[taradinoc]

I'd worry that the doctor might recommend dangerous and ineffective treatments, that the police officers would arrest me on false pretenses, and that the cleaner would steal my belongings and poison my groceries. So, yeah, I'd fire the cleaner, switch doctors, etc.

But... would I let myself attend an industry conference that's also being attended by someone who voted for a politician whose opinions or policies are hostile to me?

Yes. Of course.

I'd also attend a conference that's being attended by someone who thinks I'm going to hell when I die. I'd even attend a conference where one of the speakers thinks that. Because I don't have to trust conference attendees or speakers with my life or health; I don't have to interact with them at all, and if I do, it'll be in a busy public place; and if they were the kind of person to go into a blind rage when they meet someone like me in public, they probably would've done it already and gotten caught.

[Natanael_L]

There's a very wide range of sleazy but not illegal behavior as well as hard to prove illegal acts which also might affect the equation.

For a conference organizer, the primary question is how to make it a positive experience for as many visitors as possible, and that's the criteria they will use when determining who gets to visit.

If allowing a particular person to visit means several others will refrain from visiting, is it then a good idea to permit that? That's a value judgement for the organizers to make.

And if you think they made the wrong decision, feel free to tell them so or even to boycott it yourself, giving them a reason to consider other potential solutions.

[taradinoc]

>If allowing a particular person to visit means several others will refrain from visiting, is it then a good idea to permit that? That's a value judgement for the organizers to make.

That's part of it, but it's also a value judgment for everyone else to make.

In many cases, the rest of us in society care enough about how those decisions are made that we've passed laws prohibiting businesses from rejecting customers for certain reasons.

For example, if your market research shows that allowing Jews into your event results in lower overall attendance, because too many of the other potential attendees are anti-Semites who refuse to go to an event that allows Jews, you still don't get to ban them. We've established that making those opportunities equally available to all religions, ethnicities, genders, races, etc. is more important than maximizing profit. Even when that discrimination isn't illegal, it's often frowned upon by the culture.

And one reason for that is that we distinguish between the business deciding you can't visit them, and you deciding you can't visit them. We expect businesses to be inclusive, even if that means more people choose to exclude themselves -- because this way, the people who are excluded at least get a choice.

>And if you think they made the wrong decision, feel free to tell them so or even to boycott it yourself, giving them a reason to consider other potential solutions.

I've got no reason to attend a Kubernetes conference anyway, but I have the same interest as any other member of society in ensuring that people get treated fairly.

[Natanael_L]

We also purposefully do not extend that protection to literally everything distinct about a person. Even stuff like California's laws only protect employees from their employers when engaging in political action.

There's no universal legal protection against an entity responding to another person's general beliefs, if that entity consider those to be harmful.

We do not want to obstruct society from holding people accountable for harmful behavior.