Google Swings Left Again

Google has done away with its Artificial Intelligence Ethics Board, apparently because leftists at the company objected to inclusion of Heritage Foundation President Kay Coles James on the board:

[E]mployees immediately claimed that James’s position on transgender identity involved advocating violence against them. An employee leaked an internal discussion on the issue, and the comments proved terrifying.
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Some employees defended James’s addition to the board in the name of including diverse perspectives. Even this suggestion was demonized.

“I think that people have been very clear that the problem with the Heritage Foundation isn’t that they ‘don’t think like I do’ but that they actively and stridently advocate for religiously based anti­LGBTQ+ policies that immiserate my friends, colleagues, and comrades and has a real and damaging impact on their lives,” one employee wrote.

Disagreement is violence! I met Kay James at a dinner a year or so ago, and can assure you that she is not a proponent of violence.

The Heritage Foundation has hosted many events criticizing transgender identity. It has hosted former transgender Walt Heyer, who runs the website SexChangeRegret.com. It has hosted Julia Beck, a lesbian feminist who got kicked off of the Baltimore LGBT Commission for disagreeing with transgender identity.

Beck has warned that embracing transgender identity in civil rights law would allow biological men in women’s bathrooms and changing rooms and in women’s sports.

That seems rather obviously correct. But transgender activism has entered the holy pantheon of leftist ideologies that cannot be debated.

Mike Wacker, a Google employee concerned about animus against conservatives and Christians at the company, warned that conservative employees at Google are terrified of defending Kay Coles James internally, “especially if someone reports them to HR. That fear is justified.”

Corporate human resources departments are among the main sources of evil in today’s world.

Wacker pointed to a survey from the Lincoln Network, in which one conservative tech employee wrote, “Employees will interpret your words in the most offensive way possible, then report you to HR based on that interpretation. It’s one big offendedness sweepstakes. When people get in trouble, it’s often based not on what they said, but on how others interpreted their words, regardless of how unreasonable that interpretation is.”

“I’ve seen someone get reported to HR for sharing a National Review article,” the conservative employee wrote.

There is much more at the link. Bottom line is that Google and other left-wing tech companies should not be ceded control over public discourse in America.

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