Dev.SN ♥ developers
Sections
Dev.SN
from the i-guess-they'll-unfriend-mozilla dept.
The controversy around Mozilla's new CEO Brendan Eich continues. Eich made a personal $1000 donation to California's Yes on Proposition 8 campaign in 2008. Now, dating site OkCupid has started redirecting Firefox users to a page explaining Eich's views against marriage equality, and asking users to switch to IE, Chrome, or Opera.
If individuals like Mr. Eich had their way, then roughly 8% of the relationships we've worked so hard to bring about would be illegal. Equality for gay relationships is personally important to many of us here at OkCupid. But it's professionally important to the entire company. OkCupid is for creating love. Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure.
Visitors are then provided links to alternative browsers, or they can continue to the site by clicking a hyperlink at the bottom of the page.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by wjwlsn on Tuesday April 01 2014, @10:20AM
That might be the question that you see. The question that I see is completely different: what definition of marriage (if any) should society choose to promote and reward with legal and/or economic incentives?
I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.
(Score: 1) by ArhcAngel on Tuesday April 01 2014, @11:07AM
Since the incentives were created to foster an economic condition in which the wife could support the family by staying home and rearing children thus providing them with a stable environment in which to grow perhaps repealing these incentives for families where both parents work is the actual fair thing to do. In the US people are free to pursue the relationship of their liking (certain age restrictions apply). What is being lobbied for/against is the extension of entitlements to same-sex partners. I say take away the entitlements completely since the reason they were created (1 wage earner households) is mostly a thing of the past. Have the entitlements extend only to households where the annual income is 20% below the median average annual income (or 15% or 30% I just used 20% as a possible threshold). Once you take emotion and prejudice out of the equation it is easier to craft a tenable solution. I just don't see anybody on either side willing to do that.
(Score: 2) by wjwlsn on Tuesday April 01 2014, @11:29AM
Good points. Do you include dependent/child tax benefits in that strategy? Also, I wonder if eliminating the marriage tax benefits would also require the amendment of welfare laws; we don't necessarily want to create a disincentive to marriage for those with kids. Some may reason that being an unemployed single parent is better than being married, especially if the other parent is still around and able to provide income.
I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.
(Score: 1) by velex on Tuesday April 01 2014, @12:03PM
Easy. Nullify any marriages that don't involve a pregnancy within 6 months, and nullify any marriages upon death of the children (abortion, accidental, disease, etc). Enforce marriages between individuals who have genetic offspring under the age of 18, even if that results in one person being married to several other people. There, everyone's happy, even the feminists since my proposal would enable lesbian-only marriages as long as that procedure to put the genetic material from an egg into a sperm is performed. (Tho MRAs might not be too happy when stupid guys "help" a lesbian couple have a child under my proposal since that would constitute a marriage that excludes the other lesbian partner and enforces it on the idiot guy.)
Err... I don't think too many folks will be ok with that. But that's ok. I forget who here has a sig to the effect of "you can't rationally argue someone out of a position they didn't rationally get into," but that applies.
A more serious answer would be that I don't think society should reward any kind of interpersonal relationship legally or economically. Get the government out of the marriage business. Maybe churches could reward individuals in marriages they recognize, but then that's their business and none of mine at that point.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Tuesday April 01 2014, @12:49PM
what definition of marriage (if any) should society choose to promote and reward with legal and/or economic incentives?
I vote for none at all. Why should a childless married couple pay less in tax than a widow with a child who earns the same amount of money?
Why are we discriminating against single people? Governments should stay out of marriage and sex and family life.
Free Nobots! [mcgrewbooks.com]
(Score: 2) by wjwlsn on Tuesday April 01 2014, @12:58PM
This is insightful. Now spin it another way.
.
How is that fair?
I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Tuesday April 01 2014, @08:09PM
I agree with this, mostly. I do think that anyone that wants to be able to designate visitation rights in the hospital (for example) should be able to choose anybody, for pretty much any reason.
From what I've heard, if you are not blood related and immediate family (or adopted), you have to be married to get these benefits. This is where the government needs to step in and define it so that a person's wishes must be honored with no preference for majority or minority lifestyle.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:36AM
From what I've heard, if you are not blood related and immediate family (or adopted), you have to be married to get these benefits.
It probably varies depending on where you are, depending on your state or country's laws. I lived with a woman I thought was divorced who died of cancer a few years ago. She went in the hospital and never came out. That's when I found out she was married, her husband came trying to get her to sign divorce papers after refusing a divorce for two years so the abusive SOB wouldn't have to pay the hospital for the cancer. The hospital barred him from the premises, I could visit any time I wanted, even after she'd slipped into a coma. That's Illinois, across a state line or maybe even a different hospital it might be different.
Free Nobots! [mcgrewbooks.com]