Interesante debate... Sobre el uso de tarjetas de credito para donar a "grupos de odio"

Es interesante ver como la nueva moralidad trata de armarse con las herramientas de la represion para consolidar su psoicion.  Este debate en el NY Times es algo que deberiamos de considerar en luz del Boycott de la Comay y otras instancias de boycott a valores judeocristianos y conservadores.  Es interesante ver como el comentarista musulman aboga por no darle servicios a esos grupos, pero no menciona los grupos de su fe que envian dinero y ayuda a grupos terroristas en el medio oriente.  Potok, usa el espectro del KKK...  Es interesante que cuando son ellos los que odian a los cristianos, a los conservadores, entonces todo esta super bien...

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/08/08/the-ethics-of-doing-business-with-hate-groups

The Business of Financing Hate Groups

 
The major credit card companies position themselves as being quite broad-minded: observing gay pride month, creating a Shariah-compliant credit card, celebrating diversity among employees. But the companies also do business with hate groups, including by processing donations to anti-gay and anti-Muslim organizations and to white supremacists.
Should credit card companies stop processing payments to such extremist groups? Or in the interest of free speech, should these organizations continue to be allowed to receive donations via credit card?
Jamie Chandler, a political scientist at Hunter College, suggested this discussion
.

Ethical, Not Just When It’s Easy


Jamie Chandler is a political scientist at Hunter College. He is on Twitter. Palmer Gibbs is a graduate student in journalism at Georgetown University. She is on Twitter. They are researching how hate groups raise and spend their money.
August 8, 2013


American Express, Visa, MasterCard and Discover understand branding power. Maintaining best-in-class diversity programs promotes the companies as community-driven and socially aware. But scratch the surface of their equality-branded initiatives and you’ll find a rabbit hole of controversy. They profit from groups that assert gays are pedophiles, that Arab-Americans want to subjugate the country to Shariah law and that immigrants are mounting hostile invasions of the U.S.


The credit card companies recognize that diversity – among employees, customers and business partners – is profitable. In celebration of the Supreme Court’s decision in support of gay marriage, MasterCard bought celebratory ads on Twitter. It is also expanding its presence in the Middle East, working with the Emirates-owned bank Al Hilal on a Shariah-compliant credit card.

Companies like Visa and MasterCard can celebrate diversity or do business with hate groups. But they can't do both.

Simultaneously, they provide payment-processing services to organizations labeled hate groups. The “merchant services” divisions of American Express, Visa, MasterCard and Discover allow these groups to accept online credit card donations. In exchange, the credit card companies earn a 2 to 3 percent fee on each transaction. A $250 donation to the Family Research Council – an extremist group that vehemently opposes the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and asserts that homosexuality is the same as pedophilia – earns the credit card company about $7.50.


A visit to the Web site of the International Conspiratological Association – a white supremacist group that denies the Holocaust – reveals credit card logos directly above a graphic reading “White Pride World Wide.” This brand identifier communicates tacit approval of the association’s mission, and signifies its membership in a community of millions of retailers and cardholders.


Providing merchant services to hate groups contradicts the major credit card companies’ promoted values. They cannot encourage diversity only when there is an award to be won. They must live and breathe it every day.


Stopping these services is not a matter of violating hate groups’ civil liberties, or limiting their right to raise money. They are free to collect cash donations and spread their message. This is what’s guaranteed to them in the First Amendment. But unlike cash, the ability to accept credit card donations is a privilege. It comes with the expectation that the relationship will not denigrate the card companies' reputations.


Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover should refuse to process payments to organizations that violate the credit card companies’ diversity principles. Terminating ties may or may not hurt profitability, but that’s irrelevant. It is a matter of conscience.
 

Legal to Censor, but Unwise


Gabe Rottman is a legislative counsel and policy adviser at the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union.
August 8, 2013

It’s so tempting to go for the easy answer. Credit card companies are private businesses. They generally have the right, including possibly the First Amendment right, to refuse to deal with anyone. (Exceptions might include a collusive financial blockade of any group, which could violate antitrust law, and of course there are anti-discrimination laws.) That should apply all the more to bigots, right?
While superficially appealing, that answer is wrong. Pulling credit card services helps the haters and hurts free expression.

In America, we err on the side of counter-speech, not censorship.

First, there’s the “martyr” problem. Back in 2010, PayPal threatened to cut off Pamela Geller, the anti-Muslim blogger, for violating its “acceptable use” policy. Geller immediately draped herself in the First Amendment — and put out a call for donations. “Truth,” she wrote, “is the new hate speech . . . . Want to make a contribution to my fight?” PayPal eventually relented, but it’s clear that the denial of services to a “hate speaker” transformed her modest soapbox into a wider broadcast.
Besides, this is a nuclear option.
Advocacy groups cannot survive without money. Financial services companies, subject as they are to public and shareholder pressure, are ill-equipped to determine which groups should live or die in hard cases of alleged “hate speech” (like Web sites critical of Catholicism or same-sex marriage). Because denial of service acts to directly censor the controversial speech, financial services companies should not be in the business of making these tough calls.
Intolerance is a human tragedy and must be addressed. But if there’s one cardinal rule in America, it’s that we err on the side of counter-speech, not censorship, when we hear things we don’t like but that don’t directly hurt us. Usually that truth applies to the government, but as principle if not law, it very often applies with equal force to private parties.


No Obligation to Support Extremists


Waheed Hussain is an assistant professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a Laurance S. Rockefeller visiting faculty fellow at the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University.
August 8, 2013


In the 1930s, hate groups in Germany coordinated “Don’t Buy Jewish” campaigns that destroyed businesses and communities, and forced many Jews to hide their religious backgrounds. These campaigns make it crystal clear that religious freedom is about more than just having certain laws on the books. Religious freedom also requires that other people not use various forms of social and economic pressure to intimidate you or persecute you for what you believe.

What holds for religious freedom holds for other basic freedoms, including the freedom to carry on your romantic and sexual life as you see fit. Many hate groups in the U.S. use boycotts to pressure companies not to hire gay people or to treat them worse than straight people. These boycotts create economic pressures that can keep gay people from getting a job or force them to hide their sexual orientation.

If extremists want to lend their support, they can tell the hate groups: the check’s in the mail.

People are certainly allowed to donate to all sorts of political groups, even groups that have ugly and repulsive ideas, as long as these groups are only making arguments in the public forum – not acting violently and unlawfully. But when a group crosses over into coordinating patterns of social and economic isolation, this is not just speech anymore.
This brings us to credit card companies. If a hate group is trying to coordinate a boycott that threatens people’s basic freedoms, I see no reason why a credit card company has to help the group to connect with potential donors. If anything, the company has a responsibility not to facilitate this oppressive enterprise.
Think of it from the donor’s perspective. Donors have no right to use boycotts to threaten other people’s basic freedoms, so they have no right to hire a hate group to help them do this. They also have no right to demand that credit card companies facilitate the hiring process.
If extremists want to lend their support, they can tell the hate groups: the check’s in the mail.


A Service Too Basic to Be Denied


Mark Potok is an expert on the American radical right and a senior fellow of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala.
August 8, 2013



When it is suggested that credit card companies should refuse to process payments to racist or otherwise extremist groups, you can pretty much bet on a hue and cry from a surprising number of Americans who say that “free speech” is being compromised. That reflects a basic misunderstanding of the First Amendment.
As a constitutional matter, credit card companies certainly can refuse to process payments or donations to groups like the Ku Klux Klan. The First Amendment applies only to government actions. The law does not require, say, a privately owned newspaper to print an opinion with which it does not agree. Nor does it require a credit card company to do business with an extremist group.

These services are so essential they are like a utility. And do we really want to deny basic services to those with whom we disagree?

But the Americans who cry “free speech” are onto something, even if the First Amendment is not behind them. Credit card companies serve millions of customers, and they provide a service that is basic to life in the modern world. In that sense, they are similar to a utility. Would it really be the right thing for a power company to refuse to provide electricity to the home of a known Klansman? Similarly, should credit card companies refuse to issue cards to extremists? Or only to process donations to their groups?
That may not be the best choice. It is perfectly legitimate for Internet portals like Yahoo or Facebook to prohibit the posting of racist or other material that offends the company’s values. No democratic or constitutional value requires that Facebook or Yahoo facilitate the spreading of racist hatred or allow the intimidation of its non-racist users. But as a society, do we really want to deny the basic services of modern life to those with whom we disagree? At the end of the day, that seems every bit as un-American as the racist values of the Ku Klux Klan.