cato_the_elder

First of all, it would be nice of you to at least looked at the responses to this comment, and reminded users that many of those are explicitly against HN guidelines (which is objectively true, with comments like just "What on earth?" [1], and my comment is essentially stating an opinion clearly acceptable in e.g. Singapore, and I know one of your goals on HN is to not be completely US-centric). Browbeating is clearly not what HN is for, and IMO allowing it would cause a lot more damage than allowing accounts primarily used for politics. Curious political discussion has some real content, browbeating doesn't.

Secondly, the effect of that policy is to essentially ban accountants with unpopular political opinions on one side of the spectrum (because people don't want to associate it with their normal work, for obvious reasons). One evidence for this is that you've probably banned more accounts on one side of political spectrum with that rationale. That should be easy to check, since the politics of accounts which use HN primarily for politics should be quite clear from their commenting history. I'm not accusing you of personal conscious bias against right-wingers in moderation here, I'm just pointing out that policy would result in more of them getting banned, since more of them have no choice but to try to conceal their identity (due to "consequences" at work, etc.). Remember what happened to Brendan Eich?

Thirdly, I disagree with your characterization of my comments as "ideological battle". I'm merely stating my political opinions, I have tried to never escalate into personal attacks, and I have tried to always add something concrete and interesting to the discussion, along the HN'a norm of intellectual curiosity. To me, ideological "battle" would imply the kind of dogmatic political rallying I got in response to my comment.

Finally, it seems that you are banning my account on a first strike. I don't remember having any previous negative interaction with the mods.

P.S. After posting this, I also noticed that you have "shadow banned" me, in the sense that my comment looks completely normal to myself when logged in, but I can't find a trace of it when logged out. That's an unethical practice in my books, and something that you have explicitly stated that you reserve for spammers and serial trolls [2].

Traditional nuclear family is a tenant of many cultures, including the one I have a feeling of belonging to. Also, the amount of propaganda and censorship which is needed to push these things is quite worrying.

> I actually thought marriage itself was likely to die as an institution

That's unlikely, at the very least because of Lindy effect [1]. In the traditional sense, it is under attack though.

> something close to 70% support now

First, these things are measured by polls, and the outcome of course depends on how do you ask the question. Do you think you'd get the same outcome if it was phrased as "subsidising" instead of "the right to marry"? Plus, how much propaganda and censorship did that take? Are people free to make fun of these things or harshly criticise them without fear of "consequences"?

Interesting, I'm curious to know what kinds of car are popular there. I searched a bit, and it seems like after Tesla Model 3 (which is expensive), the most popular car models are Peugeot 208 and Nissan Qashqai [1]. I wasn't able to figure out how much they cost in Denmark through a quick search though.

> "For the Greeks, the concept did not meaningfully exist at all; the social identities we today understand in the West as a gay man or a bisexual woman, for example, simply weren’t something that people recognized."