vision can be required to wear corrective lenses while driving) to the highly consequential (American citizens of Japanese ancestry can be interred during a war against Japan).
The history of the Equal Protection Clause, then, is a long and messy process of sorting out what kinds of discrimination are permissible and what aren't. And there has been a lot of movement, especially during last few decades. Consider that during the lifetime of George Takei, the EPC was interpreted to permit the internment of his family (Korematsu v. United States, 1944) and giving him the right (in California) to marry his husband of the same sex (Hollingsworth v. Perry, 2013).
The current standard is that that you can discriminate on a basis other than certain "suspect" classifications if the discrimination is reasonably related to a legitimate government interest.
In the recent Windsor case, the Supreme Court concluded that the federal Defense of Marriage Act failed to meet even that minimal standard. Many lower courts have invalidated state same sex marriage bans on the same basis.
You can argue that it is the place of the legislature to decide what classifications it can use in lawmaking, but that raises two problems. First, the clause is part of the Constitution and it must impose some limit on the power of state legislatures, and there needs to be a process for interpreting what that limit is. Second, history has shown that the political process doesn't always protect unpopular minorities (though there are also good arguments that courts are not that much better).
The law that exists states explicitly that anal and oral sex, only between members of the same sex, is illegal. Both of these acts have been specifically made legal for a heterosexual pair.
The only difference between these two scenarios? The gender of one participant. A woman may receive anal sex from a man, but a man may not. Discrimination based on gender.
Besides that I generally approve your comment, let's quote the section that was judged by the Court of Appeal 3 days ago as conform to the constitution:
""" Article 377A
Any male person who, in public or in private, commits, or abets the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 2 years.
"""
"No troops quartered in your house", "you get a jury trial if it involves more than $X", and "powers not taken by the feds are granted to the states" don't seem like 'basic principles' to me. They seem a bit more complex and somewhat arbitrary.
Is it OK to be proud to be a gay white man?
If you answer one question with yes and one with no, there might be a problem.
Do you not see a difference between being gay and being white? Really? Is it not obvious that one group has been historically repressed, attacked, discriminated against, etc. by its 'counter group', whilst the other has been the oppressor? These are about the most simplistic facts in social history, so I find it very difficult to believe you unaware of them; it seems more likely that you're choosing to ignore them in order to push some bizarre agenda. Just be honest and state the point you're actually trying to make.
Realistically, it doesn't make much sense to be "proud" of being gay, just like it doesn't make sense to be "proud" of being white.
It makes sense to be proud for staying strong in the face of discrimination and hate speech, but being gay itself is not worthy of any pride.
After all, these atrocities were not an effect of being white as such, unless we somehow internalize a notion than whites are in some way genetically inclined towards committing genocide etc.
Exactly. If you are an aging gay man who has experienced repression and discrimination and lived your life to the fullest in spite of these challenges, you can be proud.
If you are a rich white man in Silicon Valley who happens to be gay, well ... hooray for you, I guess.