The "internet mob" is justifiably frustrated with the non-internet "mob" that frequently tries to shit all over minority rights.
Attempt on any level however to deconstruct and analyze the public reactions to protected speech, even if it's speech considered disagreeable and one is immediately seen as complicit in the mechanisms of the aforementioned domain.
Progressive thinking isn't progressive if you demand that your cause is the only cause worth being heard. It isn't being 'forward' if it means shutting down discourse you don't want to hear.
"I may not like what you say but I will defend your right to say it".
Not anymore.
It's 2014 and the critic has become the heretic.
And frankly, as a minority myself-while I am fully willing to admit that there are distinct parallels between what the LGBT community is going through and our nation's history with civil rights between the 1940's and 1960's forcing people to look at the two as analogous cheapens the struggles faced by both parties. Until a time comes where gays have attack dogs unleashed on them, sprayed with water cannons, arrested for where they choose to sit on a bus, or are told they cannot even be seen in public spheres and forced to use separate entrances, what we have is an American legal mechanism that still needs to be refined and sharply tuned to ensure domestic equity for all citizens. The portrait has changed considerably since Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, harkening back to Jim Crow when the law allowed physical harm of blacks cannot be compared to a legal system that's struggling to find a new identity of civil liberty isn't helpful. It's pouring salt over old wounds and calling it 'medicine'.
No one's saying he doesn't have the right to say it.
Free speech is not freedom from consequences like boycotts and criticism.
> Until a time comes where gays have attack dogs unleashed on them, sprayed with water cannons
The US has a long history of police brutality incidents against the LGBT community. [http://www.amnestyusa.org/node/87367]
> arrested for where they choose to sit on a bus... and forced to use separate entrances
Which they would have been, if being gay was an outwardly obvious condition like being black is.
> or are told they cannot even be seen in public spheres
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Wechsler (1972) was the first publicly elected official to be openly gay, and only came out after being elected. The first time a known gay politician was elected was 1974 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_Noble). The (still limited) ability to be gay in the public sphere is very much a recent development.
No one's saying he doesn't have the right to say it. Free speech is not freedom from consequences like boycotts and criticism.
Can a society really be considered to have 'freedom of expression' if individuals have to worry that every statement has to pass some kind of checksum from a group that seeks his or her ouster for saying it?
It's kind of why I'm starting to abhor the "free speech doesn't make you free from the court of public opinion" argument; it's being used so often and without any substantive discussion that it appears to be a pseudo-intellectualist's cop out.
So sure, even if legislatively one has the 'freedom' to say what they want, what does it say about how we value that freedom if we tacitly strip people from the ability to have disagreeable views without launching upon them as if they were guilty of high-treason? Are you really free if what you say doesn't get you thrown in jail but gets you burned at the social media cross?
That's not to say that legislators didn't want to segregate the gay population, but perhaps they (a) found it difficult to implement or (b) believed being gay was a choice whilst being black wasn't, thus they could put gay men in asylums (common in England) whilst no amount of 'mental discipline' would change someone race.
These issues are complicated, I don't necessarily have a solution. It is a shame though that someone who has earned his spot as CEO has been boycotted because of his beliefs. Seems pretty hypocritical of those attacking his views.
And that's fine, but free speech doesn't come with zero consequences. His actions caused others to exercise their free speech, using their speech and economic power to push for change just like Eich did with his Prop 8 donation.