Google Takes A Stand

Google hasn’t always lived up to its informal motto of “Don’t Be Evil”–their complicity in China’s internet censorship policy, though perhaps understandable in business terms, was a pretty stark departure from their purported belief of defending ethical causes.

But its recent decision to take a public stand against California’s Proposition 8, a proposed ballot initiative that would nullify the State Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage, is to be commended.  Said their co-founder Sergei Brin,

it is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8…we should not eliminate anyone’s fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love.

Brin is admirably candid on what the affect of Proposition 8 would be: namely, that a minority segment of the population would be treated as second-class citizens.  There really is no other way around this issue, and no parsing ought to be necessary.  This is fundamentally about ensuring that the law must stand athwart concerted attempts to create unequal divisions amongst citizens for dubious reasons (a view that this New York Times op-ed makes powerfully and succinctly).

It seems thankfully inevitable that gay marriage will one day be a uniformly accepted institution in America and the West.  Google should be applauded in its effort to quicken the pace of that eventuality.