omicron1 said:
Remember the ridiculous Orson Scott Card boycott campaign?
How is it that equal and opposite actions receive equal and opposite reactions? Everyone who loved the boycotts (people expressing their displeasure with a company's association and inferred views) apparently hates the emails (dem horribul conservatives, durr). Just a thought.
Let me see if I can clear this up for you.
Group A wants to be free from oppression and so they and their allies boycott their oppressors.
Group B wants to keep Group A oppressed and so boycotts anyone who tries to help Group A attain equal rights or equal representation.
You may not, but many people see those two things as morally very different. I put forth that protesting to gain equality is not equivalent to protesting to deny people equality.
Let's put this in a concrete example.
Before the Supreme Court case Loving v. Virgina in 1967 is was perfectly legal for states to prohibit people of different races from marrying.
Set Up: So say a black woman and a white man want to get married (perhaps my parents...who luckily were in California where it wasn't illegal). They want to have the same rights as a same-race couple. They are denied that right.
Situation 1) Some author writes a book about how blacks and whites should never marry...because we can't change the institutions of marriage, it is bad for society, they don't want to have to see a black and a white person kissing because it creeps them out, etc. People who believe in the concept of equality boycott that author. They boycott in order to further freedom and equality and tolerance.
Situation 2) Star Trek has black woman Uhura and white man Kirk kiss in an episode. A bunch of people who don't like black people, don't like the idea of black people and white people kissing, don't want to change the institution of marriage to extend equal rights decide to boycott and write letters of protest to Paramount. They boycott in order to further oppression, inequality, and intolerance.
If you value what the Declaration of Independence, one of the founding documents of the USA, says, that "we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." If you further also consider black people (or women, or gay people, etc) to be human beings...then you should be fine with boycotting those who undermine the fabric of our nation by denying those self-evident truths--those anti-American people who don't believe in equality and in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Similarly, you should also be against boycotts that try to further un-American values of intolerance, inequality and oppression.
