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Comment by bertil | Hacker News Reader

> I'll exercise my right to shun you for it.

That right is, presumably, something you revoke when joining a ‘open-minded and tolerant’ community -- something that both Mozilla and OkCupid asked their employees to do.

That’s why, to justify shunning from someone within that group, you need to qualify supporting Prop 8 as abhorrent: something outside of Free speech.

I’ve posted a few comments already, so I feel the need to clarify my position: I have an opinion; I never shared it with anyone, ever. What I know however, from knowing many people on any sides of however you want to split this, is best said here:

http://imgur.com/r/AdviceAnimals/YstKo08

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Would I have happily embraced slavery if born at the time? Not a doubt in the world. Surely my peers would have considered themselves open-minded and tolerant just as much.

Here is what this comes down to: is there an overall shift in societies sentiment on this issue towards tolerance and against discrimination? If yes, you don't want to be standing on the wrong side of history by publicly expressing your disagreement.

I know… I’m just trying to defend the good side, which is always the one listening first.

As for history, it’s a forgiving mistress: always remember that the one absolute, un-impeachable moral hero of all modern history was an openly incestuous child molestor, and that all his friends and relatives begged him daily to stop.

Okay, I'll bite: who are you talking about here?

Gandhi, though the claim may be exaggerated.

Hard to find a good source, but here's something: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2521/did-mahatma-ga...

> If yes, you don't want to be standing on the wrong side of history by publicly expressing your disagreement.

Lincoln was very much on the wrong side of history, and even in his time many abolitionists argued that it was horribly immoral to allow slavery where it existed, or to end slavery only in military-occupied areas of the Confederacy. Should we have shunned him then?

This is exactly why I don't like black/white mob rule, FWIW. Life's too complex to be reduced to a set of tripwires that define our behavior. Evolution has provided us all with the most advanced processing devices on this planet, we should all feel free to use them to examine a given case on its own merits.

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