Where do you work, hobby lobby? We are on a website sponsored by a San Francisco based start up accelerator. Regardless of where “no politics” as a rule goes no one in this world is getting fired for saying “My husband”. It’s a disingenuous reductio.

Insisting on personal pronouns over another employee’s pushback is a much more realistic (and still compelling) line of argument.

As a dev in the midwest, there are a lot of midwest tech companies where I wouldn't want to mention that I'm gay, or bring up anything about my personal life with my wife. (And Basecamp is also a midwest tech company.)

If a company I worked at went full no-politics at work after two minor incidents about the founders use of ablest language, and the acceptability of making lists of "funny" names, then I think I'd probably not know where the line is for them.

I mean.. you know that people do in fact work at hobby lobby? I don't, but uh.. there's a whole spectrum of companies and employees outside the particular demographics of this website and this kind of policy is absolutely weaponized in practice. Not in theory, not in any kind of reductio ad anything, in actual practice.

Yes, Hobby Lobby exists and people work there. Hobby Lobby’s management will continue to do exactly what they were doing regardless of what basecamp does. If DHH sees your comment and says “you’re totally right, we are going to embrace political discussion at Basecamp”, Hobby Lobby keeps on being Hobby Lobby. It’s a silly point to make in this discussion.

They even have a website! I’d be shocked if there aren’t routinely Hobby Lobby employees visiting Hacker News.

Probably a majority of people held opinions like that extremely recently. Like, the 2000s or maybe later recent. There are still a ton of people who think like that, and you only really need one for it to become a hostile environment.

> Because literally, this is the bar a lot of homophobes exist at to consider a conversation about a gay relationship 'political' or even religious, and they will act on it.

So the homophobe is being political, and therefore breaks policy.

Perhaps they would feel better if they let their misapprehensions and hate towards their colleagues go.

In my experience it's the homophobe who gets all up in arms about "politics at work" and tries to get management to implement a no-politics policy.

Their goal is to further marginalize the already-marginalized, and shut down conversations about making the workplace a more inclusive place.

Because somehow "hey let's stop discriminating against $XYZ type of person" is somehow "political".

In my experience that has never happened

Usually its a bunch of people advocating for socialism, screaming silence is violence, and saying white people are going to hell

From what I've seen (maybe this is just the bay area) you don't usually know someone is conservative until they trust you lol

> white people are going to hell

You’re not very good at straw man arguments, for what it’s worth.

It takes effort to get to the point where you can fire someone simply for being a homophobe. People are advocating for these types of rules. They're being told to just suck it up and don't be political.

Wouldn't the ideal situation be firing someone for _acting_ as a homophobe (which a no-politics rule encourages), rather than _being_ a homophobe (or having any other undesirable trait)?

I think you focusing on a word that's not that important.

How do you define what's a fireable homophopic offense. You need to discuss it, you can't shut it down because its political and uncomfortable to discuss. You need to listen to the people that are being made uncomfortable and have these discussions. "stop being political" is making a decision, it's the side of no change.

Maybe I'm under the misunderstanding that "no politics" doesn't also apply to e.g. reporting inappropriate workplace actions to HR.

If you see a homophobic (or racist, or sexist, or inappropriate, etc) offense, you should absolutely report it to your superior and/or HR, and AFAICT Basecamp's changes don't say you shouldn't. It sounds like they're just banning discussions in the open channels with coworkers ("Hey everyone, do you think what Bob did was homophobic?").

Of course, I might be misinformed on 1) whether you're still allowed to report workplace offenses to HR, and/or 2) whether company-wide conversation about your coworkers' potential offenses is actually a positive thing to allow.

You are what you do, and you do what you are.

Reminds me of the gamer moment memes about ANY character that isn't a straight white male or a busty white woman is considered political.

No, because I'm not the social police. But I don't want to hear about it while I'm working, and so I don't participate in those conversations. I'm trying to concentrate on work problems at work. End of.

No, but I think it’s ok if someone is that toxic at work to think the above is an offense, to let it be known so they can more easily “work themselves out of a job”