So the wine procurement is open and shut corruption in my view. If I was betting on the outcome here, I suspect "Dan" from the article was actually correct in his prediction. Google will just shut the whole unit down. They're already being sued over it and their reputation is being tarnished in the New York Times. It's a no brainer in terms of risk management.

Somewhere in my employment letter it says, you are representing company outside of workplace and work hours as well (that is in personal life too).

I can be fired if I bring disrepute to company anytime - ex. involved in a weekend nightclub drunken brawl.

The very concept of "bringing disrepute" is a slippery slope, and shamefully medieval.

Edit: I'll clarify. The problematic issue is the ambiguous, subjective threshold at which activities become "disreputable." Ambiguous, subjective standards like that should not be grounds for dismissal. They are too easily abused via "selective enforcement".

Of course, in many firms, employment is entirely "at will," and subject to employers' most capricious whims. This is not a good thing; the subjugation of one's employment to another's whim is an oppressive imbalance of power.

This is an issue where I could imagine something actually getting done in US politics. Dems would have a hard time opposing a worker's rights issue and Republicans would have a hard time opposing a bill framed as anti-cancel culture. Assuaging people's fear of losing their livelihoods over politics wouldn't solve all our problems, but would probably help lower the temps just a bit.

Edit: also the self-dealing on hundreds of thousands of dollars in wine.

Google would not be exposed to any significant liability here. Particularly not when the cult has a well-documented history of sexual abuse.

Edit: I forgot to provide references. Here’s a summary[1] of a 1988 California Supreme Court ruling in which the court determined that cult conduct does not fall under religious protections, even if the cult’s members might genuinely believe the cult’s doctrines. In other words, an internal decision by Google to terminate cult members because of their history of sex abuse or self dealing is unlikely expose them to civil litigation risk.

[1]: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-10-18-mn-4552-s...

At some point you have organizations that are doing the exact bare minimum to dodge a more unsavory classification. The Rule of Law can't legislate being a good person. It can only legislate not being a monster.

The categorical question of "is X a cult" doesn't impinge on whether The Fellowship of Friends is a cult, which it is.

It doesn't make a statement as to what is or isn't considered a religion.

It's worth noting that the Fellowship of Friends is recognized by both the IRS and California as a tax-exempt religious organization. And, at least from my perspective, it doesn't sound all that different from Scientology, which does enjoy First Amendment protections as a religion. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molko_v._Holy_Spirit_Ass%27n_f...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headley_v._Church_of_Scientolo...

A Fortune 500 company I worked for had anti-discrimination training that said it was okay to discriminate against 45 year olds. And their harassment training said that it's not illegal for a bisexual manager to flirt with or grabass everyone because they're not being selective about it. I hope to god some later employees figured out how twisted both of those were and that, even if they are both true, you shouldn't call attention to it in ethics training, ffs.

It sounds like you're coming from a legal perspective. Is that really the end-all-be-all representation of reality?

There is no universal consensus on how to define the term "cult". There are multiple competing definitions.

In 1932, the sociologist Howard P. Becker introduced a fourfold classification of religious groups, into cults, sects, denominations and ecclesias (which was in turn an expansion of the theologian Ernst Troeltsch's earlier two-fold classification of religious groups as "churches" or "sects"). Cults and sects are religious groups with a high degree of tension with the surrounding society; cults have novel beliefs (in the context of that society), sects have traditional beliefs. Denominations are established religious groups with low tension with their society, but who do not dominate it. An ecclesia is a de jure or de facto state religion. By this set of definitions, cults are religions, if by "religion" one means "religious group". Many sociologists of religion continue to use Becker's definitions today; they are still part of the standard content of most university-level introductory courses on the sociology of religion – although not all sociologists endorse them, and some have put forward alternative proposals (such as Roy Wallis' proposal that the defining feature of cults is "epistemological individualism".)

In most sociological use, "cult" is a value-neutral, non-judgemental term; in colloquial English, it has become a derogatory term, implying the group is harmful or aberrant. Some psychologists have developed formal definitions of "cults" as psychologically harmful organisations – it appears those psychologists were ignorant of the prior use of the term in sociology (or, possibly, knew about it but didn't care.) Many evangelical Christians promote a theological definition of the term "cult", in which it essentially means "Christian group we judge to be heretical"–in some cases, the label "cult" is even extended to include all non-Christian religions.

You seem to be suggesting there is some legal definition of the term "cult", in the case law of some American states, including a legal distinction between "cult" and "religion". As evidence for this, you point to a newspaper article summarising the 1988 Supreme Court of California decision Molko v. Holy Spirit Assn. However, the newspaper article you cite never actually uses the word "cult" non-attributively–it is citing the use of the word by others, not using the word itself–and it is citing the use of the word by the plaintiff's expert witnesses and by activist groups, not the Court's justices as using the word.

And, if you read the actual text of the decision [0], while it cites a number of journal articles and books with the word Cult in their titles, it never actually uses that word itself. I am wondering if maybe you are projecting this binary distinction which exists in your own mind, between "cults" and "religions", on to case law in which that distinction is never actually drawn. On the contrary, Justice Stanley Mosk's decision assumes that the alleged "cult" (in this case, The Unification Church) is a religion, and the case turns on what are the legal standards for fraud and emotional distress claims against religious groups. The Court's judgement is that you can sue a religious group for fraud and emotional distress, by alleging deceptive recruiting practices, brainwashing, etc; and that such lawsuits are not barred by the First Amendment. The actual decision doesn't turn at all on any cult-vs-religion distinction, the same legal standard applies to all religious groups, whether "cults" or not. And it was not a decision on whether or not the Unification Church actually had engaged in any such activities, or whether they were a "cult"; it was simply a preliminary ruling that the case against them could proceed to trial. (Ultimately, the case never went to trial, it was settled.)

[1] https://scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/molko-v-holy-spirit-assn...

Islam for example is a religion, that you can not leave.

I personally don't know what Islamic teaching says on the matter, but there seems to be a reasonable number of "ex-Muslim" organisations around the world, the existence of which makes an empirical case that, for practical purposes, you can indeed leave.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ex-Muslim_organisation...

To the best of my knowledge, apostasy in Islam in the US is no particularly worse than apostasy in Mormonism on the scale of denomination.

Obviously, there are plenty of people around who consider themselves ex-Muslims or ex-Catholics, regardless of any such considerations. Likewise, for so-called cults, so I'm not convinced it's really a point of difference.

It's rare in the US, but it does happen in other parts of the world (killed for being apostates).

Not going to comment on anything else, just pointing out the obvious difference in kind here. Death is orders of magnitude worse than having your name on a list.

For instance, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-da-fé

(This wasn't unique to Spain, but Spain was certainly an epicenter, due to a large Jewish population forcibly converted during and after the Reconquista)

The whole "it was the civil authorities not the Church" line doesn't really work there, since the Pope was ultimately in charge of both, even if the two were still nominally distinct.

Even in the case of the Spainish Inquisition, where the Church-va-State distinction was somewhat more real – you have to ask whether the Church encouraged or discouraged the civil authorities from imposing capital punishment on those it convicted of heresy. I think you will find that the answer was very much "encourage", not "discourage" or neutral. "We didn't execute anybody, we just encouraged the government to execute them" is a rather laughable defence.

That's literally why I started off my comment with "I'm not going to excuse the church". You're absolutely right that there ought to have been a reckoning with the consequences.

If you can't, then it's just a waste of my time.

I repeat: Do you actually have any evidence for what you're saying?

If it helps, though, the Roman Inquisition, an organ of the Church, also liked to burn the odd apostate.

Frankly, it sounds as though you are randomly spouting phrases in an attempt to sound educated.

As a Catholic, I regularly attend Church and we have many people (even entire families) who either join after a long period of being away or leave the faith all together. We miss them of course but no one sends them death treats.

Additionally, many people move between denominations.

Perhaps you are confusing those with real cults such as: Christian Science, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism, Seventh-day Adventism ?

I can't however speak for how they operate as I haven't studied them or been involved.

For instance, https://www.notme.ie

I've just never heard of such a thing.

Are you asking the court to make a judgement on theological matters (i.e., the state of your soul)? Surely you can see why they don't care.

>As of 2014, there were eight Muslim-majority countries where apostasy from Islam was punishable by death, and another thirteen where there were penal or civil penalties such as jail, fines or loss of child custody.

I'd say at least in those eight death penalty countries, you practically are not allowed to leave. And if the state letting you live but is taking away your children from you, you'll too think twice about leaving, too...

In some regions, while apostasy is not official punished by law, people will still punish it extra-legally e.g. by committing "honor killings".

Of course, this does not reflect all of Islam/all Muslims, and what people think about how apostates should be dealt with varies a lot regionally.

If it even is legally (under religious laws) possible to leave the religion is a contested issue between theological scholars, however the bulk of theological scholars seem to consider it an absolute crime against God, but may disagree on whether it's up to people to punish the crime, or punishment be left to God.

But even in Western countries there can be significant support within Muslim communities to harshly punish apostates.

> A similar survey of the Muslim population in the United Kingdom, in 2007, found nearly a third of 16 to 24-year-old faithful believed that Muslims who convert to another religion should be executed, while less than a fifth of those over 55 believed the same. [0]

That said, other religions, including an in particular Christianity, historically haven't been nice to apostates, either.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/jan/29/thinktanks.religi...

> As of 2014, there were eight Muslim-majority countries where apostasy from Islam was punishable by death,[17][18][19] and another thirteen where there were penal or civil penalties such as jail, fines or loss of child custody.

Parent comments argued that Google is liable for allowing the cult to discriminate against non cult members.

If that is true, it isn't really Google's fault. If it's false, I doubt there will be any documentary evidence to say so - these people aren't stupid, they won't have said "make sure you only hire my religion" in an email.

They are mainly discriminating against people who are more qualified for the jobs; basically the entire world that isn't Oregon House.

If the Crips gang infiltrated Google and were only hiring Crips, you wouldn't say that they are unfairly discriminating against other perfectly good gangs like Bloods, as the main issue.

(I understand that the analogy is far from perfect, because gang membership isn't a constitutionally protected class, but still ...)

There's also a difference between hiring someone you know vs. only hiring a person because you know them.

Besides which it is possible to have hiring practices that make this abuse more difficult: where I work friends & family of a candidate are obligated to identify such prior relationships during the hiring process so that another person can review any decision to hire that candidate.

Maybe things are that bad at Google, but that would be precisely the reason for casting more light on the issue in order to change things.

Of course if you expand any principle to an unreasonable extreme it becomes unreasonable but I don't see how this observation has anything to do with anything.

It may be difficult to distinguish between these two hiring patterns without asking the sorts of questions that are illegal for employers to ask.

The cult we are discussing here is accused of engaging in grooming and pedophilia.

That’s comparable to a bunch of people that went to Stanford?

This comment thread is about what policy, if any, can these people really be investigated or fired for. If association with an organization whose leadership engages in grooming and pedophilia, while distasteful, is a firing offense, then should we be firing all catholics? There seems to be no way to articulate a policy here that a lot of well-meaning people wouldn't run afoul of, and you can't selectively implement policy without then running afoul of discriminatory business practices.

The business should do what it thinks is right and deal with the fallout. Take a stand.

People are fired all the time for posting their personal opinions on FB. Especially if they make the company look bad. Fire these idiots for supporting a child molester.

You may not like it, but figuring out policy is important to a functioning society. It's how we avoid descent into fascism and witch hunting.

Yes, we should

The comment just said "investigate"! This is getting very strawmanny.

No, sorry, it's not. I don't see that in the article. The leader was accused of coercing sex and having sex with a (as in one) minor[0]. Yes, that's bad, I am not trying to say it's not.

But extending what that leader allegedly did to include all members, or suggesting those members were at least fine with it, or at the very least knew about it and did nothing, is not helpful, honestly. If we did that, we would have to apply the same logic to every Catholic, as the Catholic Church enabled and hid a lot more - and in a lot more systematic fashion - abhorrent child abuse cases committed by their leaders (well, "middle-management" for the most part).

[0] The other victims he allegedly coerced were characterized as "young men", which doesn't mean they are underage.

> I found support groups where ex-members talk about their time in the group, including discussions of sexual abuse and grooming.

> Members have described him grooming and sexually assaulting male followers, including minors

I'm definitely not trying to defend Fellowship of Friends here, just pointing out that a zero tolerance policy for supporting pedophiles pretty quickly falls apart because the successful abusers- those who can consistently abuse lots of people, like Burton, are almost always in a position of power in some organization or another. That's what gives them access and cover to do it to so many victims after all.

I don’t see much similarity between this person and the Catholic church.

As to the cases you mention no one knew about their crimes because no one came forward. When someone did come forward the police pursued the perpetrator. So firing someone involved wouldn’t have had an effect because the perpetrator was already in jail.

Google has a chance to do something if it finds the reports credible.

But second of all, most of the accused are not in jail. The infamous SBC list of 700 names were mostly open-source people involved in criminal charges (though some civil charges were also included) but plenty of people who credibly covered up other people's sexual assaults (about the worst thing that could be imagined for Lubbers, based on this article- and to be clear this article does not accuse him of that) are not in jail. Paige Patterson, for example, is not in jail. In fact, he preached at one of the most prominent SBC churches- 1st Baptist in Dallas- the Sunday after the Guidepost report came out. Patterson was fired from SWBTC after being credibly accused of covering-up a sexual assault 15 years earlier, which is definitely something that I would support if evidence emerges that Lubbers did that sort of thing. But without that evidence, I'm just not sure if Lubbers is more victim or violator, you know?

Somewhere in my employment letter it says, I'm representing the company outside my workplace and work hours as well (that is in personal life too), I can be fired if I bring disrepute to company anytime - ex. drunken brawl in a nightclub.

I don't know more about the FoF than what's in the article, but I've done some reading about a similar sexual assault ridden cult, NXIUM, and their the hierarchy was such that clearly some people were assaulting, and some were assaulted (and some were on both sides at different points), and I would want to be damn sure that I was firing people on the assaulting side but not the people on the assaulted side of the line, and for the people who were both... I dunno, really hard question.

How can you be that gullible and still be considered top tier talent?

Calling BSA and SBC cults is pure word play on your part. No reasonable person believes these are cults.

As for gullibility: would you support firing anyone who has been the VICTIM of domestic violence? A lot of the ways that cults convince people to stay are similar to the ways that domestic abusers convince their victims to stay, the methods are remarkably similar. So would being a victim of long-running abusive relationship be a sign that one isn't top tier talent in a job? Should all of them be fired? If you find yourself horrified by that idea, then I would suggest that you are being rather too aggressive towards cults, and forgetting that probably a majority of the cults members are more victim than perpetrator, though doubtless many are both to some degree.

Easily? I don't think there is any reason to think people good at programming are any less susciptible to being manipulated than anyone else.

I'll grant that destructive cults are different than established religions, but firing these workers specifically over the sexual allegations wouldn't be much different than firing an employee who happened to be a deacon in a their local church in a Catholic diocese where the Cardinal abused children.

Fined billions of dollars? Worth it.

reminds me of when rand paul asked about an oil spill, “when did they ever say they weren’t going to pay for it?”

what did OJ do in his work at the NFL that was wrong? he didn’t murder anyone while he was at work, so i don’t see the problem.

my impression is that all those cults/churches - like for example LDS, scientology, masons, etc. - have favoring of business dealings with fellow members, be it hiring, promotion, supply and service contracts, etc. among the basic tenets of the cult/church.

The amount of nepotism in that group described in article is really nauseating. We had a senior engineer who was a spouse of an exec, and it was already making tremendous obstacles to the work - the managers and the director were tip-toeing around that engineer, it was borderline disgusting. Anyway didn't help - the director and thus the managers under him as well as several top engineers - the whole top of the house of cards of our department :) - were promptly gone the moment the director had disagreement with that engineer. In another team a young hothead guy got in disagreement with another spouse of another exec, and was immediately gone as a result. I can't really imagine how screwed the environment would be in the situation like that Google GDS - probably very suffocating and bordering on mental abuse for anybody who isn't a member of that cult.

Also, if as alleged, 12 people out of 25 were from some random small town, _any_ random small town, that probably means something is going very wrong in hiring.

The alleged cult is arguably kind of irrelevant; it's the alleged corruption that should raise eyebrows.

> Are you supposed to then ask everyone in the department about their religious affiliations, or whether they've given money to a fringe religious organization? That also seems like a really unhealthy road for a company to go down.

I’d suggest a question like this:

1) Are you affiliated with an organization that molests children?

I was baptized a Roman Catholic, but left the church long before the Spotlight investigations came out, though that was hardly the first time that the organizations complicity with sexual abuse got attention. The largest Protestant denomination in the country, the Southern Baptist Convention, just released a massive report about how they hid and enabled sexual abuse of minors (and grown-ups) for decades[2].

What about the entire Canadian government turning a blind eye to sexual abuse of First Nations children for over a century at the Indian Residential Schools that they paid for[3]?

If you answer that question honestly, I would hazard a guess most people have affiliations with an organization that turned a blind eye to abusive behavior, because that is, unfortunately, incredibly common.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_Scouts_of_America_sex_abus... [2]: https://www.vox.com/culture/23131530/southern-baptist-conven... [3]: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/why-so-many-sexual-pred...

Many Catholics stopped attending church when they found out what had happened.

Because what should Google do now that they know? They can do a great amount of good.

Most people are in a position to do something. I don’t see it any different for Google.