Comment by genon
9 years ago
Absolutely correct.
He is also effectively saying that since he can and will remove sites he personally doesn't like, that he personally approves of every other site using Cloudflare.
The excuse he uses for terminating TDS is an absolute crock; if TDS genuinely did falsely and sincerely claim that Cloudflare supports them, then Prince could and should have simply asked them to remove that claim.
It's an outrage that businesses that want to enjoy all the benefits of selling to the public can discriminate against members of that public for any spurious or bigoted reason they like.
Don't wanna sell cakes to gay people or host pro-Nazi sites? Don't start a business serving the public then.
Single-purpose accounts aren't allowed on HN, nor are accounts that use the site primarily for ideological battle. That isn't what HN is for, and it destroys what it is for. Therefore we ban such accounts, and I've banned this one. Would you please stop creating accounts to break HN's guidelines with?
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032227 and marked it off-topic.
> It's an outrage that businesses that want to enjoy all the benefits of selling to the public can discriminate against members of that public for any spurious or bigoted reason they like.
I have a problem with this, because in effect it is saying that if you want to be in business, you have to check your principles at the entrance.
I do run a business, and I do reserve the right to withhold service from people whose principles I find offensive. Just as as an employee, I would reserve the right to withdraw my service (resign) from an employer whose principles I disagreed with.
All this is very healthy for our society - it provides excellent feedback about your views, in both directions. The business owner losing business if they are overly intolerant, and the customer loses a valuable service if they are overly offensive. The system works pretty well - much better than any legal solution could.
I think that your point would be correct if businesses did not wield the enormous amount of power that they currently do. Who competes with Cloudfare right now? Who competes with AWS? There's already jokes about how if one of those services is down then the internet is down. While everyone might agree currently with getting rid of the Daily Stormer because they are assholes, the precedent and power is now set.
For the same reason is not ok for a public business to not make cakes for gay couples, we should not allow public businesses to pick and choose who is allowed to be part of the economy. If you want to argue against that, that is fine, but you have to accept it when people with the completely opposite set of morals start discriminating against _you_
edit: In case it wasn't clear, I am not a fan of Nazis, but I don't want to even set up the opportunity for businesses to have the power to just exclude me from normal day to day activity just because the CEO has decided he doesn't like whatever group I am in
Somebody started these companies. They are free to setup their own Nazi friendly servers and compete head to head.
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Lotharbot suggested the following standard, which I think makes good sense: if a business provides a generic product, they should not be able to discriminate in who they sell it to, and in turn, we as society recognize that they are not saying anything about support or disagreement with their customers' views by selling them things. If, on the other hand, a product involves customization and expression, the business can refuse customers for ideological reasons, and we can infer from their work what they support.
So a bakery making generic wedding cakes must provide them for everyone, and we as society are crystal clear that this does not imply the baker supports interracial marriage. However, a bakery providing custom cakes based on the couple cannot be compelled to write "Arranged marriage between children is beautiful" on a cake.
A web host is required to sell you webspace regardless of your content, unless it is actually illegal or contrary to technical and ideologically neutral terms of service. But a web design firm may decline to design a page for you based on its content.
I think this is a really good principle, and a great way to preserve both free speech and freedom of conscience.
> I have a problem with this, because in effect it is saying that if you want to be in business, you have to check your principles at the entrance.
Well, welcome to the club! Other noteable groups objecting to their principles being regulated by a government office include Masterpiece Cakeshop of Lakewood, CO, and Memories Pizza of Walker, IN. (For the moment, disregard the likes of Hobby Lobby and Little Sisters of the Poor, as their matters of principle-regulation are less directly relevant.)
I figure there are three-ish main options.
1. People are consistently required to suppress their principles, and do business with groups like the Daily Stormer.
2. People are consistently allowed to exercise their principles, and refuse service to gay weddings.
3. A disaster area of conflicting regulations both for and against the right of various groups to be served by various businesses, conforming to no consistent set of principles but rather to whatever is politically popular and expedient today, and hypocritical to the core.
My money's on 3.
(There's a theoretical possibility they'll actually nail down specific principles and not make it a total mess, but I don't think it's plausible.)
You're missing out on option 4: People can't discriminate on properties that the person they are doing business with can't pick or change (gender, sexual orientation, color of skin, hair, size of nose ...) but can discriminate on properties that the person in question did choose or could change (voicing the desire to kill or suppress large parts of the population, affiliation with nazis or just being an idiot in general).
Your notable groups are not required or regulated in any way that would require them to print a swastika on a cake or a Hitler face on their pizza if the customer ask so. They are, however, required to serve queer and non-queer people of all skin tones. There is indeed a difference between these kinds of discrimination.
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"Public service" is an important distinction here that you're missing. There's a big difference between opening a shop and running a telecommunications business. While it would be totally appropriate for you to set the tone and messaging of your shop and even discriminate among customers, I submit it would not be good for our society if telecom companies banned customers based on their legal speech. You wouldn't want that, because while it would be great if it only targeted racists and Nazis, what if it didn't? This is basic public communication infrastructure, just like the public streets that link up private shops.
The principle that applies is a basic Enlightenment one: everyone has the right to speak. You don't have to agree. You can not visit their shop. You can protest outside their shop. But you don't get to barricade their shop and cut its wires.
As long as they are not baking cakes they can turn down any customer that they want.
Gender, race, age, sexual orientation, etc. are “protected classes” that you can’t discriminate on. Being a Nazi is not a protected class. If you have a business, you can feel free to discriminate against Nazis. And you probably should.
If you operate on public infrastructure, like being granted public right of ways to lay fiber, I think you lose the right to discriminate. This feels good because Nazis are assholes but it sets a very dangerous precedent. This is why the ACLU has a long history of defending Nazis and their ilk. Because one day it will be you on the other side. We should all discriminate against Nazis by denouncing them, ignoring them, etc. Public infrastructure should not.
By this argument Gmail shouldn’t be allowed to run spam filters.
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You can talk about how things "should" be, about "precedents", etc, but the true guideline to measure these things is what the vast majority agrees to, because that's what public approval is all about. So all you can really do is try to convince the majority about what is 'right' and what is 'wrong'.
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What happened last time the Nazis were ignored?
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Protected classes in California include "political activities or affiliations".
Also, did the website actually self-identify as Nazi, or were they just called that by other people?
Well, they seem to have been named by reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_St%C3%BCrmer...
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The site is offline, but if you search for it on Google, you can still find it in the cache
Yes, it's pretty clear.
This isn't so clear cut though. Religion is usually included in that list, even though That is pertly ideological. Recently, gender and/or sexual orientation/identity has become arguably ideological too. Racial identity has some problematic examples (are jews white? what about light-skinned hispanics?)
Can of worms doesn't even begin to describe these half-baked, feel-good, shortsighted, "shore up a few voting blocks" measures. Parents who petition the city council for soft playground surfaces have done humanity a great disservice. Just be grateful there is a playground and work to make sure others get playgrounds before you turn your child into someone who can't produce something of value without first making sure everyone else is following "the rules".
It may be helpful for people to understand some of the underlying legislation that lays out protected classes. Of course, there is state and local legislation that can further refine the protections at a state/local level in addition to the national legislation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class
Hmm... Nazis are typically white & male. Do I need to ask all my white male patrons if they're Nazis before I serve them?? /s
> if TDS genuinely did falsely and sincerely claim that Cloudflare supports them, then Prince could and should have simply asked them to remove that claim.
The damage of libel is reputational damage. Getting the libelous claim retracted after the claim has been seen by the public doesn't undo or erase the damage the claim does. Usually you have to do something drastic to actively disprove the libelous claim, if you want to regain the lost reputation.
If TDS did make such a claim publicly enough to cause reputational damage, there should be evidence we can all see.
Anyone know where that evidence is?
Assuming good faith on all parties (including in this discussion)...
The public posting was probably on their website, which is now likely blackholed due to being DDoSed after they were no longer protected by a CDN.
The Internet is broken when some terrorists can get together and decide to blockaid someone else; even if that someone else is nearly universally agreed upon to vile.
I agree with that user on Twitter that wants to make (the racist) individuals /infamous/ so that they can receive the blowback they deserve for their public behavior.
Why are you being a Nazi sympathizer?
It doesn't even have to cause reputational damage yet I don't think. IANAL, but the contracts one signs with this sort of company tends to include things like not claiming endorsement of the content by the provider.
> Usually you have to do something drastic to actively disprove the libelous claim
Yes, that something is called suing for libel and proving it is libel in a court.
Simply claiming something is libel (which Prince doesn't even do in his blog post) doesn't make it libel.
> Usually you have to do something drastic to actively disprove the libelous claim, if you want to regain the lost reputation.
Because of Cloudflare's action there are now 1000 times as many people, including myself, who are aware of TDS's claim who otherwise wouldn't have heard of it.
> He is also effectively saying that since he can and will remove sites he personally doesn't like, that he personally approves of every other site using Cloudflare.
Well... Yeah. I'm not sure why people think this is not how the internet works. It's a knit of private industry in most of the west and with the exception of a few (eroding) laws, private industries do all kinds of things.
The problem for DS is: there aren't many sites that WILL CDN them now that are as good as the alternatives that will surely not.
We can talk about strengthening guarantees of access to internet services and hosting, but that'd almost certainly be government mandated. Very few governments in a position to dictate this kind of policy to a global entity like the internet are terribly friendly to outright fascist, nazi policy.
So you can pick your poison: inconsistent rules from private entities or more consistent but more likely unfavorable and less mutable rules from government mandate (probably with the weight of government survey and law enforcement).
> Don't wanna sell cakes to gay people or host pro-Nazi sites? Don't start a business serving the public then.
The difference here is that neo-nazis make a decision to be bigots. They could stop. Most LGBT people consider their status to be a matter of birth.
Even for deeply held religious beliefs, we've long recognized a difference in fairness between discriminating on the circumstances and nature of birth vs. the circumstances and nature of choices made.
I think CDNs are a problem in general (their existence speaks to the self-inflicted wounds of an ultimately lawless internet, bad actors contained within gradually destroying it from abuse). It's a bad thing if they start consistently policing content.
But I think it's much worse to vigorously justify murder of people exercising their rights to free speech. Ultimately, people opting out of the tit-for-tat game of free speech and engaging in spontaneous acts of violence are opting out of society as a whole, and will start finding themselves exiled and imprisoned formally. And it's difficult to see any other way to proceed.
> The difference here is that neo-nazis make a decision to be bigots. They could stop. Most LGBT people consider their status to be a matter of birth.
I don't understand why this argument gets thrown about so often. Obviously not so much about neo-nazis in particular, but whenever a comparison is made to LGBT people. And before anybody jumps to conclusions, I am not about to argue that sexual orientation is a choice.
Even in the face of overwhelming evidence of all kinds, from all sorts of sources, there are people that seem to honestly believe the earth is flat. There is no way to make a reasoned decision to believe that. It must be something they are not in control of. It could be something they were born with, something in their experiences, or both, but it's clearly something they are not rationally deciding.
I'm not certain it can be said that the neo-nazis are definitely making a choice. It seems to be a pretty vehement emotional response, which would indicate it's not.
I don't mean to say we should tolerate neo-nazis in the sense that we just let them do their thing. But I do think we might be better off treating them as people that have some predisposition to being neo-nazis than as people that just decided to be one.
Muslims make a decision to follow Islam. They could stop.
But then they would be considered an apostate by most of the people they have ever known, and some of those people may consider apostasy to be a capital crime.
Do you really think it that easy for someone who is immersed in a niche culture to walk away from it, particularly if it is an insular and unpopular culture? It happens, but not everyone is strong enough to overcome the cognitive dissonance and leave behind everything they have ever been taught.
It isn't a matter of expecting a neo-Nazi to suddenly decide to stop being one, but in getting one to a cult deprogrammer counselor and providing sufficient social support afterwards, as they will likely have to discard all previous friends and family in the process. It would be similar to a homosexual kid coming out to fundamentalist parents. "Mom, Dad... I have decided that all people are created equal, and I want to judge people not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." "I knowed we never shoulda sent you to no public school. Get out."
For most humans, leaving an accidental community requires subsequent joining of an intentional community. And the stronger the stigma and adversity against that original community, the harder it is for someone to believe they could be accepted by anyone else upon leaving it.
But that really only applies to the passive followers, who go along to get along. There are always true die-hard believers, for whom facts and contrary evidence simply dissolve under the light of their religious or pseudo-religious faith. They have intentionally excised their own capacity to question their beliefs. How much effort are you willing to expend to crack open that nut and "save" them? They are certainly never going to pull themselves out under their own power.
> It's an outrage that businesses that want to enjoy all the benefits of selling to the public can discriminate against members of that public for any spurious or bigoted reason they like.
> Don't wanna sell cakes to gay people or host pro-Nazi sites? Don't start a business serving the public then.
Work and business is an enormous part of human life: exempting businesses from Constitutional protections dramatically limit the scope of those protections. Should federal agents be able to raid a business without regard for the Fourth Amendment? Should Texas be able to take legal action against Amazon, Microsoft, etc. for speaking out against the anti-bathroom bill?
In America, you get to run a business with whatever political views you have, subject to very narrow restrictions of a handful of anti-discrimination statutes (which are, incidentally, all based on the much-maligned Commerce Clause).
Nazis aren't a protected class, yet. Do you think that businesses shouldn't be allowed to discriminate against skateboarders, or people who refuse to wear shirts and shoes?
Not that you can't think that, but it's a weird personal ideology that calls for explanation and argument, not some pronouncement of what should or should not be done.
I'm pretty sure you can make the argument why gay people, women and racial or religious minorities shouldn't be discriminated against. Make the same argument for skateboarders if you don't want to make it for Nazis. Do you have an similar argument for why Nazis shouldn't be fired, or why we shouldn't consider whether the people that we do business with employ, or are, Nazis?
Political affiliation is a protected class. I don't really know what the word "Nazi" means these days because people have used it to label everyone from far-right conservatives to Trump voters to people who self-identify as neo-Nazis. Unless a person registered with the NSDAP prior to 1945, technically they are not a Nazi.
> I don't really know what the word "Nazi" means these days because people have used it to label everyone from far-right conservatives to Trump voters to people who self-identify as neo-Nazis.
This coyness about the dilution of meaning is utterly irrelevant here. We're not discussing figurative Nazis or the erosion of the term. We're discussing people literally waving modern variants of historical Nazi flags, historically used Nazi flags, inventing new similar flags, chanting english versions of Nazi slogans, publishing extensive content about racially motivated violence that cites pre-existing Nazi dogma, and cheering acts of spontaneous and fatal violence against those that oppose them.
This is not some case of the excluded middle. The word "Nazi" is used judiciously here and no one seems to be feigning confusion except the people who think it should be okay to endorse acts that even our conservatively run justice department things could be categorized as hate crimes.
And forgive me, but it's difficult to not hear a note of falseness in this kind of protest. Many of these people in these rallies self-identify as Neo-Nazis, and use slogans that have been associated with violent white-supremacist movements for decades. A powerful deductive intellect is not required to make the connection here.
If all that's required to make this right in your book is the prefix "neo-" then please, let me offer you a chrome or firefox plugin to tighten up everyone's language to match one you'll understand.
So I ask: are you actually confused here or is this simply a rhetorical tactic?
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> Political affiliation is a protected class
This is not true at the federal level, which is generally what people mean when they refer to "protected classes". However, there are some states that prohibit discrimination based on political affiliation, including California. [1]
1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
The folks in question seem to eagerly and happily apply the word "Nazi" to themselves and embrace the so-called ideals of the German Third Reich.
So if you'd like to nitpick over the semantics of "Nazi" versus "adherent of a Nazi-Party-of-Germany-inspired philosophy", be my guest. But I'll be busy opposing them with my every breath, because that's what we do to Nazis.
What do mean by protected class? Cloud flare isn't a restaurant, they can pick clients based on politics.
> Do you think that businesses shouldn't be allowed to discriminate against skateboarders, or people who refuse to wear shirts and shoes?
I don't believe that businesses should be allowed to discriminate against anyone who is behaving in a lawful manner.
Is that belief what you're calling a "weird personal ideology"?
> Do you have an similar argument for why Nazis shouldn't be fired, or why we shouldn't consider whether the people that we do business with employ, or are, Nazis?
If someone's beliefs don't negatively affect their ability to do their job, why should they be fired for their beliefs? Should Democrats be fired? Should atheists? Are "Nazis" the only people capable of bias and discrimination?
Likewise, why should someone's beliefs be a factor in whether I do business with them? If I'm buying something from someone why would anything other than price and quality of the product or service even come up?
> why should someone's beliefs be a factor in whether I do business with them? If I'm buying something from someone why would anything other than price and quality of the product or service even come up?
Okay, let's make an example. Let's make a really blatant one.
Imagine you're Jewish. Furthermore, imagine there are two bakeries in town: Bob's Bakery, and Pastry 88.
All of the people working at both of them are perfectly civil when you go in to buy a donut. But everyone in town knows that Al Hilter, the guy who owns Pastry 88, is a Nazi. And now and then Mr. Hilter takes out ads in the local paper espousing his Jew-killing views.
Bob's Bakery and Pastry 88 are right across the street from each other. You have a hankering for a donut. Where are you gonna go to fulfill this desire?
Let's make it a little more complicated: Pastry 88 makes an amazing lemon-filled donut, and Bob's Bakery Bob's kid has a major lemon allergy. So you can't buy anything with lemons in it at Bob's. And you love lemon donuts. Do you love lemon donuts enough to give money to someone who has said that you should be gassed and have your tanned skin used for lampshades?
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> I don't believe that businesses should be allowed to discriminate against anyone who is behaving in a lawful manner.
This principle doesn't seem very robust. Can a bar refuse entry to children? Can a cinema kick someone out for talking during a movie? Can a dance club have a dress code?
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To be fair if being the single worst nazi site on the internet is the thing that gets him so angry he removes a site, thats an exceptionally high bar.
> It's an outrage that businesses that want to enjoy all the benefits of selling to the public can discriminate against members of that public for any spurious or bigoted reason they like.
I don't think that Cloudflare (or any company) should be legally obligated to work with someone they don't like. (Besides, do you really want your wedding cake baked by someone who hates you?)
However, I think it's a moral and practical travesty that companies have the ability to effectively deplatform people from the modern internet. It's our responsibility as technologists to make sure that you cannot be silenced, whether you're a persecuted minority or someone who would persecute minorities. Having political gatekeepers to the internet is bad for everyone in the long run.
I never once in my life imagined that one of the first comments on a front-page HN post would be one that claimed that refusing service to Nazis was "spurious" and "bigoted" and that said comment was not flagged-to-oblivion.
For anyone reading this thread, please know that this is NOT the majority opinion within the tech industry - not by a long shot. We are not Nazi sympathizers, and we do not think this is normal. It's not normal.
Nobody is sympathizing with Nazis. And who is “we” and what don’t you think is normal? Essentially who elected you as a tech industry representative or the official pollster of the tech industry?
This my isn’t about Nazis. This is about speech and freedom, business policies, discrimination.
Change the word “Nazi” to “Communist” and I would be willing to bet you would not be making the same statements, despite communists being more murderous throughout the 20th century than the Nazis.
Is the ACLU a Nazi sympathizer? Of course not. Use your brain and stop being distracted by the “Nazi” part of the discussion. It isn’t relevant.
"They shot Bin Laden. So wrong! Change the name 'Bin Laden' to 'my Grandmother' and I would be willing to bet you would no longer support it!"
It's super-convenient to create an argument where you can just ignore the actual topic that's being discussed. To say that this isn't about Nazis, a few days after they splattered some peaceful pedestrian along a wall, is cynical to a degree where people may indeed mistake the free-speech absolutism as a badly-veiled attempt to cover actual sympathies with such terrorists.
I'm wondering where all these but-I-will-give-my-life-for-your-right-to-say-it-grandstanders were on Saturday, when muslims in Charlottesville were praying while fascist militia in fatigues, and with automatic weapons, were standing outside, chanting threats.
Edit: Ah, sorry! Those were jews, not muslims. And not even the police was willing to protect them: http://www.newsweek.com/charlottesville-police-refused-prote...
I'm surprised at how many people are pretending not to understand what I wrote, seemingly in order to proclaim how anti-Nazi they are.
When I was a teenager and first read Chomsky, being anti-censorship was a left-wing thing. I don't think Chomsky has changed his opinion on censorship, or his political persuasion, and neither have I.
It's a pity that people who believe in fascistic ideals (censorship and discrimination based on political beliefs) are what is deemed "the left" these days.
IMO, if you believe in censorship and do not support free speech you are not left-wing.
> claimed that refusing service to Nazis was "spurious" and "bigoted"
Do you seriously need me to explain that "bigoted" referred to the cake example? Seriously?
As for the rest. Cloudflare did not refuse service to "Nazis". Had they done so, they would have not had to remove that service, under the entirely spurious reason that Matthew Prince woke up in a bad mood and claims they wrote something he didn't like.
They're still providing service to Stormfront, and who knows how many other "Nazi" sites.
I've also read Chomsky and lived in a country (the UK) with 'incitement to racial hatred' laws for most of my adult life. There are many countries like this. I have a carefully held belief that there should indeed be certain limits on free speech, and these countries get it more or less right.
Believe it or not, you can actually be 'left' or 'right' wing (or anything else) and hold more subtle positions than absolute, black and white. I think this is a huge problem in discourse in the USA right now. People believe that everyone is completely divided and polarised at opposite extremes.
It's incredibly ridiculous. You can hold many varying positions, and I think people who are completely absolutist are in the absolute minority. Just look at this thread.
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> if TDS genuinely did falsely and sincerely claim that Cloudflare supports them, then Prince could and should have simply asked them to remove that claim.
I'd go a step further. If cloudflare were a branch of the government like the literal internet police, then it would be immaterial if an entity claimed they supported them. The response would be to simply ignore or refute the claim, not demand that they withdraw it lest they lose police protection.
Cloudflare is essentially performing the function of the police protecting the KKK's right to march, just like they protect the right of civil rights marchers to be free of denial-of-marchedness. The core issue here is that government-like functions on the internet are handled by an amalgamation of private entities, who are not bound to the same constitutional requirements.
I have the right to police protection, but that doesn't mean I get to have a cop patrolling my building 24/7. That's why businesses hire private security.
Likewise, DDoS is a crime and TDS has every right to present a criminal complaint. Cloudflare is just the Internet equivalent of private security.
Where that analogy fails is that IRL you still do enjoy police protection even if you can't afford private security. Even if they're not patrolling 24/7, the cops should still show up if someone's trying to burn down your unpopular place.
OTOH if you're a private business, refusing service to someone can be a way to express your political opinion. It's easy to call out injustice and oppression for many categories (race, gender, ...) but that case is harder to make for categories like "political ideology that actually favors oppression".
Of course this should not result in human rights violations and being restricted from communicating your beliefs to the world is one of them. Especially in infrastructure, we rely on private companies to fulfill basic needs that are protected by human rights.
If your infrastructure company is huge and as powerful as a public institution, and is able to single-handedly mess with people's human rights, you should of course not be allowed to have a political agenda. Not selling cakes to Nazis in your corner shop is something completely different.
> He is also effectively saying that since he can and will remove sites he personally doesn't like, that he personally approves of every other site using Cloudflare
A -> B does not imply !B -> !A
Example: if you eat an Apple, saying "hey, that's one good-looking Apple!", it does not require you to heretofore eat every good-looking Apple you come across.
> A -> B does not imply !B -> !A
A -> B does imply !B -> !A. The error in reasoning here seems to be that attitude towards a website is assumed to be a binary "like/not like" variable, while in reality one can also neither like nor dislike something.
No it doesn't. Just because you tell me you don't like to get shot doesn't mean you are ok with being stabbed.
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False equivalence. Gay people don't choose to be gay, and gay people aren't harming others. A business can refuse to serve skateboarders, shirtless people, and other people who are being a nuisance; and it can certainly refuse to serve people who bring violence wherever they go.
>Gay people don't choose to be gay
Out of interest, if tomorrow it was somehow proved beyond doubt that being gay was a choice, would this make discrimination OK?
You left out the second part of the sentence.
If you're saying that Nazis choose to be Nazis, then could you choose to become a Nazi? I don't mean pretend to be one, or act like one, but actually believe their disgusting ideology. If you couldn't choose to do that, then presumably they didn't choose to either, and they couldn't choose to not believe their ideology. And maybe gay people could choose not to enter gay relationships, and maybe them having that ability still isn't a good reason for businesses to discriminate against them.
You seem to contradict the recent view in the LGBTQ. community that gender is a social construct and that you can choose which gender feels right for you!
Your implication that being gay has to do with biology and hence it has a hereditary component is at odds with what we are currently hearing from everywhere.
Which view is it the valid one?
To me these are exclusive so in the community should choose just one discourse.
Wow, grossly misrepresented and mischarachaterized.
As a member of the LGBTQ community I have met zero trans people who feel that they chose their gender expression, and zero people who felt they chose their sexual orientation, instead of being born and growing into their identities over time. I'm not saying it doesn't exist but I highly, doubt it's anywhere close to a plurality much less a majority.
Where exactly have you heard that most trans people are "choosing" their expressed gender? And why do you think there is one view for many people to "choose"?
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Fuck off Nazi apologist
>Don't wanna sell cakes to gay people or host pro-Nazi sites? Don't start a business serving the public then.
I get what you’re saying and agree with you, but please don’t compare gay people and neo-nazi. They’re not same or even similar.
That was kind of the point. Non-discrimination, like free speech, is worthless if it only applies to things you approve of.
Nazis are not a protected class.
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If you get what I'm saying - comparing two well-known instances from different parts of the political spectrum where businesses try and refuse custom for ideological reasons - why are you pretending I'm comparing gay people to neo-Nazis?
Because you choose to be a neo nazi, you don’t choose to be gay. I’m not talking about denying service. I’m saying one of them did not choose to be what they are.
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Being gay isn't a position on a political spectrum. Neither is being black. Neither is being female. Being a neo-Nazi is.
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The difference is the people of Colorado through their elected representatives included gays in an anti-discrimination law. Here in Georgia, the bakers would get an medal from the legislature.
Because you are
Right, the distinction is that neo-Nazi's are bad -- hateful, intolerant, divisive, problematic or however you want to put it. I'm uncomfortable saying that it's okay to do these things to the bad guys, even when it's obvious, because in an alternate universe it might be obvious that gays marrying is hateful toward Christians and intolerant of their sacred rituals.
Nobody fought and won war---to the conclusion of unconditional surrender---against an army and ideology of the LGBT community.
Nazism didn't go through some kind of Martin Luther style academic and cultural reformation in the last 80 years. Neo-Nazis are the same as the original Nazis. They have the same ideology & the same ambitions. They're literally incompatible with Western liberalism & enlightenment.
Neo-Nazis are just late-stage Third Reich acolytes, sympathizers, and insurrectionists. They're still trying to fight a war that they lost to terms of unconditional surrender. It's frankly shocking that they're given the deference of being just yet another political voice in the diverse landscape of voices. They are not. Very, very few modern political movements were defeated explicitly at the tip of a spear instead of the stroke of a pen. Nazism is in scarce company in that regard.
There's no point at all to engage any of it as though Nazism is the same as normal political speech. Allowing for ideological recidivism and re-litigating WWII sort of defeats the purpose of having fought that war and conquered them to begin with.
It would make way, way more sense to consider them enemies of the state and deal with them as such.
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No. The distinction is that neo-nazis chose to follow a hateful ideology. Gay people did not choose to be gay. I’m not supporting denial of service, in fact I think nobody should be denied service. I’m just pointing out that the equivalence is not right.
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