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.