That is different from, for example, what happened to the Occupy movement. Brendan Eich was not investigated by the FBI, nor was he wiretapped, nor was a confidential informant sent to tempt him into an illegal act.

If Brendan Eich's views on gays having the freedom to marry were not opposed by a large number of people relevant to his leadership position at Mozilla, and if Mozilla did not have a corporate culture that was overtly welcoming to LGBT individuals, it would not have mattered. In fact it demonstrably did not matter until Brendan Eich came into a leadership position where he could change Mozilla's culture.

A surveillance state, on the other hand, is devoted to preserving itself at the expense of everyone and anyone else. That's not the same thing.

It sounds like you are claiming that state surveillance is actually a subset of social pressure surrounding what's socially acceptable behavior. You claim the latter to be a bigger and more serious problem. Perhaps you did not mean to claim that, but that is how it sounds.

Socially acceptable behavior is always changing as generations come and go.

For everyone's well-being, governments must always trend away from oppression, not toward.

Whatever you think about equality issues, surely we can agree that these things are not really the same, and government oppression certainly is not a subset of social norm issues.

He didn't say it was a bigger problem, he said the problem is bigger than just the government. In other words, it's all part of the same problem.

Governments are not Other. They are part of a society's self-regulatory machinery. Democratic governments in particular are a reflection of society at large. If a government is behaving badly, the root cause has something to do with the society.

That's how I read GP and I can't disagree.

> Socially acceptable behavior is always changing as generations come and go.

Legally acceptable behavior is also always changing as generations come and go. From a sociological perspective laws are simply the formalization of very strong social norms.

seriously. the home secretary authorising every journey in and out of the UK with one or more schemes..... never going to happen.

Is your argument that people should be allowed to spew bigoted and hateful nonsense without facing any social repercussion whatsoever?

spew, bigoted, hateful - emotive words that illustrate my point exactly (as does the downvote). Even a discussion about a discussion about gay marriage is enough to incur wrath from some.

My real argument would be that in many cases rational discussions should be possible without social justice warriors trampling all over freedom of speech.

I can give you one.

The state should have no involvement in the institution of marriage, and instead the latter should be privatized and handled by non-governmental organizations. The terms of a marriage contract should be outlined solely by the individuals (or the service/organization providing the contract for individuals), which can then be optionally arbitrated by courts and/or registered with a state entity so as to work out issues like visitation rights.

Only then will marriage equality be achieved.

That said, this is more of an "anti-marriage" (at least in its current conception) argument than a specifically anti-gay marriage one, but it naturally intersects with gay and all other forms of marriage.

The anti-gay marriage part comes into play when you say that legal recognition of same-sex marriages serves as a feel-good quick patch solution that will only slow down or even diminish support for more profound solutions to the problem of marriage equality.

That was already covered. The argument is that allowing gay marriage will reduce support for the anti-marriage position. If gay marriage is denied then supporters of gay marriage will prefer to support the anti-marriage position rather than supporting marriage when they can't participate in it, which is preferred if you're anti-marriage.

Ironically the corollary to this argument is that allowing gay marriage preserves the institution of marriage.

You say people should be allowed, but in the next sentence place conditions that what they say should agree with you.

Would it have been a completely different post if it only read:

> you should be allowed to express whatever viewpoint you have regarding gay marriage

I think it would.

At what point does a good faith disagreement become taboo?

Edited: A closer analogy would be interracial marriage. Laws prohibiting interracial marriage weren't struct down until 1967. Could a respectful person advocate banning interracial marriages ?

It should be never.

Let's take your example. For sake of argument I'm going to make an argument against interracial marriage.

The US has a great diversity of cultural identities which are largely tied to race. For example, African Americans make up 13.2% of the US population and have a unique history and music, their own vernacular (AAVE), etc. We should seek to preserve these diverse cultural identities, but they are generally lost in families where the parents come from different cultural/racial groups. For example, if the current generation chooses mates without regard to race then in the next generation only 1.74% of offspring will have two African American parents. In the following generation the number drops to 0.03%. The entire third generation would fit into a typical school auditorium and the fourth generation would be extinct. The same would be true of every other unique culture in the country in a single-digit number of generations.

Am I now supposed to be shunned for making that argument? What part of it is even logically invalid? You can disagree with it on the basis of priorities. I disagree with it. But why is a person making that argument a bad person? Why should that line of discourse be verboten? If you think the argument is wrong then say why. If you have to run the people you disagree with out of town because you can't refute their positions, chances are you're the bad guy.

The way I see it the state does not have a say in who I fall in love with. Neither do you or anyone else.

You can't have a conversation about it without one of those awful social disclaimers "now I support gay marriage but..." tacked on to your opinion.

In short, this is exactly what social behavior is for: moving civilization forward as a whole. If people like Eich insist on being left behind, they have that right, but they don't have the right to drag the rest of us down with them.

That's very different from social pressure. You have a right to speak, and to not be physically restrained from doing so, but you don't have a right to be free of any social consequences that follow. You're free to talk your way into a job, or out of one.

It's only by radical people going against the grain that we have ended up with the relatively free and liberal society we have today.

Support for "heavy social pressure" is support for the status quo. Personally, I'm hoping for some improvement in the state of things during my lifetime.

Here's a hint, if you want to understand my point of view: it's easy to identify the Bad Guy in any conversation. It's whoever resorts to the threat of physical force first. Apart from that, it's all fair game: no one has the right to remain unoffended.

Social pressure can have a big impact, and while it's not the same as physical force (or the threat of it), I think there are cases where it can be harmful enough to blur the line that I once thought would be easily drawn at 'physical force'.

There are areas in 'free societies' where being openly gay, or openly atheist is legal, but is (or was) socially unacceptable. Finding work as a gay or atheist teacher in such areas might be close to impossible, but for various reasons leaving such an area might be equally close to impossible or at least highly undesirable.

As a result, there are gay teachers who, practically speaking, cannot be gay, not even in the 'privacy' of their home, even though legally they are protected from physical violence. There are also atheist couples who are all but forced to go to church on Sundays lest they incur the social exclusion of all those around them.

While I don't know if a state-enforced no-discrimination policy is a good or even acceptable solution, I find it hard to dismiss this thought outright. Perhaps it is.

And so in the case of Eich, for example, the only reason why I feel that Mozilla had the 'right' to fire him is that I find it hard to believe that this keeps him from living a good life outside of Mozilla. But if society were to change and all companies were to fire Eich for his views, then perhaps government intercession to prevent this might be necessary.

Because yes, I do think we need to protect those who have ideas we don't like, to the point where we might have to actively interact with them on a regular basis. In fact, I think it's a good thing. 'Good' beliefs should regularly be challenged.

That said, I'm peppering the post with 'mights' and 'perhapses' because I also see the drawbacks and practical difficulties of this approach. Forcing a Christian school to allow a gay atheist teacher to work there might not solve the social exclusion issue, for example.

But all I'm trying to say is that I find it much more difficult now to take the stance that we should draw the line at physical force. We're too reliant as humans on social contact and fulfillment to ignore the dangers of social exclusion.

It's not even about the truth anymore. Even mainstream news organizations spin and lie about what actually happened, with real-world consequences (and no consequences for the news orgs or the reporters). Every news outlet spread lies about the Ferguson incident, before we even had any credible witnesses or facts. When the facts finally came out, they continued to spread the same lies (and many continued to believe them).

In the past couple of years, there have been dozens of reporters that have gotten fired for an obvious mistake that was deemed 'offensive' by the likes of political activist groups and used as fuel to fire them. It's just another form of bullying.

Many people don't even know that Al Sharpton will threaten companies and demand money or work in exchange for not going after them publicly. Pepsi paid him thousands per year in the 90s and XM radio actually gave him his own show for a couple of years to get him to stop talking about the "homeless charlie" incident that happened a few years back. A quick Google search will show you many companies that essentially pay him hush money. It tells me that when he cries racism, it's not about bettering society, but lining his pockets. It seems this is public knowledge now. Why isn't he in jail?

I don't really use Facebook besides some simple private messaging between friends. Why? I can predict the coming storm that many people don't seem to see. Anything online can and will be used to instantly form an opinion about you and your life style. Not having the right "culture fit" might just mean someone in management doesn't agree with your political opinions.

The ex-Mozilla CEO is another good example of the problem with today's society. He donated a small amount of money to a cause he believed in and was bullied and ridiculed online until he quit.

If it had been the reverse (he supported gay-marriage and was bullied until he quit) many of those same people would be crying out about how we need to stop online bullying and probably demand the government step in. If I were the Mozilla CEO, I would have set an example and found the people that worked for the company that spewed the most hate against me and fired them on the spot.

As I've gotten older, I have found that most people are the same: they preach open and honesty..until it's for a cause that they disagree with. Then, they just want to silence and discredit the opposition.

Few are for actual freedom, which is sad.

This is depressingly true. Tolerance of only the ideas that the group agrees with, otherwise it's [insert something dumb here] and it needs to be stopped!

Gay marriage is an extremely important issue. No doubt. But the CEO of Mozilla has hardly any influence upon that. He runs a software company. He may employ a few homosexuals, that's about it. His donations are relatively meagre and Firefox doesn't censor content its' viewers access.

Where's the backlash against negative practices perpetrated by a few that impact on huge swathes of the population? Companies conspiring with the USG (see PRISM), anti-consumer practices (Apple, Microsoft etc), companies that kill (tobacco, fast food, etc).

It seems like we're stuck in a place where social issues that affect minorities result in visceral, emotional responses, whereas the bigger stuff is 'just business', like we're just bored of it. That bugs me.

Perhaps it's just the attribution onto an individual.

I do know quite a few folk who were against the civil partnership law in the UK, but that was because they wanted marriage equality, rather than a marriage-lite.

The person you're responding to never said that all anti-gay marriage arguments are religious. They said that all of them are rooted in bigotry.

Do you believe it's acceptable to disapprove of people who are opposed to interracial marriage? If so, how exactly is being anti-gay marriage more justified and less bigoted?

I believe the objection that many gay people have is that they perceive gay marriage as attempt to push heterosexual norms of monogamy and family life onto a culture of people who have often rejected them (and suffered heavy criticism for that rejection, plus blame for HIV).

So rather ironically, gay marriage becomes a tool by the heterosexual population to "straighten out" gay people.

Whether or not you are swayed by that argument (personally I am not), it's not true to say that all arguments against gay marriage are rooted in bigotry.

By closing their mind and throwing labels like "bigot" at their opponents, the grandparent poster loses the opportunity learn about the world. That's truly unfortunate.

The lack of social repercussions for things means the status quo stays, because there's no reason for it not to so long as it doesn't directly affect the majority in a way that they can see.

EDIT: Additionally, frankly, you can't make me interact with people, or support people, who refuse to accept that I exist as a real, healthy person who doesn't need to be "fixed". That goes against all manner of rights, and is severely unhealthy for me.

I don't think this was the case. Look at, for example, the abolitionist movement. You'll find the social repercussions directed against the movement. It took over twenty years of convincing people of the justice of their cause, despite the forces used against them.

> The lack of social repercussions for things means the status quo stays

Isn't it more likely that social repercussions will be used to enforce the status quo? Only when change has already won can it use social force to complete its victory.

Not quite. It works in two steps. At the first, while an idea is growing, there are social repercussions against it. Once it reaches a certain mass, the social repercussions start working against the majority.

Even a relatively small minority can affect the majority through social repercussions, by definition, doubly so if the members of the minority are still relatively hidden - if they can't be attacked directly.

In the UK, there's serious social repercussions against supporting UKIP, and they're still plenty strong.