https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
First of all, it would be nice of you to at least looked at the responses to this comment, and reminded users that many of those are explicitly against HN guidelines (which is objectively true, with comments like just "What on earth?" [1], and my comment is essentially stating an opinion clearly acceptable in e.g. Singapore, and I know one of your goals on HN is to not be completely US-centric). Browbeating is clearly not what HN is for, and IMO allowing it would cause a lot more damage than allowing accounts primarily used for politics. Curious political discussion has some real content, browbeating doesn't.
Secondly, the effect of that policy is to essentially ban accountants with unpopular political opinions on one side of the spectrum (because people don't want to associate it with their normal work, for obvious reasons). One evidence for this is that you've probably banned more accounts on one side of political spectrum with that rationale. That should be easy to check, since the politics of accounts which use HN primarily for politics should be quite clear from their commenting history. I'm not accusing you of personal conscious bias against right-wingers in moderation here, I'm just pointing out that policy would result in more of them getting banned, since more of them have no choice but to try to conceal their identity (due to "consequences" at work, etc.). Remember what happened to Brendan Eich?
Thirdly, I disagree with your characterization of my comments as "ideological battle". I'm merely stating my political opinions, I have tried to never escalate into personal attacks, and I have tried to always add something concrete and interesting to the discussion, along the HN'a norm of intellectual curiosity. To me, ideological "battle" would imply the kind of dogmatic political rallying I got in response to my comment.
Finally, it seems that you are banning my account on a first strike. I don't remember having any previous negative interaction with the mods.
P.S. After posting this, I also noticed that you have "shadow banned" me, in the sense that my comment looks completely normal to myself when logged in, but I can't find a trace of it when logged out. That's an unethical practice in my books, and something that you have explicitly stated that you reserve for spammers and serial trolls [2].
I did look at the replies and it's true that some of them were terrible and against the site guidelines, but your account was by far the greatest problem, given that you initiated a flamewar and perpetuated it with 20+ comments. Pointing the finger at others, when you've broken the rules so badly yourself, is not a good look. One might mention individual responsibility as a value here.
I think you make an interesting point about ideological asymmetry. Maybe there is a systemic factor in that way—or maybe it's just that certain classes of account are more likely to fulminate and otherwise break the rules ("commit more crimes", as some might say in another context)—or maybe both? I don't know, and I don't see what difference it would make to moderation. Should the fire department hose two sides of a burning house equally, regardless of which way the wind is blowing, lest it give an appearance of bias? It's our job to prevent this place from burning itself down. For that we have certain rules and we apply them as evenhandedly as we know how. That involves pointing the hose where the fire is.
If you or anyone thinks the rules aren't optimal, I'd be happy to hear suggestions for better rules—as long as everyone understands that "better" has a clear definition in HN's context, because we're optimizing for one specific thing (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
If the state should be free to choose, it should be free to choose, not be limited by the constitutional text.
You'll have to explain how gay people being allowed to visit their loved ones on their death beds as a culture war against "the population" though.
Are gay people not part of "the population" ? I'd expect the population to be the set of all people in the country, not some subset that you happen to like
I'm making a distinction between the state and the government. The state also includes people who write and interpret the constitution.
> You'll have to explain how gay people being allowed to visit their loved ones on their death beds as a culture war against "the population" though.
I'm not sure why would you think I'd be against that.
> not some subset that you happen to like
It's not just some subset, it's the overwhelming majority.
So you oppose heterosexual marriage as well? As it is also a particular lifestyle.
Also, note that it has two kinds of marriages already, with different rules -- civil marriage, and Muslim marriage.
(Sarcasm if it wasn't obvious)
But that's still heterosexual.
> And cultures where abstinence/celibacy etc. is revered.
> The Na of Yunnan is supposedly one such example
But those cultures aren't thriving, are they?
I knew you'd say that. So you'd be ok with government subsidisation of polygamy?
I was only replying to your claim of universality. Who knows what will be the norm in another few centuries.
In the cultures which approve of it? It's none of my business. In my own country, no.
I actually thought marriage itself was likely to die as an institution until I saw just how much support there was for gay marriage in my own country (it has something close to 70% support now. Maybe not "vast majority" but pretty close). FWIW the lowest divorce rates in the last 50 years were all recorded after same sex marriage was legalised.
Traditional nuclear family is a tenant of many cultures, including the one I have a feeling of belonging to. Also, the amount of propaganda and censorship which is needed to push these things is quite worrying.
> I actually thought marriage itself was likely to die as an institution
That's unlikely, at the very least because of Lindy effect [1]. In the traditional sense, it is under attack though.
> something close to 70% support now
First, these things are measured by polls, and the outcome of course depends on how do you ask the question. Do you think you'd get the same outcome if it was phrased as "subsidising" instead of "the right to marry"? Plus, how much propaganda and censorship did that take? Are people free to make fun of these things or harshly criticise them without fear of "consequences"?
Official nation-wide referendum, in 2017, with 61% responding yes. 80% participation.
No censorship that I was aware of, and I would very much have been concerned if there were. Lots of propaganda, arguably more on the "no" side, but accepted, that's not an entirely objective view.
Homosexuality is not unique to humans, it's common in the animal kingdom (including humans) and only unusual in some countries for cultural reasons.
It's also universal among all countries around the world. Just some criminalize it.
What does this mean precisely?
Marriage without the associated state components (shared property rights, child custody rights, inheritance, etc, etc) seems like it would be much less effective than our current approach.
Being able to legally form a union where are assets are shared is a really useful function of marriage, and that function relies on the state to work.
I agree that it's a vague proposition in our era though. I'm just saying that it's not completely unreasonable.
If this were true then everyone everywhere would be in a heterosexual lifestyle. Demonstrably false.
So no, no debate. Your positions are factually wrong.
> "For the Greeks, the concept did not meaningfully exist at all; the social identities we today understand in the West as a gay man or a bisexual woman, for example, simply weren’t something that people recognized."
[1]: https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/rules-attraction