Tag: LGBT

Dear BitBucket, please dial down your LGBT celebration

Dear BitBucket, can you please dial down your LGBT celebration.  Changing your website logo is one thing.

But adding 20+ lines with ANSI codes to the “git push” output and all without warning is way too much.  If you don’t believe me, check #bitbucket hashtag on Twitter, and see how many happy customers you have now.

P.S.: keep in mind that this is a paid service too. WTF?

Gay marriage: the database engineering perspective

Gay marriage: the database engineering perspective is a rather old article on how gay marriage (and other types of marriages) can affect technology, but somehow I missed it for all these years.

It’s interesting from a variety of perspectives – technical, social, and cultural.  It’s also somewhat tongue in cheek, yet insightful and thought-provoking.  Irrelevant of your views on the subject, I recommend this read.  Where else will you find 14 database schema designs trying to solve the same problem.

The legal ramifications of what I’m about to describe are unguessable. I have no idea what rights a civil union like the ones which would be possible below would have, nor do I have any idea what kind of transhuman universe would require so complex a system. This is the marriage database schema to take us up to the thirty-first century, people.

If databases are that difficult to adjust, I can’t even imagine the effort needed for humans…

Cyprus to have its first Gay Pride parade

Cyprus Mail reports:

Cyprus first-ever Gay Pride parade will be held in Nicosia on May 31 and it will be part of the 15-day-long Cyprus Pride Festival, according to ACCEPT LGBTI Cyprus head Costas Gavrielides.

Just for the record, I am against the parade.  Not against gay people, but against the parade.  I am as much against the Straight Pride parade.  I don’t think that sexual preferences are a good choice for parading.

As far as the actual rights, laws, and morals go – I do agree with some and do disagree with the other, but, once again, I think there are other ways to work them out.

Moscow bans gay parades for 100 years

Ria Novosti reports:

The Moscow City Court upheld on Thursday a district court’s decision to ban gay parades in Moscow for the next 100 years, Gayrussia.ru reported.

And people are saying there is no common sense left in Russian government.  There you go, proven wrong.  Well done, your honor.

Big picture of same-sex marriage

The latest post in Big Picture blog covers the subject of the same-sex marriage.  Being a huge fan of the blog, I feel responsible to share these pictures too.  The pictures themselves are beautiful, irrelevant of what you think about the subject.  That’s just great photography.

Now on to the subject.  There are a few things that I want to make clear, and even if I said them before, I want to emphasize them once again.

  • I am not against gay marriage. If that’s your thing – knock yourself out.
  • I am against calling it marriage. Maybe it’s just me, but the word “marriage” has a very precise meaning.  The same way I don’t call people who live together and have children together married, unless they went through a specific process, I don’t want to call same-sex unions “marriages”.  Just find another word for it.  That’s all I’m asking, and I don’t think that’s too much.  You can enjoy all the same rights married people do.  Just don’t call it “marriage”. Because it’s not.
  • I consider the argument “Why do you care if it does not involve you?” stupid. Not dumb or silly, but stupid.  Gay marriage is not about me or you.  It is about the society in which we live.  And that does involve both me and you.  Asking why I care is similar to asking why I care about the Gulf oil spill or a tsunami in Asia.  Those things do not involve me, and do not directly affect my daily life.  But they have big impact on the society in which we live.  And that’s why I care.  Even if I can’t do much about it.

I think that’s all I wanted to say today.  But feel free to continue the discussion in the comments.