Sure, the then unemployed slaves can then starve from the mass unemployment and lack of social security.

No, by displacing the means of production of a whole agricultural sector. Eliminating slavery all at once when they were so dependent on it would be like us banning farming machines today in an instant. Recipe for disaster.

Who said anything about continuing slavery? You don't just ban it, you migrate away from it while providing solutions to the massive hole left in the labour sector.

Machine harvesters would have done the job.

Until the south started trading directly with europe instead of the north, few seemed to object to slavery in the north enough to take action.

The north had just spent a whole lot of money on other conflicts, and needed the resources.

It was more about the north trying to screw over the south economically. Provide an economical way for the cotton fields to be harvested and the need for slaves goes away. If someone tried to destroy my livelihood I'd fight against it tooth and nail too.

It is sad how much slavery there is today though. While there is officially no slavery, that tends to just means it's harder to know when you are one.

You're putting more resources towards one group because of their race/gender. This is unfair.

It is unfair because it is striving for equal outcomes not equal opportunity.

You may have equal opportunity at the employer level, but at the education level you're fighting for equal outcomes, even if to get equal outcomes it requires a disproportionate amount of resources to certain groups.

The solution to unfair discrimination is not more unfair discrimination.

Except that it didn't, his gay coworkers would have never picked up on it because he's treated them fairly and by their ability to do the job (why some of them were so surprised).

This comes to separating personal views and business. You're assuming he can't, when it's quite clear he can considering what his gay coworkers have said about him.

It shouldn't matter what his views are so long as it does not affect how he does his work/manages people. Show me evidence he treated gays differently at work and it will be a different story.

Polyamory is just a different word they're using for polygamy because of the stigma attached to it, same deal in the end.

Polygamy is having many spouses, perhaps you got polygamy mixed up with polygyny?

You criticise the idea, not the man though.

That a person holds ideas you dislike in one area should not affect his work in a totally unrelated area. To do so is holding people to criteria not relevant to the task, what a lot of people tend to consider "unfair discrimination".

If he had not donated money, and instead only voted, isn't voting worse? Instead of indirect action he's taking direct action. What is being advocated here is intolerance to others political views. The very people preaching tolerance are the ones being the most intolerant. You can want gay marriage to not be a thing while simultaneously respecting others views that it should be a thing.

Marrying isn't really a right, it's a privilege. One that even the gay activists seem content to restrict to only "between two people" just like others want to restrict it to "between a man and woman" I don't see them fighting for polygamists or for people to be allowed to marry in-family. They want to extend the privilege to themselves without extending it to others who also aren't allowed it.

Actually, if he is tolerant, and others are being intolerant of him, we should tolerate their intolerance. So it applies anyway.

I'd like to think I'm being tolerant of your intolerance, I might not agree with you on things, but I'd hardly punish you over it like you would eich since you consider him intolerant. I would hope that you understand the troubles with hindering open discussion of things by having people punished for their views in unrelated items, even if it's for things people find abhorrent.

Only for the first few generations, when inbreeding is common (think thoroughbred horses) the nasty recessive genes are filtered out over time.

Doesn't necessarily have to be that way, there are women who would like multiple husbands etc. Complicates child rearing responsibility a bit, but that's their choice.

I think a lot of people in the poly crowd would think that saying "being poly is bad for society" is very similar to when some people say "being gay is bad for society".

type "define crucify" into google, you will see aside from the first, literal meaning. 2. informal criticize (someone) severely and unrelentingly. "our fans would crucify us if we lost" synonyms: condemn, criticize severely, attack, tear apart, tear to pieces, censure, denounce, arraign, lambaste, pillory, carp at, cavil at, rail against, inveigh against, cast aspersions on, pour scorn on, disparage, denigrate, deprecate, malign, revile, vilify, besmirch, run down, give a bad press to; More

Chances are you knew the intent, purposefully misconstruing things to paint a different picture than intended can be a bit straw-man'ish.

Associative meaning is a thing

Bigotry: 1. intolerance towards those who hold different opinions from oneself.

No matter what he believes, he can be tolerant of what you believe in. It is not a 'bigoted opinion' or 'bigoted cause' because no matter what he believes in he can be willing to tolerate your difference of opinion.

"Tolerance doesn't mean tolerating only those who tolerate you. Tolerance means also tolerating those who don't tolerate you. If you live by the former, then you believe the Black Panthers were right, and Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. were wrong. The former leads to all-out war. The latter leads to coexistence. When Prop 8 passed, I didn't rub it in the faces of my gay friends. I encouraged them to not lose hope and to continue fighting for what they believed in, because that is the way our system is set up to work. Everyone gets their (thorough) say before society as a whole decides what to do, and the losers (usually the minority, though in Prop 8's case it was the majority) agree to live with the outcome without resorting to violence, while the winners do not resort to outbursts of Schadenfreude."

Being tolerant to the intolerant may be the harder path, but it is the path to a civil society. From what I've seen of the man he seems quite tolerant, if only his detractors were so.

But that's exactly what the gay activists are doing. What about polygamous couples? They're still limited. "But marriage is between two people" .. sounds an awful lot like "but marriage is between a man and a woman". It limits the privilege. Unless you want it to be not limited at all (incestuous relationships, polygamy, etc) but I haven't heard anyone putting that forward.

Being married isn't a right, it's a privilege.

A privilege that gay activists seem to want without extending it past themselves to other groups who are excluded from it also.

How indirect do you want to go?

Talking butterfly effect kind of stuff here, we are all connected, we do not live in a closed system. You could do things that support them even without your knowledge. Would you look at what stock he's invested in and purposefully try to harm those companies through boycotts because purchasing from them would support him?

where do you draw the line?

So long as he doesn't bring it up at work, he gives you a job, you do the job. Politics and personal affairs stay at home. Not a problem.

"Well, the problem isn't so much the freedom as the principle. People want to do something that a huge number of people consider controversial. Someone uses their democratic right and votes against it. A different group of people publicly lynch that someone for taking an opposing view. It's unhealthy to society for people who hold opposing views to be crucified. It's uncivil and counter-productive."

A lot of people tend to consider discrimination the using of criteria irrelevant to the problem (like being a certain ethnicity/sex does not mean you are better/worse for the job.. except where it does, like the job of a prostitute catering to heterosexual men). The mans political views do not come into play at work, so he is being discriminated against unfairly.

A lot of slashdotters are problem solvers that really dislike problem criteria that are really quite irrelevant. Does the fact he personally supports homosexuals not being able to marry affect his technical management of a browser? Not really.