Selective intolerance

[muckefuck]

So for days I've been mulling a rant in response to this open letter chastising those who called for the resignation of Brendan Eich and warning of the dire consequences of this kind of "intolerance". (I don't know about you, but I'm getting pretty sick of being called "intolerant" for not particularly caring that an anti-gay millionaire lost his job for badly handling his first PR crisis as CEO.) Now, thanks to Donald Sterling, I don't have to.

I do wonder if I'm guilty of a false equivalence here, but to the degree the cases aren't comparable, I think they actually favour Sterling. After all, his remarks were private and involved only private affairs (i.e. who his girlfriend should associate with). Eich's donation was public and had the political aim of depriving others of their civil rights (unconstitutionally, as it turns out). David Badash spells it all out pretty clearly I think. Perhaps I'm missing something, though, so I'm hoping one of the signatories comes forward to take and defend a stand on Sterling so I can pick through their justification.

Comments

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

That's kind of my whole point: there haven't been a lot of other petitions along these lines, at least not that I've seen. SOP procedure is that someone gets dumped, people squawk about it for a little bit, then everyone moves on with their lives as if nothing happened.

If you want a recent example of diversity opinion plus same-sex marriage, there's the case of Mark Zmuda and others like them. (Admittedly, this has the added complication of religious freedom. But that's pretty much inevitable where same-sex marriage is involved, now that all the non-religious objections have been exhausted and exploded.)

[lhn.livejournal.com]

The religion issue is more germane given that it's an explicitly Catholic institution. It at least seems that would be more like Eich being revealed to have lobbied against open source licenses and net neutrality: in a direct conflict with defining policies of the organization.

(Or is it? I don't have a good feel for how important it is doctrinally as opposed to socially. Presumably it would be reasonable to dismiss him for, say, publicly denying the divinity of Christ, or saying he thought the Trinity sounded kind of unlikely. I don't know where the doctrine re sex and marriage falls on that scale.)

On the other hand, if the school has a policy of not discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation as he says it does, that makes a big difference.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Zmuda's sexual orientation was known to his employers and was not, in itself, an issue. What prompted the firing was his marital status. To me, the most interesting twist is that he maintains he was told he could keep his job if he agreed to divorce his spouse. You want to talk about an action in "direct conflict with defining policies of the organization", well there's one that was worth fighting a war over.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

I admit, that seems incredibly stupid. Once he's married-- for that matter, once he's out-- the message that's going to be sent by having him as their principal has been sent. Either that's incompatible with their Catholic values or it isn't. "Our principal is an openly gay man who married a man-- but now it's okay, because he divorced him at our request while still-- presumably-- continuing the relationship..." If there's some coherent guiding principle they're operating under for saying that's okay, while remaining married isn't, I'm not smart enough to untangle it.

This seems like a "compromise" proposed someone who doesn't even really know what they're trying to achieve.