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Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

In general I agree with you, but neither pride nor tolerance training is political.

Pride is like St. Paddy's Day or Chinese New Year: it's neither left or right.

Tolerance training isn't political either. If an employer wants their employees to be comfortable at work, it's within their right to train employees to be tolerant of each other. It has nothing to do with politics.

It's strange how gay people just being gay is often seen as a political act -- but that's never the case for straight people.

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> Pride is like St. Paddy's Day or Chinese New Year

Having worked in Northern Ireland I can tell you that St Patrick's Day is loaded with politics there.

The company got around it by giving both St Pats and 12th July as public holidays but allowing staff to voluntarily work them in lieu.

Hence staunch loyalists could work on St Pats and take the holiday another time, whilst nationalists could work on Orangefest. Neither felt compelled to celebrate the other's festival.

Being a naive Englisher 'Hun' I just took both days off and offended both groups equally.

All discussion of politics and sports was banned at all times. That seemed quite easy to enforce.

I will not respect or tolerate a person because they are gay. I will respect and/or tolerate them because they are human and a colleague.

Tolerance training is political because the employer wants employess of a certain belief,affiliation or private association to feel welcome. For example,tolerance training for vegetarians would also be political.

Pride also is supporting a political movement much like supporting 'alt-right'.

It's not gay people being just gay,but a company telling workers personal sexual lives of their colleagues is a basis for tolerance or intolerance and that the company favors tolerance in that particular case. By that same right,they can hold gay intolerance training.

> I will respect and/or tolerate them because they are human and a colleague.

Congrats, you just passed every tolerance course ever, and all without bringing politics into it.

While you may be high minded and professional, not all workplaces are, and it's fine for the company owners to ask that employees keep a professional environment around everyone -- including people that may make some feel uncomfortable.

> a company telling workers personal sexual lives of their colleagues is a basis for tolerance or intolerance

It's weird that you jump right to sex. Being gay is about a lot more than sex.

If a woman tells me she went skiing with her husband last weekend, my mind doesn't rush to thinking, "gee, why is she talking about her personal sex life at work?"

> I will not respect or tolerate a person because they are gay. I will respect and/or tolerate them because they are human and a colleague.

Good for you! The problem is that some people don't respect or tolerate a person because that person is gay. That's a thing that exists.

How you define and express both is political. How you require people to act around these issues is political.

Does the state require you to hire a quota of LGBT workers?

Does the state punish bad behaviour towards LGBT workers?

How do you handle people who hold beliefs that conflict with LGBT life styles?

Should you mandate the use of language around these topics?

Is there speech that can cause harm people and should it be protected as free speech?

Are these not all political issues.

Chinese New Year can be political. Why is it celebrated under that name in Western countries, rather than Tết or Korean New Year or just Lunar New Year? And then add Chinese money funding the events for some soft power propagation...

It looks like you've been using HN primarily for political-ideological-national battle. That's a violation of the site rules, and we ban accounts that do it, so if you'd review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and please stop doing it, we'd appreciate it.

Okay. I'm very intellectually curious about China, and I hope other people are too. I mostly comment on these sorts of topics because, relatively speaking, I know slightly more than the average HNer, but I'll take this into consideration.

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