> "We" can have a very
> successful meeting, depending on the value of "we."
> So, when we talk about "we," who's included?
> successful meeting, depending on the value of "we."
> So, when we talk about "we," who's included?
It's probably easier to enumerate who's excluded than who's included:
- Clearly, anyone who is not willing either as a matter of principle or a matter of concern for safety to travel to a country where engaging in consensual sex with their partner is illegal would be excluded. But in order to consider this a matter of personal safety, one would have to assume that something unusual would happen, because from that particular perspective, nobody has _in fact_ been arrested for such behavior since the 1990s, and I wasn't able to find a single example of a foreigner being arrested (which doesn't mean it's never happened). However, as a matter of principle, which you have expressed, this would exclude you, and that is definitely a bad outcome. I think it's quite reasonable to refuse to attend as a matter of principle, so we have to take this seriously. Of course you would be able to participate remotely, but we've had that discussion elsewhere, and it's not terribly comforting.
- Other people who are excluded are anybody who can't afford to travel to Singapore for a week, whether they live the next town over or in Florida.
- Other people who are excluded are anybody who is unable to get a visa. Vinayak Hegde spoke rather eloquently on this topic on the mtgvenue mailing list recently.
- Anyone who believes that flying internationally three times a year is too heavy of a carbon burden is excluded (I know several people for whom this is the case).
There are two problems with looking at it this way. First, from this perspective all venues look alike: there is no destination where everyone is welcomed equally. This is a point several people have made. The other is that it treats a matter of intolerance as equivalent to a matter of immigration policy. If you have suffered from intolerance all your life, this will seem unfair. If you have been treated as a third-class world citizen all your life, it will also seem unfair. You and I have a certain kind of privilege that people from countries like India and Mexico don't have, and that has to feel unfair to them. I have a kind of privilege you don't have, and I'm sure that feels unfair to you (FWIW, which isn't much, it also feels unfair to me).
In terms of the practical impacts of this, Singapore may well be less bad than the U.S. for more IETF participants. Or it may be more bad--I really don't know. But while the specific form of discrimination that we see with Singapore is indeed different, and objectionable to folks like you and me and Ted, the other kind of discrimination is completely invisible to us, except in the sense that some IETFs we don't see people we were hoping to see, who happen to come from those countries.
The point is, it is a perfectly valid position to say "as a matter of principle, the IETF should not go to Singapore because of their intolerance of LGBT people." But it is also a perfectly valid position to say "as a matter of principle, the IETF should go to Singapore, because it is an easier destination for a lot of Asian people than any destination outside of Asia." It's possible to frame the statements so that one sounds more acceptable than the other, but I think doing so is obfuscatory, not illuminatory.