Comment by nox101
6 days ago
Google Maps allows you declare your allegiance. You can mark a business as LGBTQ+ friendly (why should I have to declare that and it not just be assumed?).
https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/small-business/addi...
You can also declare a business as "woman owned/led"
https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/small-business/empo...
and "black owned"
https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/31/21348990/google-black-own...
So, I'm very visibly queer and from the south. I have always been appreciative of gestures like this or in the parent comment - because it is not a safe thing there to assume that people would be accepting.
> why should I have to declare that and it not just be assumed?
That’s an easy question with an easy answer.
Because it can’t be assumed. Because there are people (who own businesses) who are not friendly to LGBTQ+ people. And people (such as LGBTQ people) may want to find or avoid certain places.
Is a good-faith interpretation of such a signal that it would be some sort of silly performative measure?
I suggest you try steel-manning this. Imagine that the people who want these things have rational reasons for wanting them. What might they be?
[dead]
https://www.queerty.com/wyoming-bar-calls-murder-gay-people-...
Thank you for posting this. For those who didn't click through, its an article headlined "Wyoming bar calls for murder of gay people as “cure for AIDS” and are selling it as merch", and shows a picture of the bar's horrifically bigoted t-shirt.
People who dismiss labels like "LGBTQ-friendly" as "performative moralism" (to use the term Paul Graham used multiple times in his article) have clearly never had their very existence threatened on a frequent basis simply because of who they are.
This stuff has always seemed deeply wrong to me, as someone that actually believed in the values I was told were right and proper.