[slykat]

I find it ironic that the same people protesting the contract would also protest a bakery that refuses to sell a product for say a same sex couple (or if you were in the 60s, restaurants that refused to serve blacks).

You either have a viewpoint that: 1) a business shouldn't make a moral judgement on its customers and be accessible to all 2) A business can make moral judgements on its customers and choose not to do business with customers considered immoral

If you are ok with #2 you are running into a slippery slope in my view. And if you are ok with #2 and you are one of the largest companies in the world, it is a very huge slippery slope.

[rtpg]

This is a false dicothomy

The actual (IMO correct) position most of these people share is the following two points at once:

- businesses should have a moral position, since businesses are just a set of people

- that moral position should be right!

This isn’t rocket science! Stuff like “don’t support a business doing bad stuff” and “support businesses doing good stuff” is just really basic consumer activism.

There’s no need to go deep in metaphysics. It’s literally just “support good things, don’t support bad things”

[Thorentis]

This is not a false dichotomy at all.

Businesses should have a moral position, sure.

That moral position should be right? According to who? The business itself? Then that second point is redundant. Everybody thinks their moral position is right, that's what morals are. It's a tautology otherwise.

GitHub employees think their moral position on ICE is right. Many disagree. But according to them that's fine, because they think they're right so should be able to boycott who they like.

Replace Github with bakery refusing to serve same-sex couples. Bakery thinks they're right. Many disagree. But according to them that's fine, because they think they're right so should be able to boycott who they like.

You only think it's a false dichotomy because you personally disagree with the bakery and (presumably?) agree with Github. By saying "the moral position should be right", is you simply saying "and they should agree with me otherwise they are wrong".

[Sophistifunk]

> - that moral position should be right

You do realise that what this actually means is "this person agrees with me"

[malvosenior]

Many, many people feel that enforcing existing immigration laws is morally right and a "good thing".

I think defining what is morally right is harder than rocket science and literally impossible in some cases.

[manigandham]

The whole point of morality is that it is subjective. You can not determine what is right as a rule.

[aeturnum]

I do not think the dichotomy you outlined accurately describes how things work

I mean, this is why we have developed the idea of a "protected class."

Because you're correct that, at the end of the day, judgement is judgement and sentiment is sentiment and everyone is the hero of their own story.

But to place the limits of proper action at sentiment is solipsism.

So there is a set of protected classes which we, as a society, have decided are inappropriate reasons to discriminate against people. The quick reasons it is wrong to discriminate: sex, race, age, religion[1]. There are many reasons we allow people to discriminate: lack of money, being violent to employees, being unacceptably rude, setting off explosives, etc. These are all discriminatory practices that often involve moral judgement.

We are always in the process of trying to decide if we should have a new protected class and how that class should be defined. I also suspect we will, at some point, talk about removing protected classes.

Businesses should (and in fact always do) make moral judgements about their clients. The people at Github who chose to work with ICE decided it was morally right for them to do so. You can tell because they did it. They might say they were sad about it and had "moral qualms" but at some point it does seem like it comes down to yes or no.

So do you think we should have a government agency class? Or perhaps a law enforcement class? I personally do not.

[1] Some exceptions here, of course, a mosque does not have to hire a catholic priest who applies to be an imam.

[icelancer]

>> race

Unless you're Asian/Asian-American, of course. Then it is fine to negatively discriminate against you.

https://www.stanforddaily.com/2019/10/03/judge-rules-in-favo...

[_7bxa]

The difference is not serving black or queer people isn't a moral judgement -- it's just discrimination (there isn't anything inherently wrong with being Black the same way there isn't anything wrong with being queer or Asian or Indian, those things aren't a choice unlike being a Nazi). At best, not serving minorities is a shitty moral judgement.

Not serving ICE is a more legitimate moral judgement because ICE has the option to change their behavior and ICE is genuinely bad.

Slippery slope is one of those silly things I see from free speech advocates. I tend not to see the bad impacts in real life because if the government isgoing to restrict free speech, they will do it regardless of what anti-hate speech laws currently exist.

[ljm]

There is nothing inherently wrong with serving ICE. You might not like it, but many of your compatriots do.

I don't like what they do at all, I think it's reprehensible, backwards, and purely uncivilised. But people you utterly hate have friends too, and they see something different than you do, and we do not have a singular moral world-view.

This situation with ICE should totally change, but that change is a function of your vote, not a function of protesting against Gitlab.

I very strongly argue that there should never be a single perspective on morality, in the way that these posts suggest there should.

[cscurmudgeon]

So can a business refuse to serve democrats?

[slykat]

Do you not see the negative repercussions for businesses serving the public to be allowed to make a moral judgement on who they do business with?

[chillwaves]

If racists had self awareness, they wouldn't be racists.