[cato_the_elder]

Well, that's right thing to do IMO. It may be true that what happens in people's bedrooms is not government's business, but it's also true that the state has no obligation to subsidize particular lifestyles, especially when it's tantamount to waging a culture war on it's population.

[dang]

We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not allowed here, regardless of which ideology you favor. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

[cato_the_elder]

Well, I object to this for multiple reasons.

First of all, it would be nice of you to at least looked at the responses to this comment, and reminded users that many of those are explicitly against HN guidelines (which is objectively true, with comments like just "What on earth?" [1], and my comment is essentially stating an opinion clearly acceptable in e.g. Singapore, and I know one of your goals on HN is to not be completely US-centric). Browbeating is clearly not what HN is for, and IMO allowing it would cause a lot more damage than allowing accounts primarily used for politics. Curious political discussion has some real content, browbeating doesn't.

Secondly, the effect of that policy is to essentially ban accountants with unpopular political opinions on one side of the spectrum (because people don't want to associate it with their normal work, for obvious reasons). One evidence for this is that you've probably banned more accounts on one side of political spectrum with that rationale. That should be easy to check, since the politics of accounts which use HN primarily for politics should be quite clear from their commenting history. I'm not accusing you of personal conscious bias against right-wingers in moderation here, I'm just pointing out that policy would result in more of them getting banned, since more of them have no choice but to try to conceal their identity (due to "consequences" at work, etc.). Remember what happened to Brendan Eich?

Thirdly, I disagree with your characterization of my comments as "ideological battle". I'm merely stating my political opinions, I have tried to never escalate into personal attacks, and I have tried to always add something concrete and interesting to the discussion, along the HN'a norm of intellectual curiosity. To me, ideological "battle" would imply the kind of dogmatic political rallying I got in response to my comment.

Finally, it seems that you are banning my account on a first strike. I don't remember having any previous negative interaction with the mods.

P.S. After posting this, I also noticed that you have "shadow banned" me, in the sense that my comment looks completely normal to myself when logged in, but I can't find a trace of it when logged out. That's an unethical practice in my books, and something that you have explicitly stated that you reserve for spammers and serial trolls [2].

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32544213

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30342925

[dang]

Shadowbanning means banning someone without telling them. I just told you.

I did look at the replies and it's true that some of them were terrible and against the site guidelines, but your account was by far the greatest problem, given that you initiated a flamewar and perpetuated it with 20+ comments. Pointing the finger at others, when you've broken the rules so badly yourself, is not a good look. One might mention individual responsibility as a value here.

I think you make an interesting point about ideological asymmetry. Maybe there is a systemic factor in that way—or maybe it's just that certain classes of account are more likely to fulminate and otherwise break the rules ("commit more crimes", as some might say in another context)—or maybe both? I don't know, and I don't see what difference it would make to moderation. Should the fire department hose two sides of a burning house equally, regardless of which way the wind is blowing, lest it give an appearance of bias? It's our job to prevent this place from burning itself down. For that we have certain rules and we apply them as evenhandedly as we know how. That involves pointing the hose where the fire is.

If you or anyone thinks the rules aren't optimal, I'd be happy to hear suggestions for better rules—as long as everyone understands that "better" has a clear definition in HN's context, because we're optimizing for one specific thing (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).

[8note]

Isn't this amendment adding an obligation on which lifestyles the state can subsidize though?

If the state should be free to choose, it should be free to choose, not be limited by the constitutional text.

You'll have to explain how gay people being allowed to visit their loved ones on their death beds as a culture war against "the population" though.

Are gay people not part of "the population" ? I'd expect the population to be the set of all people in the country, not some subset that you happen to like

[cato_the_elder]

> If the state should be free to choose, it should be free to choose, not be limited by the constitutional text.

I'm making a distinction between the state and the government. The state also includes people who write and interpret the constitution.

> You'll have to explain how gay people being allowed to visit their loved ones on their death beds as a culture war against "the population" though.

I'm not sure why would you think I'd be against that.

> not some subset that you happen to like

It's not just some subset, it's the overwhelming majority.

[washbrain]

> it's also true that the state has no obligation to subsidize particular lifestyles

So you oppose heterosexual marriage as well? As it is also a particular lifestyle.

[cato_the_elder]

See my other comment below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32544217.

[SamReidHughes]

Singapore has benefits for married couples with the intention of boosting fertility rate, such as better access to HDB's. It's inappropriate to apply this to pairs of men.

Also, note that it has two kinds of marriages already, with different rules -- civil marriage, and Muslim marriage.

[mikojan]

Except when the state is subsidizing heterosexual lifestyles to wage a culture war on its population

[JohnJamesRambo]

What on earth?