I'll come out and say I read Scoble. I don't have to admire the man to gain a little bit of insight from what he talks about (though I do respect and admire him to a healthy degree).
When I first heard of the story, it was from Robert's blog post here. Robert's post is concise and informative. It's small but it gets to the point quickly yet with a certain calmness to it. Robert links to a blog post here which seems to be the exact opposite end of the spectrum. It's seething with hatred, so much so that I'll admit it rubbed off on me but not the right way. What bugs me the most is not the anger, but the fact that they are directing their anger towards an entity that has exactly 0% say in the matter.
We've developed a system in this country where elected officials are accountable for the laws they pass or deny, no other entity can claim that responsibility. Despite this fact, people are quick to blame Microsoft simply because it took a neutral stance. According to dictionary.com, neutral can be defined best as this definition: Not aligned with, supporting, or favoring either side in a war, dispute, or contest. What I find to be the most ironic is that people believe that neutral really doesn't mean you belong in the middle, you are either for something or against it. Why is that so ironic? Because the Bible basically states that you are either for God, or against God and there is no neutral ground. People want to be neutral with God yet bent out of shape when you say you're neutral on one particular issue. The door doesn't swing both ways on that one.
I won't deny that I am Christian nor will I deny that God has beef with homosexuality. God loves homosexuals, he just loathes the practice of being homosexual if that makes sense. I don't believe homosexuality is natural simply because you can't produce a child without some sort of outside stimuli. Until humans somehow “evolve“ so that this can happen outside of medical science, I'll always consider it an unnatural act. That's just my personal opinion and I'm not going to debate it, I need physical evidence to persuade me. I have no real say in this matter as I'm not a resident of the state of Washington nor do I work for Microsoft. My only stake in this is that I'm a human being who observes the world around him and is not afraid to raise his hand when he sees something not quite right.
House Bill 1515 was defeated by one vote, by one politician. Last time I checked, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Jim Alchin, and the rest of Microsoft were not elected officials, so how can they be the one that ultimately “killed the bill?“ They withdrew their support for the bill, claiming a neutral stance. I will agree that the timing does look severely fishy but I think it was just an uncommon coincidence. I don't particularly like some mega church preacher gets to hold his head high and pat himself on the back publicly over this, particularly because he had nothing on earth to do with it. This preacher is no more an elected official than Bill Gates yet him claiming victory is equally as foolish as someone blaming Microsoft.
Who is the responsible party for killing House Bill 1515? The 25 people who voted against it. Not the one person who didn't vote for it, but every single person who voted against it. These 25 elected officials are accountable for their vote, not Microsoft, not this preacher or anyone else for that matter. Why aren't people blaming them? Why don't I see a myriad of blog posts giving all 25 officials names, email addresses, and phone numbers for people to “express their opinion“. The only logical explanation I have is somewhere communication wasn't enforced as it should be. When I communicate my problems to those who can do something about them, conversation ensues so that my problem eventually goes away. If I try to call Microsoft tech support about a Microsoft product, they will most likely be able to solve my problem. If I contact Microsoft tech support about a toaster, I don't think I'll be fixing my toaster any time soon yet that's exactly what is going on here.
What I find the most disturbing is that the gay community is treating this bill as a death row inmate that just had it's last appeal. The bill as it's known now has been shot down but that doesn't stop someone from drafting a better bill that could actually get passed. People say there's nothing wrong with House Bill 1515 but apparently there had to have been for it to have been shot down. I believe a bill should stand on it's own merit and if it wasn't approved because officials wanted a couple of extra bucks from a corporation, too bad. If that's the type of government Washington State has, their elected officials are nothing more than common criminals. Logic leads me to believe that this bill had some flaw, albeit probably minor that kept it from passing though it wouldn't be the first time elected officials elicited bribery to pass key legislation.
Does Microsoft necessarily need this bill to be passed? No. They already treat their employees in the manner defined by the bill. Not one thing would change for Microsoft when the bill was passed. Why did Microsoft withdraw support then if this were true? I don't know, I'm not Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer so I can't answer that question completely. The memo from Steve Ballmer here, does somewhat explain why things turned out the way they did. Some people think that Microsoft caved to their shareholders wishes but that's not totally the case. If Microsoft were to support the bill, they would have had to shell out money most likely which directly affects shareholders whereas social issues in and of themselves will never affect shareholders. The issue is not particularly gay rights but how much money they'll contribute to gay rights and since Microsoft is in effect “owned“ by it's shareholders, they must be taken into account when making these kinds of decisions. If this could have been done without monetary support, I'm sure Microsoft would have done so but it seems to me that this boils down to cash more than it does rights. Pathetic.
Where does the gay community go from here? There's a couple of options:
- Contact your elected officials repeatedly until a better bill can be drafted. Make sure they keep out as much negativity as possible because 9 times out of 10 there's always something negative lumped in with something positive.
- Complain to your elected officials, not Microsoft or the internet through blog posts. People are sympathetic to a lot of causes but this one is not just if you don't do your part.
- Hate only begets hate. Being angry about this is good, but wanting to actually kill someone over it is foolish. I won't deny that people are downright nasty towards gays but it doesn't give you license to hate others, especially those who've done nothing to you or in this case actually support you.
- Fight the good fight. Don't be discouraged. If it takes 1 million House Bill 1515's, then stay the course until it's passed. Giving up now or any time in the future means you are letting them win.
Now that I bring this post to a close, I wanted to give some more links. There's another americanblog post here, but it spouts hateful rhetoric. It tries to explain ties from Microsoft to those of the “religious right“ though there is nothing from Microsoft explaining it so one has to believe a little bit of FUD might be floating around that blog and it's comments.
Tobin weighs in on a blog post from Apress, his publisher, here. I agree with Tobin's response though at least the post incites a civil discussion. 3 million dollars is a lot of money to throw away though, so I'm glad Microsoft isn't going to put any of the suggestions from the post into action. I do wish we lived in a country where money didn't talk and bullchit didn't walk but apparently we've “progressed“ this far.
The best discussion by far is between Cyrus and BT on Cyrus' blog here. BT understands our government quite well and brings logic to the table in their debate. It's refreshing to see knowledgeable people of this caliber having a civil discussion on the topic. I check back every so often to see where the discussion has progressed because it's the only one I find interesting. Hateful rhetoric and paranoia really isn't my thing any more, so I think I'll be staying away from the majority of other posts on the subject. I'll try to also install a brain filter that's roughly defined as: if hate > 50% of the total amount of information, stop reading. I didn't do that with americanblog and it ended up pissing me off way too much. I should focus on people who actually understand the topic at hand, not those that just want to make themselves feel better by hating others.