[EliAndrewC]

grellas' argument doesn't sit right with me either, but I disagree that his argument was tactless or intended to derail anything. When grellas writes:

> Principle is more important here than a particular outcome. What happens with Ms. Rice is not the issue here.

I get why you'd see that as trying to derail more specific discussion, and why you'd disagree with that statement in general. However, I see it as part of a good-faith argument that blocking employment based on political beliefs (or even actions) is generally harmful to society, even if we feel we have valid reasons in a specific case.

[elbear]

In what way is it harmful to society?

[EliAndrewC]

grellas makes two basic arguments in the post I replied to, which I will attempt to summarize:

1) Refusing employment based on beliefs has been historically bad, e.g. Christians refusing to hire or do business with Jews, and blacklists for suspected Communists. Such things are in fact SO bad that they outweigh any/all good that might be done by applying such filters in cases where we feel they're justified.

2) Startup culture specifically is about joining together diverse people to build great things. Even if we stipulate that filtering out business leaders with "bad" political beliefs had some benefit, there's disproportionate harm done by the startups that will not succeed because they handicapped themselves in this way.

I'm not sold on either of those arguments, though I think they both have merit.

[ericd]

It harms our ability to have open and candid discussions on contentious topics.