For a US example look at NAACP v. Alabama (1958). If you are on the side of revealing this information, you are on the same side as some pretty unpleasant folks.
> I look at the picker of sides and their motives to determine the consequences of picking a side.
Taken literally, this suggests that you can't work out the consequences without looking at the supporters. If that's what you mean, I have to say it seems weird to me.
Taken less literally: if you think the consequences of one side winning include "people get harmed", you can just say that. You can point at the consequences instead of the supporters.
The people picking sides provides data and case studies for what that side really means. Its nice to think in the abstract about issues, but it is helpful to see the movements of the various actors in a situation to determine if a decision has a net benefit while not violating what I hold dear. The whole ignore the actors on both sides sacrifices getting a benefit from the analysis they did to pick a side.
Plus bad actors are quite good at sounding very good in the abstract while showing their true colors in their actions.
It's just a different value calculus from your own. You mention that you try to make choices based on 'what seems right' but surely you're aware that different people have different conceptions thereof. Violent extremists are typically very sure of their moral premises even though they may be drastically different from the popular norm.
That's like saying "it's OK to have racist thoughts, just don't say them out aloud". Whether it's revealed or not is secondary to the act of compiling itself.
It is ok to have any thoughts you like about anything. Once you act on them, that's when other people have to take into consideration their consequences. And speech is certainly something with consequences.
So, you would have ruled for Alabama so the KKK and Jim Crow supporters could get the list and "talk" to the businesses and people supporting the NAACP?
Well, the KKK and Jim Crow supporters were a bit farther up the ladder of 'unpleasant'. 'Unpleasant' being used in the same meaning and tone as a southern lady saying "aren't you special".
In their day they were only mildly unpleasant. Furthermore, those groups they believed they were acting to promote policy that believed was in the best interest of the nation, regardless of how we see them in hindsight.
Imagine if there existed similar databases then. Would you hire someone if you knew they were firmly pro-segregation at age 20-something in 1950-something?
The context of the time doesn't make the actions of the KKK any less unpleasant or disgusting. Lynchings and laws codified to keep non white people sub citizens are and were far beyond unpleasant, whether the majority of white people at the time believed so or not.
policy that believed was in the best interest of the nation
Which nation, exactly?
Imagine if there existed similar databases then. Would you hire someone if you knew they were firmly pro-segregation at age 20-something in 1950-something?
Probably not, not. I would certainly probe very carefully to see whether they had abandoned such a stance, since many aspects of personality and and political attitude are formed early in life. If you go back and look at documentary footage from around the time schools were integrated, in the 50s, you can see many youngish people protesting that and waving placards with swastikas and so forth on them (this less than 2 decades after the Nazis were defeated in WW2). A lot of those people held on to those ideas and passed them onto their kids.
