Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Good for Google

From the Google blog:
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.
I think the title of the post sums up how I feel about this. I like how the tone of the piece is measured, and also how it explains why at this juncture Google is getting into the act of speaking out about social issues.

I also like this video on the matter:



It is an incredible well done piece.

3 comments:

John said...

I thought it was "faith, hope and charity, the greatest of these is hope." Then again, I'm remembering that from an episode of Red Dwarf rather than actually consulting the Good Book.

petpluto said...

You would know better I would! I didn't even recognize it as a biblical quote at first.

petpluto said...

Looked it up (should have done that before I posted that first comment):

http://bible.cc/1_corinthians/13-13.htm

Yours is definitely on the list, but most of them feature the love quote mentioned.