Re: Debian supports pridemonth?
Gerardo Ballabio <gerardo.ballabio@gmail.com> writes:
> Clearly, there must be a prior assessment that any particular group's
> values are aligned with Debian's values.
Sure, of course.
> And I don't think that this is, or should be, within the bounds of the
> Publicity Team delegation.
I think this is probably the place where we disagree.
That said, how *do* you want to handle this, assuming that other people in
the project do want to acknowledge important events for our community
members? For example, Debian has made note of Diwali in the past in
various ways (arguably less obviously than changing the logo, to be fair),
and it's been entirely uncontroversial.
Having a GR every time the project wants to acknowledge a day that is
important to part of the project seems rather excessive to me.
Perhaps it's just because I come from a work culture where this sort of
acknowledgement is entirely routine and unexceptional, but this all feels
like a tempest in a teapot to me. My position is that if some subgroup of
Debian wants some sort of acknowledgement that's meaningful to them, we
should default to doing so unless we have some obvious reason not to, and
I trust the Publicity Team to judge whether such a reason exists and
escalate or figure out some other approach if it does.
I think this is much less complicated than people are making it.
Now, if the *actual* issue here isn't about process, but is instead an
argument that Debian shouldn't be recognizing Pride, specifically, then we
simply disagree, and I'm not sure fiddling with the process is going to
help. And no, I don't think this is something the project should avoid
because it makes some people uncomfortable. If we have to hold a GR on
having Debian acknowledge Pride, I'll second it, and I suspect it will
pass easily; I just hope we can avoid that.
> An example that is probably more to the point: Debian certainly
> welcomes Israeli people, but if publicity were to issue a statement
> that Debian supports a Zionist initiative, I'm sure that many would
> object.
We could instead acknowledging Jewish holidays as a way of making our
Jewish community in general feel welcome (if that is something that would
be meaningful to them). For instance, Jewish co-workers at my job
organize an after-work Passover meal each year and invite anyone who wants
to join.
Corporations navigate this routinely, despite much stronger constraints
(even legal constraints) on what types of acknowledgements they can do.
> (There is of course a difference between being Israeli and being a
> Zionist. I'd argue that it is the exact same difference that there is
> between being LGBTQ+ and being an LGBTQ+ activist.)
Pride is not the activist event that it used to be, at least in the United
States and I believe in a lot of Europe. It's become very mainstream.
(This is something that some people in the LGBTQ+ community are also
rather frustrated with, as it turns out, but nonetheless, I think that's
where we are today.)
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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