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San Francisco -- and the tech industry -- are beaming with Pride this weekend.
The United States Supreme Court on Friday ruled same-sex marriage a constitutional right, one day before San Francisco begins its famous Pride festivities, one of the largest celebrations of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender -- aka LGBT -- culture in the country. The tech industry is practically euphoric, especially after high-profile executives this year, from Apple CEO Tim Cook to Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, publicly advocated advancing gay rights. But that advancement works both ways, said Gary Virginia, board president of SF Pride, which organizes the celebration. Speaking out is not just a personal decision for tech execs; it makes good business sense too, he said.
"They attract a younger population for their workforce, and it's been proven that social attitudes are changing," said Virginia. "So it behooves them to have progressive policies to attract LGBT employees. I think they see the benefit of it."
The celebration caps off a landmark year for the gay rights movement. In September, Apple's Cook wrote an essay saying he's gay, making him the first openly gay CEO of a Fortune 500 company. A month later, he allowed for his name to be attached to an LGBT anti-discrimination bill in his home state of Alabama. In March, Benioff said he had cancelled all Salesforce events in Indiana after its governor signed a law that would allow businesses to refuse service to anyone in the LGBT community on religious grounds. Less than a week later, dozens of executives from Airbnb, Ebay, Jawbone, Lyft, PayPal, Twitter and other companies signed a joint statement in The Washington Post against the religious freedom laws either passed or being considered in several states.
The tech industry is a relatively recent ally. LGBT leaders point out it's taken decades to achieve Friday's Supreme Court decision. New York City, for example, is commemorating the anniversary of the 1969 riots at the Stonewall Inn, which many consider the jump start of the movement. The 1978 assassination of Harvey Milk, an openly gay San Francisco board supervisor, galvanized the national LGBT community.
Original Submission
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday June 30 2015, @02:00AM
I feel obligated to respond to this. The one thing that continues coming up for me is the question of what the value of gay marriage is in the face of the larger situation you mention. We're looking at a total destruction of the middle class. So, sure, we can have gay marriage and legal weed, but we'll all be rotting in terrafoam dorms.
I saw clips of Sarkeesian, Quinn, and Wu on John Oliver's Last Week Tonight week before last. I'm thinking this online harassment issue is another link in the chains of slavery as it were. (All in all, it was all just bricks in the wall.)
I admit, I never got my copy of the gay agenda since I was training with the Chinese Amazons at the time, so I'm a bit out of sorts to discuss it. I'd like to report that my employer has been just great in regards to true equality. We had an openly gay supervisor for a while, and I believe they at least still employ half of a lesbian couple. They even considered one of my trans friends for a temporary position (she didn't get it). No special dispensation here. They all stand on their own merits. It's a practical small, but growing, business.
My thoughts (after a pint of vodka) wander to questions of why the Confederate Flag is A Thing now. I've often thought about getting a Gadsden flag bumper sticker and placing it next to a rainbow flag bumper sticker just for the sheer divide by zero that would cause.
John Titor, a time traveller from an alternate timeline where nuclear war breaks out in 2015 (at this point I don't think that'll happen in this timeline—martial law hasn't been established [yet], which had been since 2013 iirc in Titor's timeline), reported that in 2026, America had become closer to Jefferson's ideal agrarian republic.
I'd like to argue that homosexual and trans folks have a place in a Jeffersonian agrarian republic and even as a valuable and natural part of the family. Let's rethink this whole gay marriage thing. Perhaps it's a mistake. Granted, I have an enchantment that makes me biologically 100% female—I'm just lazy about paperwork (a foreign concept to Amazon tradition), so may the readers feel free to flame me. I'd go so far as to say the nuclear family is a mistake. The extended family is more natural, and that's where homosexuals and trans folks come in.
One might invoke Card's vision of marriage, but I think that's wrong. Procreation need not be the absolute goal or absolute measure of a person. Rather, we should move into more of a model of community that Titor reported. Home education, extended family, community, openness, and what struck me most, turning off the TV to talk about things and pass on stories with the family and community.
Think about creepypasta. This used to be something that was passed on by word of mouth by a campfire (see Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Schwartz). Now we have Hollywood hollow creepypasta. Really, Evil Dead is the only real creepy story Hollywood has to offer, and that's barely Hollywood!
We need to find a new democratized way to realize the Jeffersonian vision of a republic in an age that is most certainly not agrarian.
Project Australia? I've been wondering if it's time to do an IPO for such a thing. More meditation is required for concepts such as the refs.