LambdaConf cannot live up to its goal of being a “friendly community of like-minded souls” when it does not protect current and potential members of that community who are vulnerable to those who would deny their humanity.
Furthermore, the speaker was previously banned from another conference. I have yet to find accounts that such violations have actually taken place at a conference where he gave a talk. Shouldn't the basic assumption in a system based on the rule of law, that you're innocent until proven guilty be the case here as well?
Call me when they don't let "Death to capitalists" radical communists speak, and then we'll talk about excluding people who are pro-slavery.
I guess 'Debate ideas not people' isn't as important as making sure a man who holds an unpopular opinion isn't welcome at a conference.
For example, we did debate ideas around race and opportunity and justice. We debated ideas around the freedom of women to choose what would happen with their bodies. We debated the idea of one citizen, one vote. We debated the idea that people should be free to love a person of whatever gender they pleased.
But such debates never end, because the people who don't like how the debate turns out just keep debating. They are conducing a century-long filibuster, designed to disrupt any attempt by the people they don't like to have ordinary, peaceful lives.
You can see this whenever they re-open old debates. They start off with the same arguments that were conclusively refuted and try to force you to refute them all over again. And again. And again. And again. In this regard, racists behave just like anti-vaxxers, young earthers, and others who have zero interest in "debate," because they believe in some divine truth that transcends evidence, science, or the rights of other people.
They are waging a war of attrition, trying to wear society down by sheer force of stubbornness. And naturally, moderate thinkers avoid having the same toxic discussion over again for the tenth or twentieth time, so gradually bit by bit they receive fewer challenges to their ideas, creating the impression that there multiple, equally valid sides to every issue.
But there aren't multiple, equally valid sides to every issue. We have limits on which ideas are valid in society. We have, for example, constitutional democracies, with judiciaries attempting to operate as a check and balance against certain "popular" ideas being considered valid.
For example, we have this idea that every adult citizen gets to vote. It's full-on wrong to pass a law that says that black people can't vote. We don't have to 'debate' this idea, we did debate it, there was blood shed over it, and the matter has been settled.
The idea that black people should not vote is not "just another point of view," or, "something upon which reasonable people may disagree." It's wrong, and to believe it or to espouse it is to be unreasonable _by definition_ in a constitutional democracy.
LambdaConf can obviously invite whomever it wants, for whatever reason it wants, and you are free to think whatever you want of the choices they make. All I am saying is that for those who disagree with LambdaConf's decisions, it is not a matter of "a man who holds an unpopular opinion." Nor is it a matter of not wanting to "debate an idea."
Certain opinions are so wrong as to not be trivializable as unpopular. Certain ideas have already been debated, and the people still pretending to debate them have not demonstrated any good faith interest in debate.
Whether the person involved in the fracas is such a person, and whether his ideas are or aren't in these categories is, of course, something your could debate. I am not going to, as I was not planning on speaking at LambdaConf, so I had no decision to make on the matter.
Also this is not a talk about his taboo views on race, they are hoping to prevent him from speaking on functional programming. In a way, they are hoping to exclude him from the marketplace of all ideas because of a single idea.