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Add an exception to politics at work rule

William Chia requested to merge patch-19795 into master

This tweet both angered and inspired me: https://twitter.com/stillinbeta/status/1184846163628965888

Awfully bold of @olearycrew to wear a rainbow @gitlab shirt when his company doesn't discuss “politics” in the workplace https://twitter.com/miah_/status/1182292723102973952?s=19 #escapeconf

I didn't like the implicit calling out of my friend @brendan although if I assume positive intent I can see the author is perhaps praising Brendan's support of LGBTQ people while using the example to call out potential hypocrisy or contradiction within GitLab policy.

The tweet's message is thought-provoking because it spawns the question, "Is LGBTQ automatically political?"

On the one hand, I give it a hard, "no." C'mon, people just want to live their lives. Just because they were born a certain way doesn't immediately make them a political statement.

On the other hand, I have to consider, "yes." We cannot be a company who claims a desire to be inclusive if we don't support the political change necessary to bring equality to people who don't have it today. I'm not proposing that GitLab take overt corporate stances on political topics, but I am proposing that at a minimum, we should be open to discussing them.

Censorship is a form of discrimination. Especially for marginalized underrepresented groups whose voices are often silenced.

Between the 2 evils of:

  1. Potentially making people feel excluded when their political opinion is in the minority
  2. Categorically excluding people by not allowing discussion of their plight simply because it is political

I'd put forth that 1 is the lesser of the two.

Edited by William Chia

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