While we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of this argument, we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality. We hope that California voters will vote no on Proposition 8 -- we should not eliminate anyone's fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love.Read the full blog post.
9.26.2008
Google opposes California's anti-gay marriage bill
From Sergey Brin, Co-founder & President of Google:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
This is sad. It's the modern version of "church and state", now its multinational companies and politics mixing where they shouldn't.
"While we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of this argument, we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality. We hope that California voters will vote no on Proposition 8 -- we should not eliminate anyone's fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love." (Google blog)
This argument with exactly the same words could be used to support marriage between an adult and a minor, and polygamy, and even forced marriages. Something is very wrong here.
I am getting quite frustrated with the amount of people thinking that the issue is about equality. It's not. Equality has already been achieved. All adults have the right to marry an adult of the opposite biological sex, regardless of sexual orientation. There is no discrimination. What most people in the gay/lesbian/transgendaral/etc rights camp want is to redefine marriage, and to give, not just themselves, but everyone extra rights, ie, the right to marry an adult of the same biological sex. They want extra rights for everyone, not a right that everyone but them already has.
So it's not about equality at all. It's about the definition of marriage, something I don't think Google as a multinational company should have an official policy on.
I was surprised that Google took this stand, and I appluad them! I am sure they took the time to discuss it and carefully phrase both their corporate policies and the statement. They will no doubt see many criticisms of this decision, but hopefully as many accolades.
I don't believe that anyone is trying to redefine marriage; they're simply trying to get the laws changed so that the term applies equally to all couples.
I find it hard to see how affording everyone these "extra" rights (a question-begging description - which rights are the 'extra' ones?) would adversely affect anyone.
What I hear is the annoying, ever-squeaky wheel of irrational fear once again standing in the way of love and equality. It's happened before, it will happen again. We shall overcome.
Welcome to the blog, jamnastic! I appreciate you chiming in but I have to respectfully disagree with your position.
The polygamy and marrying-a-minor arguments are the classic "slippery slope" arguments used against gay marriage, and as such, they just don't hold water. We're talking about two adults, just two, both adults, both consenting. The sky will not fall and marriage as an institution will be no worse for the wear - in fact, it'll probably be better off - if two people of the same gender get married.
Two other points..."transgenderal" is not a word. I think you mean "transgender" (though I appreciate you invoking the entire continuum of LGBT in your argument - lots of folks forget to do that).
Also, fun fact - biological sex is not as clearly defined as you think. We can't perfectly define it by chromosomes, since some people are X0, some are XXY, etc. We can't clearly define it by genitalia, since many people are born with indeterminate genitals. And obviously gender expression is all over the map. There is actually no absolute cut-and-dry method to categorize 100% of the human population into male and female. So saying everyone has the right to marry the opposite gender even has fuzzy implications.
Gods bless the fuzzy implications!
Post a Comment