Apple's Tim Cook says his home state is 'too slow' on LGBT rights issue, pushes for education reform

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  • Reply 61 of 80
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by NolaMacGuy View Post

     

     

    i see no anger. lack of patience for idiocy isnt the same as anger. but like many christians, you probably delight at the notion of being persecuted.


     

    Us Christian's are just begging to be mocked and ridiculed, and possibly face imprisonment or death. Sounds like fun!  /s

     

    Persecution has been going on since the beginning of time and just now starting to hit America. Tens of thousands of Christians are currently being severely persecuted throughout the world – namely in China, Korea, Africa, India, and of course in the Mid East. Jesus promised persecution and that "the world would hate you because of me[Jesus]". Jesus, the Apostles, and countless followers of Christ have been murdered because of their faith. And for those who have murdered in the name of Christ, are NOT followers of Christ (meaning they are not following Christ's example). Jesus always commanded to tell the truth – but to do it in love. He never commanded we hurt or physically war against others but rather gave a perfect example of being a lamb to the slaughter... and He said to love your enemies. But that love also never asks us to shrink away from His truth or to disregard His word due to cultural demands. That's why He and the Apostle's died... because they relentlessly spoke the truth about God publicly – and speaking God's truth to others in love, no matter how difficult it may be for some to digest, is always an act of love.

  • Reply 62 of 80
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,309moderator
    Cook added that Alabama is "still too slow on equality for the LGBT community," citing a legal right to fire people based on their sexual orientation.

    There are more complications when it comes to this issue than with race. There are jobs where sexuality plays a factor in a person's suitability for a job role. There are some cases where this is seen as true for race - white cops in majority black neighbourhoods, white teachers in majority black schools but this is of much lesser importance. There was a case where a lesbian was fired from being a soccer coach for female students:

    http://mic.com/articles/11738/5-people-who-were-fired-for-being-gay-and-the-29-states-where-that-is-still-legal

    People often dismiss discussions of homosexuals when it comes to changing rooms like in the case of the gay NFL player not showering with the rest of the team:

    http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/08/27/espn-apologizes-after-report-on-gay-nfl-player-michael-sams-locker-room-showering-habits/

    but to dismiss this as irrelevant means invalidating their sexuality. If people genuinely respect someone's homosexual attraction as valid then it should be treated exactly the same way as having a male coaching a female soccer team with access to changing rooms or having female staff entering the male shower rooms. This happened in a private girl's school where they had a female sports teacher who had an affair with one of the underage female students:

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2745403/Lesbian-PE-teacher-26-sexually-abused-pupil-15-girls-private-school-jailed-15-months.html

    A straight female wouldn't have done that. Of course you can't assume that all people placed in intimate situations that fit with their sexuality will result in something happening but it absolutely increases the risk - straight male/female doctors with female/male patients for example. There are thousands of cases of male doctors/nurses inappropriately touching female patients that wouldn't happen with female doctors/nurses and this is leading to a majority of females in areas like nursing.

    These issues also apply to people who are transgender. Society places restrictions on people based on gender and always has done to reduce risk of abuse. Hiring a male or female would typically have been an easy way to get someone suitable for a particular job. Not having to declare sexuality complicates this significantly. We can't simply go the route of ignoring gender or sexuality in employment because it's going to escalate cases of abuse where people are put in positions of trust.

    Nobody should be fired due to someone's intolerance of sexuality but if someone has been chosen for a job role based on their suitability (having a perceived sexuality that means lowered risk of inappropriate behaviour) and it turns out they are no longer suitable based on their sexual attractions then they should be able to be fired for no longer being suitable for the role. It's like being disqualified from competing in sports when you change gender:

    http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/07/us/transgender-lawsuit-crossfit/

    The reason they separate men and women in sports is that they perform differently so if a male transitions to being female, their performance might still reflect male physicality and would be unfair to the other competitors.

    Obviously having the laws allows people to fire employees simply for being intolerant of their orientation but not having them means employers can't fire employees for having sexual attractions that might cause higher risk in their job role.

    One thing that came to mind with Apple's advertising is that I don't think they've ever used homosexual imagery in any of their marketing. All of their media shows heterosexual families, heterosexual couples. They show racial diversity but never sexual diversity. This can be justified by the ratio of the population represented but I would have expected it to have happened at least once.
  • Reply 63 of 80
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by zoetmb View Post

     



    That's not what I said or implied.   Without government involvement in marriage, you either don't have a legal status of marriage or you only have religious marriage (unless you turn the administration of marriage over to some private company, which I'm sure purist capitalists would love.)   

     

    Since there are laws and associated rights around marriage, which is the primary reason why LBGT couples need the right to marry, Government is always going to be involved in some way, unless people are permitted to declare themselves married simply on their own say-so.




    The problem occurred when the religious ceremony became ensnared with the legal record-keeping aspect and people determined they'd want their government to keep the records.

     

    "Marriage" should mean whatever people want it to mean, but the legal agreement indicating joint property ownership and all of the other stuff that goes with it should simply be called something else.

     

    Also, the many and varied laws that provide legal and tax advantages to marrieds is another absurdity that needs to be stricken. Equal treatment means no one gets favors or preference. Right now, marrieds receive unequal treatment not just versus gay couples, but versus single people. There are now more single people in the US than there are marrieds! This rewarding people for having kids nonsense has got to change.

  • Reply 64 of 80
    aaronjaaronj Posts: 1,595member

    Wow.  Just ... wow.

     

    Oh well.  Another site that isn't worth my time anymore.  It happens, I guess.  I had a good time while I was here, surprisingly so, it turns out.  Have fun waiting for prophecies to come true and for all that other BS.  Maybe Jesus will give you a new 5k iMac or something.

     

    Wow.  Later.

  • Reply 65 of 80
    dasanman69dasanman69 Posts: 13,002member
    "Marriage" should mean whatever people want it to mean, but the legal agreement indicating joint property ownership and all of the other stuff that goes with it should simply be called something else.

    Many places call them 'civil unions' to differentiate from 'marriage', but it's still the same thing. I just can't see why anyone would against same sex couples having the same civil rights as a hetero couple.
  • Reply 66 of 80
    dasanman69dasanman69 Posts: 13,002member
    aaronj wrote: »
    Wow.  Just ... wow.

    Oh well.  Another site that isn't worth my time anymore.  It happens, I guess.  I had a good time while I was here, surprisingly so, it turns out.  Have fun waiting for prophecies to come true and for all that other BS.  Maybe Jesus will give you a new 5k iMac or something.

    Wow.  Later.

    To be fair the threads like this are few and far between.
  • Reply 67 of 80
    Originally Posted by RichL View Post

    The Pope disagrees with you.

     

    1. He said nothing of the sort

    2. The Pope is not Christianity, its writings, or its teachings.

  • Reply 68 of 80
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Smurfman View Post

     

     

    Us gays are just begging to be mocked and ridiculed, and possibly face imprisonment or death. Sounds like fun!  /s

     


     

    Fixed it for you... because that's what has actually happened, unlike the fake victimization kick christians are on.

  • Reply 69 of 80
    nagrommenagromme Posts: 2,834member
    Thanks, Tim! More people need to be outspoken about the ignorance and hate still ingrained in so many. (Whether or not those people's hate comes from some HUMAN telling them how God wants them to vote, using a badly-translated Bible where they carefully cherry-pick which "rules" to follow and which are to be abandoned. Stone adulterers much?)
  • Reply 70 of 80
    Originally Posted by nagromme View Post

    Stone adulterers much?)



    Sounds like someone needs to go read it again.

  • Reply 71 of 80
    richlrichl Posts: 2,213member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post

     

     

    1. He said nothing of the sort

    2. The Pope is not Christianity, its writings, or its teachings.


     

    1. Yes, he did.

    2. The Pope is the leader of the largest Christian denomination and the position goes all the way back to St. Peter. He has ultimate say in doctrinal disputes within the Catholic church.

  • Reply 72 of 80
    dasanman69 wrote: »
    Many places call them 'civil unions' to differentiate from 'marriage', but it's still the same thing. I just can't see why anyone would against same sex couples having the same civil rights as a hetero couple.

    Rights are inherent. They cannot be given. It's only the constitutional duty of government to protect certain rights enumerated in the Constitution.. Anything beyond what limits the Federal government's activities and powers in the Constitution is up to the states and the people.
  • Reply 73 of 80
    Originally Posted by RichL View Post

    1. Yes, he did.




    No, not a word of that confirms what you claimed.

  • Reply 74 of 80
    richlrichl Posts: 2,213member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post

     

    No, not a word of that confirms what you claimed.


     

    What do you think I claimed?

  • Reply 75 of 80
    Originally Posted by RichL View Post

    What do you think I claimed?


     

    The opposite of what the quoted original post says, of course, meaning that the Pope believes in any way that homosexuality is either normal or acceptable.

     

    He does not, as your link shows. His stance is the same as Jesus’; that the sin is, of course, to be hated, punished, and remain unaccepted, but that the people guilty of its practice are to be treated as any other person.

     

    “Hate the sin, love the sinner,” in short.

  • Reply 76 of 80
    richlrichl Posts: 2,213member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post

     

     

    The opposite of what the quoted original post says, of course, meaning that the Pope believes in any way that homosexuality is either normal or acceptable.

     

    He does not, as your link shows. His stance is the same as Jesus’; that the sin is, of course, to be hated, punished, and remain unaccepted, but that the people guilty of its practice are to be treated as any other person.

     

    “Hate the sin, love the sinner,” in short.


     

    That's not what the Pope said. He said, "Who am I to judge?". Smurfman was clearly judging gay people for their sins.

     

    In the same article it quotes the Pope as saying "The problem is not having this [homosexual] orientation. We must be brothers." before criticizing lobbyists. 

     

    I'm sorry if that wasn't clear enough for you.

  • Reply 77 of 80
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post



    One thing that came to mind with Apple's advertising is that I don't think they've ever used homosexual imagery in any of their marketing. All of their media shows heterosexual families, heterosexual couples. They show racial diversity but never sexual diversity. This can be justified by the ratio of the population represented but I would have expected it to have happened at least once.

     

    I seem to recall some company recently running an ad that showed a mixed race couple and THAT caused a dust-up. A lot of folks like to believe that world is different than it is and don't like to be reminded of reality.

     

    "They don't think it be like it is, but it do."

     

    Recently the Lincoln Nebraska Public School System tried to erase any reference to gender in the classroom and schools. This was to accommodate children who may have a different gender identity than their bodies. The hoops they found they had to jump through to make this possible led to some amazing contortions of speech, which led to a real bruhaha at the school board meeting that led to the whole thing being thrown out.

    It's one thing to make sure everyone is equal before the law, and equally treated in society, but when the private or public sector tried to keep from hurting feelings because our language is gender specific, that seems to be like leaving Kansas in a tornado.

  • Reply 78 of 80
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,309moderator
    I seem to recall some company recently running an ad that showed a mixed race couple and THAT caused a dust-up. A lot of folks like to believe that world is different than it is and don't like to be reminded of reality.

    That would probably be this series of ads depicting a black man with a white woman and mixed race kid:


    [VIDEO]


    The comment section shows the reactions:

    I think that matches up with what you were saying about the school trying to change things to be gender-neutral. There are some stats here about interracial relationships:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_in_the_United_States

    It's down at around 2-3% - there could be different numbers outside of marriage and still with kids but it actually seems that the majority scenario in the black community is single parent (67%):

    http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/107-children-in-single-parent-families-by#detailed/1/any/false/868,867,133,38,35/10,168,9,12,1,13,185/432,431

    One of the Youtube comments was about why they tend to go with black male and white female and not the other way round and the stats show that this setup is over twice as common as black female with white male although there are high profile examples of this ( http://madamenoire.com/52576/white-men-in-hollywood-that-woo-black-women/ ).

    The problem is about representation. If the overall number of interracial families is in fact 2-3% or even 10% then it's very far from the typical family setup, which is the other 90-98% that most people identify with. For every 10-30 family setups that people would know, the setup shown in the ad would represent just 1 of them.

    The ads are meant with the best intentions of not excluding minorities but adverts are supposed to identify with potential customers and atypical depictions are going to affect that. The same is true all around the world - in China, it makes sense to show primarily Asian families. Mixed race depictions might actually be done not to show mixed race on purpose but to cover multiple races with a single ad without using multiple families.

    The proportion of the population identifying as gay is similarly very low, stats suggest 2% but some won't have come out. To take away gender-specific or sexuality-specific dialog in schools that is familiar to the 98% in order to benefit the 2% is not only difficult to do but it can end up having a worse effect because the minorities are being made to feel like they have created a burden in order to accommodate them and are being singled out for special treatment. I think the easier route there is to just have some part of the learning process to make people aware of different sexualities and do it in a way that's positive. It's very easy for people to confuse atypical with abnormal - uncommon doesn't inherently mean something is objectionable.

    One difference with race and sexuality is in the numbers. The combined population of non-whites in the US is set to overtake the population of white in the near future. White is at 64%, non-white (combined black, hispanic, asian) is 36%. I suspect the percentage of gay people won't escalate nearly as quickly so it could take longer to have issues dealt with. I think the attitude of upcoming generations towards it is positive though and that's really all it takes.

    I actually think a lot of negativity over issues like race, gender and so on are more defensive than offensive such as when a majority is made to accommodate a minority. For example, if someone came up to you and introduced themselves as a feminist, a black rights activist, animal rights campaigner or whatever, that declaration alone presents some hostility. They are declaring that there are unspecified issues that need sorted out and they want to do something about it and the declaration can be seen as accusatory and so there's pushback against that. This is like Tim's 'proud to be gay' statement where some people react with 'proud to be straight' as though there was an implication that it's either better to be gay or that there was an accusation that who he's sending the message to have declared being gay to be something to be ashamed of.

    Had the declaration not been made in the first place, I think a lot of negativity would never come out. Few people for example send abusive messages to women for the sake of it but in the case of the gamergate thing, when women were raising a complaint about how women are depicted in games then they get retaliation. The retaliation is then used as evidence of the problem but that isn't always a reliable measure. If you were to harass someone and they punch you, you can't then say 'see, told you they were violent'. They were violent in retaliation to what you did but your assertion would be that they are simply violent and not when provoked. There was a video posted online recently with a woman walking around with an open top and a bra camera to apparently show how guys look at women as sex objects but like I say, that's not really a reliable measure. If a ripped guy walks around with his shirt off, women look at him too, they don't shout things as often but sometimes.

    Another thing is when it comes to what the threshold is for the problem. A woman filmed herself walking around here and this is presented as harassment:


    [VIDEO]


    Most of the comments are simple greetings. This was on the Daily Show recently too:


    [VIDEO]


    [VIDEO]


    One woman there even said that making eye contact wasn't an invitation to chat or to get a compliment - if that's the case there has to be another signal invented, that would actually be quite good like a nose rub or something and then there can be a similar rejection signal for the other person like a nose pick, otherwise start the conversation. The 2nd video shows that women have a 'bitch face' that they put on to avoid getting any interaction while walking around. This is where this is going too far. I get the need to avoid the disgusting statements but women need to understand why these are being made. It's not because guys expect women to think those are complimentary, it's a test to see how tolerant the women are. The ultimate irony is that if the guys happened to be attractive, they'd think nothing of it. In fact, they'd hate it if an attractive guy didn't make a move on them like one of the older women in the above video mentioned.

    I don't see why the hostility is needed at all and this happens with race, sexuality and gender. People get far too worked up over these things and the media exacerbates it. There is obviously some need to air criticism but the criticism is so often exaggerated in order for people to take it seriously and that exaggeration is what gets the pushback. The sooner pot is legalised everywhere the better then everyone can just calm down and there'll be tolerance and equality for everyone because nobody will care enough to fight about it.
  • Reply 79 of 80
    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

    To take away gender-specific or sexuality-specific dialog in schools that is familiar to the 98% in order to benefit the 2% is not only difficult to do but it can end up having a worse effect because the minorities are being made to feel like they have created a burden in order to accommodate them and are being singled out for special treatment.

     

    The opposite seems to be true. The minority demands special treatment, regardless of its proportion, to, again, the detriment of the majority and the whole.

  • Reply 80 of 80
    I can think of hundreds of more important issue to tackle with than LBGT rights. Obviously this is a Tim Cook's own personal wishes than for the betterment of society here. Plenty of hetero folks chooses not to get married more than ever. How about fighting poverty, crime, healthcare, income inequality issues, etc. Apple have extracted and & benefited greatly from American consumers. What is their social responsibility here other than piling on the profits through tax shelters that ordinary people cannot reap. Apple haven't solved their own diversity problem and age discrimination. An old Apple engineer poses for a job at an Apple Genius bar and was denied employment even though he showed more than capable knowledge of Apple products.
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