js_africanus

I guess I don't see how you can hold that position and still claim moral superiority to a nazi.

What do promises have to do with it? We're talking about a business relationship, not contract. If the book keeper has to can her assistant because business is slow, she is no more breaking a contract than if she cans him because of his views on abortion. Or because he's a democrat. Or because he's an athiest. Or because he's not a seventh day adventist. Or because he didn't vote in favor of a local millage proposal. I suppose there are people out there who wouldn't be offended by that, but I wouldn't expect to find them here.

The book keeper/house keeper thing is to establish the chain of reasoning that makes the employer-employee relationship an equivalent case to the customer-firm relationship. If one is not offended by the idea of a boss firing an employee for her politics, then there is no point for one to be involved in this thread. However, for those who are offended by such an action, they have to show why the book keeper's assistant and the house keeper are not equivalent from this vantage point.

lisarea, of course, has thrown a wrench in my argument by creating a distinction between corporations and privately owned firms. I see two reasons for rejecting this distinction. First, privately owned firms can be just as big as many corporations, and more-or-less indistinguishable from the grass roots point of view. Would it matter if the nuclear power plant were a corporation merely run by Monty Burns vs. a nuclear power plant owned by Monty Burns?

Second, is that I don't really see why a corporation is different from the private business just because it is a non-living legal entity whereas a single propietorship is directly attached to one person. With a corporation, the decision to boycott is affecting myriad people, many of whom really can't be expected to be in the vanguard for whatever stance they choose to take. Can we really expect someone to shop for mutual funds on the basis of the all the possible permutations of boycottable positions a firm can take? Hurting Joe Retiree's mutual fund value just because he is not as militantly opposed to position X as we are is no better than wrapping ourselves in the rhetoric of "if you aren't with us, then you are against us."

xorbie

Really? Well then let me explain it to you. I don't see my right to have any opion I want as superior to his, but I do see my opinion as higher than his. Being disgusted with bigots and refusing to actively support their cause is NOT the same as being a bigot.

Notice how I said that this person gives a sizeable portion of their paycheck to support their cause, not just "happens to believe in something I find minorly distasteful." This active support is where I draw the line.

lisarea

I think, though, that some squishy factors can come into play here.

While I would certainly balk over a business firing employees over unrelated ideologies, I'd understand if, say, a small, home-based business just plain didn't want, for example, a Nazi in their employ, if it involved having that person in their home.

I really wouldn't stretch it beyond that, though. As long as the employee isn't bringing those beliefs and/or ideologies into the workplace and creating a hostile workplace in the process.

But as long as the employee abides by the terms of employment and does their job, I don't think that unrelated, privately-held beliefs should be cause for termination, no matter how odious.

I didn't mean to make a distinction between privately and publicly held companies, though. I meant to try to distinguish between privately and publicly held beliefs. That is, if the corporation itself--whether privately or publicly owned--is making donations to social or political causes that I find offensive, I'd have no trouble boycotting their goods and services. If, however, the donations are made by private parties who are merely affiliated with the company, I wouldn't boycott the company based on that.

I realize this gets a little fuzzy, in that corporate officers are generally rewarded in line with corporate profits, and it almost seems academic, in those cases, whether the corporate profits are going directly to the causes in question, or if they change hands by going through the corporate officer.

I'd still distinguish between corporate and private endorsement of those issues. Maybe if that there was some implicit corporate support of an issue I found offensive, I might endorse the idea of boycotting them based on that.