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From: sdyer@bbncca.ARPA (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: Re: "Gay Rights"
Message-ID: <1146@bbncca.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 15-Nov-84 21:36:46 EST
Article-I.D.: bbncca.1146
Posted: Thu Nov 15 21:36:46 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 16-Nov-84 01:54:36 EST
References: <214@usfbobo.UUCP> <11300002@acf4.UUCP>
Organization: Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Ma.
Lines: 68

>There is no need to wonder what I'd do:  I thought I'd made that obvious.
>The question is: What would YOU do, Steve?  If a client calls me up and
>says I don't want your programmer here because he/she/it is a {______},
>I'll have to go with the client.  They bought that right, whether it is
>moral or not.  I have only one choice: go with the client and screw the
>he/she/it or fight the client, lose, and neither the he/she/it or I profit.
>I never said it was honorable, just pragmatic.
>Lofty ideals are wonderful.  But, as I stated, they do not pay the rent.
>I've lost too many "good" jobs (because I'm Jewish) not to hate this kind of
>discrimination. But doesn't the client have the right to say "Not in my
>house you don't!!"???
>But lets get away from the theory and get into the dirt: Steve Dyer, what
>would you do???
>And lets hear the rationale behind it.  And then tell us where you would
>replace those expected, possible already spent, lost funds due to YOUR high
>ideals (or am I presupposing that you'll do the "noble" thing, and tell
>the client something meaningful and relevant?).
>I'm waiting Steve......
>Ross M. Greenberg  @ NYU   ---->  allegra!cmcl2!acf4!greenber  <----

No one is saying that life isn't full of hard choices, and that often
one trades evil for evil in just trying to get by.  But, "What would YOU do?"
is not an answer to the question of what it takes to live a moral life.
Rather, it is a question recognizing that you have failed in this instance.

"What would YOU do" is the moral equivalent of the artist saying to the
critic, "So YOU do better!"  It is, at best, irrelevant to any discussion
of ethics.  I have never been in the situation you describe, though I have
long experimented with "thought experiments" about how I would react to
similar discrimination.  I have agonized over the possible repercussions
of coming forth in net.motss and mod.motss, and what to do in the face of
any such antagonism.  

If I had been the person offering the programmer to the client, and the
client refused because the programmer was whatever-the-offensive-group-you-
may-have, I'd say "screw the money and the client." The client may have the
"right" (in a perfect laissez-faire world) to hire whomever he wishes, but
he doesn't have the "right" to demand my services, "purchase" my conscience,
and cause me to compromise my basic principles.  I would withdraw my offer
along with the programmer, unless the programmer wished to fight it, and
not do business with that client again.  The client can then try to get his
job completed with the help of some other body shop.

One could imagine all sorts of extenuating circumstances surrounding a
decision to the contrary.  Some of them may be for entirely legitimate
reasons: "I'm about to go broke, my kids will starve, my wife will
leave me, and my mother is sick" or something similar.  Some of them
aren't quite so lovable: "I think that $9000 is more important than
my principles.  I mean, I can carry a $9000 loss, but money is money
and business is business."  These are hard issues, and only the person
faced with the choices can really be said to have faced them for certain.
Everything else is, as you say, "theory."

I can say one thing for certain: in my case, were I confronted with the
situation you describe, and I found for whatever reason that I was
unable to follow the "noble" (what quaint quotation marks) path, I
would have agonized over it long and loud.  I'd be unable to sleep,
my stomach would rebel, and my voice would croak as I had to tell the
programmer that s/he wasn't suitable because of the client's prejudice.
And I would be ashamed of myself, despite my own valid rationalizations.

I would never mention it in public, and I would NEVER use that shame as
a way to justify the actions of the client, that one who demonstrated
my own shortcomings as a person.
-- 
/Steve Dyer
{decvax,linus,ima,ihnp4}!bbncca!sdyer
sdyer@bbncca.ARPA