As an Internet company, Google is an active participant in policy debates surrounding information access, technology and energy. Because our company has a great diversity of people and opinions -- Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, all religions and no religion, straight and gay -- we do not generally take a position on issues outside of our field, especially not social issues. So when Proposition 8 appeared on the California ballot, it was an unlikely question for Google to take an official company position on.
However, while there are many objections to this proposition -- further government encroachment on personal lives, ambiguously written text -- it is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8. 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.
(Source: Official Google Blog)
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Saturday, September 27, 2008
Our position on California's No on 8 campaign
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1 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.
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