No downvotes from this guy here. I work with some terrible engineers who I wouldn't trust to design a tire pressure gauge but they're pleasant to be around. On the other hand, I've worked with world class engineers who are abrasive as hell but still write/design good gear. Code shouldn't have a thing to do with their political leanings. To quote an old OpenBSD saying: "shut up and hack".

So what do you do in the unlikely event that someone who's a target of the racism is interested in contributing to the project?

Does "shut up and hack" apply to telling them to keep their racism to themselves?

(I realize you didn't say anything about racism, but you replied supportively to a comment about it, so I'm not sure where you stand.)

Then you’re into territory where the CoC controls everything that a contributor says on every platform, as another contributor can always claim some indirect harm.

Always? All sorts of speech cause indirect harm to someone, analogous to "virulent racism"?

If that's really true, doesn't "shut up and hack" apply all the more? If you really cared about the code, you could keep your political opinions to yourself.

(Also, this is precisely why many codes of conduct define the exact harms they care about - so racism is an excluded harm, but, say, making Hans Reiser feel bad about being a murderer isn't. If you're a fan of racism, you might use this as an indicator to avoid the project and find another one, or fork it under the license.)

Which is all just censorship by the back door. With the possible implied accusation of racism aimed at me. I’ll spare both of us the usual freedom of speech rationales, I assume you’ve heard them before. It seems from your posts that you personally really do wish to use CoCs as a tool of wide-ranging ideological enforcement, exactly as their detractors fear. Or have I misinterpreted you?

However on forking I do tend to agree. There appears to be an audience for projects with less controlling, or less ideologically intended rules. These projects should be formed and developers should make their own choice between them.