Hm, okay, thanks for walking me through that.
I think the bottom line is that for people who find IETF barely affordable, the concern about being able to bring family along is a bit of a first world problem. I don't really buy the idea that the IETF shouldn't do anything to accommodate those people who are able to bring family along, if doing so is easy, but it would be absurd for that to be a stronger motivating factor in choosing venues than the ability of likely attendees to get visas, for example.
ISTM that the number of people meaningfully negatively affected by bringing IETF to Singapore is likely quite a bit smaller than the number of people positively affected by bringing IETF to Singapore. Has anybody done that comparison?
On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 3:48 PM, Melinda Shore <melinda.shore@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 5/24/16 11:41 AM, Ted Lemon wrote:
If we are going to bring breastfeeding into this, which seems
reasonable, it's worth asking if someone can actually construct a
situation in which the breastfeeding mother would be present with the
baby, but the local government would not recognize _her_ parental
rights.
We looped down a side-road. Apparently there's some feeling
that the way to solve the problem with familial rights in same-
sex families not being recognized in Singapore is to simply
eliminate the companion program (a very Kim Davis solution).
I said I don't like the companion program because I think it
tends to over-emphasize the role of meetings in our processes.
Alia answered with a concrete example of why the companion program
is useful and should be continued. I don't think anybody
was arguing that there's a legal issue related to parental
rights around breastfeeding (although I understand that
there's a ton of legal issues, and local variability in
those legal issues, around public breastfeeding).
Melinda