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Re:Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO by jrs235 on Thursday April 03, 2014 @05:24PM (#7526867)
The issue isn't about rights. I wish everyone would recognize it's about privileges and equal treatment. The benefits [of a government recognized marriage] (tax breaks, visitations, spousal benefits, etc.) are all privileges. How can you tell? Because with the stroke of a pen all those things could be revoked by the government.
Re:Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO by vertex-four on Thursday April 03, 2014 @05:35PM (#7527004)
Except that marriage is recognised as a human right, both internationally and by the USA. Any specific benefits, obviously, are not rights, but the ability to be married is agreed to be a human right.
Re:Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO by waps on Thursday April 03, 2014 @07:59PM (#7528097)
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/

> Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

You got a person fired for his political views. Let's not pretend Brendan Eich violated human rights, he did not.

You did.

I'm making my sites just outright refuse mozilla's browsers.

Can you please understand that coming from a country where political cleansings of companies and government departments are normal that you will see a VERY strong reaction against this.

Re:Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO by vertex-four on Friday April 04, 2014 @06:50AM (#7530449)
> Let's not pretend Brendan Eich violated human rights, he did not.

He argued for, and donated money towards a campaign for, the violation of my human rights. I'm sorry that I got angry about that and exercised my rights to freedom of speech and freedom of association?

> I'm making my sites just outright refuse mozilla's browsers.

You're well within your right to do that. I'll point out that now you're in the same position as I was; you're boycotting Mozilla because it doesn't match your political views.

Re:Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO by aganders3 on Thursday April 03, 2014 @05:33PM (#7526981)
Sure, but equal access to those privileges is a civil right.
Re:Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO by jrs235 on Thursday April 03, 2014 @05:38PM (#7527033)
Everyone has equal access. Every person is allowed to marry one other person of a different sex.

I get it. People don't like the "of a different sex" in there and they have the right to appeal to have that removed. I'm more in favor with getting rid of marriage privileges all together... why burden single people?

UPDATE: To the downvoter, am I wrong or do you just disagree? Please clarify by commenting.

Re:Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO by dragonwriter on Thursday April 03, 2014 @06:55PM (#7527629)
> Everyone has equal access. Every person is allowed to marry one other person of a different sex.

Which discriminates by sex the same way that "every person is allowed to marry one person of the same race" discriminates by race.

> I'm more in favor with getting rid of marriage privileges all together... why burden single people?

How does the option to marry burden people who choose not to exercise that option?

Re:Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO by jrs235 on Thursday April 03, 2014 @07:35PM (#7527911)
Thank you for commenting. I still say access is equal. It doesn't discriminate based on sex, it discriminates based on preference. It seems there are two camps that disagrees whether its acceptable or not to discriminate by that.

(Update: your point about race is great and forcing me to rethink my stance by the way.)

What is the purpose of marriage benefits? How does having them benefit society enough that government wishes to recognize it? I'd guess its to encourage offspring in order to continue future prosperity. I'm proposing we step back and ask, what's the purpose of recognizing marriages? What are we trying to incentivize and is it working?

Rather than blindly extending things perhaps we should consider repealing or scaling them back? Look at the war on drugs, we thought banning marijuana would be beneficial, we're now questioning that.

The second point of burden pertains mostly to giving tax breaks to married couples.

Re:Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO by dragonwriter on Thursday April 03, 2014 @07:50PM (#7528024)
> What is the purpose of marriage benefits?

Largely, to: (1) simplify life for people who want to do a fairly common thing, establishing a fairly comprehensive mutual support partnership, and (2) encourage people to do that thing, and thereby reduce the chance of becoming a public burden.

> The second point of burden pertains mostly to giving tax breaks to married couples.

The "break" is mostly (roughly) treating married couples as if their combine income were earned equally split between the two, on the premise that the lower earning member of the couple is making sacrifices to enable the higher-earning member to earn their wage (for couples of roughly equal income, there is no tax break [1].)

[1] And, potentially, its worse than just "no break": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_penalty

Re:Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO by matthewmacleod on Thursday April 03, 2014 @07:46PM (#7527987)
I still say access is equal.

I don't want to be mean, but this logic is just faulty. You can define any discrimination as equality if you shuffle the terms around.

Think instead about marriage equality meaning equality for couples, rather than individuals. The proposal is that a same-sex couple should have the same rights as an opposite-sex couple. Discrimination is based on the collective gender of the couple.