When experts say that something is a bad idea, and when the people who
a CoC is supposed to protect says it makes them feel unsafe, I feel
like we should listen to that.
I also thought that the points made in the Jupyter discussion thread
made a lot of sense: of course it's possible for people to start
harassing each other over any excuse, and a CoC can, should, and does
make clear that that's not OK. But if you specifically *call out*
political affiliation as a protected class, at a time when lots of the
people who the CoC is trying to protect are facing governmental
harassment justified as "mere political disagreement", then it really
sends the wrong message.
Besides, uh... isn't the whole definition of politics that it's topics
where there is active debate? Not really sure why it's even in that
list to start with.
So I hear all the arguments about people feeling unsafe due to some truly despicable, discriminatory behavior, and I want absolutely no parts of protecting that. However, I also recognize that we in the U.S. are in a particularly divisive atmosphere, and people of varied political persuasions want absolutely nothing to do with those who share differing views. So, as a concrete example, if someone were to show up at a NumPy developer summit with a MAGA ("Make America Great Again") hat, or talks about their support for the president in non-numpy channels, WITHOUT expressing anything discriminatory or support for such views, if "political beliefs" is not in the CoC, is this person welcome? I'm not worried about my own views, but I have friends of widely varying views, and I truly wonder if they would be welcome. With differing "political beliefs" listed as something welcomed, I feel ok for them; if this language is removed, I'm much less certain.
IMO, "political beliefs" encompasses so much more things than a handful of very specific, hateful views. People can disagree about a wide array of "political beliefs" and it is important that we as a community welcome a wide array of such views. If the CoC needs to protect against the wide array of discriminatory views and behavior that make up U.S. politics right now, how about specifically calling those behaviors out as not-welcome, rather than completely ignoring the fact that 99% of "political beliefs" are perfectly welcome within the community?
The CoC is about spelling out the community norms--how about just spelling out that we welcome everyone, but, in the words of Will Wheaton, "Don't be a dick"?
Ryan