The parallels you offer are missing the point, because none of them suggest a CEO has an irrational bias against a significant fraction of his employees. This donation, though, does. Unless Eich has convincingly apologized and demonstrated different views, you have to bet that a lot of people in the San Francisco office and elsewhere are wondering, "Given that my new boss may have an irrational bias against me, is this going to affect my benefits, my chance at promotion, or my working climate?"
That's entirely material to his position as CEO. Mozilla is competing with the world's top tech companies for talent, and their main advantage is a clear belief that they're doing good. Anything that taints that could make hiring harder.
Courts were also in favor of putting Japanese people in internment camps at one point. It doesn't make them right.
If people don't want to work for Mozilla because of Eich, fantastic. They can form their own foundation and work on Iceweasel. Everybody gets what they want.
Speaking of trolling, I didn't say that at all. I was pointing out that an appeal to court precedent is a form of appeal to authority, which is hardly convincing, with numerous counter-examples available upon request.
Perhaps the actual reasoning of the court might be convincing, but in this case, the reasoning was, "there is no rational basis", which reads more like an admission of ignorance than anything else.
I'm not appealing to the court's authority. So that you and others can see the reasoning, I'm pointing you at a carefully-considered legal opinion by a federal judge. One similar to others on the topic, like Judge Walker's decision on Prop 8. Hand-wave it away if you like, but the rational-basis standard [1] is a key legal concept here.
When court after court finds that there is no rational basis to these laws after carefully examining every rationale offered by proponents, I think it's reasonable for gay people to conclude that promoters of those laws are irrationally biased against them. Especially those promoters unwilling to offer any other explanation.
Except the "proponents" in this case did not include the people who put forward this referendum in the first place. Instead, the referendum bypassed the California government to put the issue to a popular vote. When the popular vote was challenged in court, the government lawyers had no incentive to put up a good defense, which they didn't.
It's really a loophole in the referendum system, and if California is serious about the referendum, they need to give standing to some groups to give them the right to defend their initiatives in court.
Even if you were right, that wouldn't be the case for the Michigan case I linked upthread, where state officials stood firmly behind keeping gay people from marriage.
"The Supreme Court decided the case on the basis of lack of standing."
...meaning the proponents weren't allowed to defend it in court.
I've already stated my feelings about the ruling in the Michigan. In fact, I have deep misgivings about the kind of research presented in that case on both sides, especially when it comes to making policy decisions.
The proponents did defend it in federal court. They lost.
It's true that the Supreme Court wasn't interesting in hearing from them again, but there is absolutely nothing to suggest that if they had, it would have turned out as anything different than their disastrous showing in federal court. Remember, they were going to the Supreme Court seeking appeal, which means they don't get to re-litigate the whole thing, just to raise questions about particular points of law. The findings of fact would stand, and as far as facts went, they had nothing.
This is all true, but is there not a possibility that Eich having invented one of the world's most popular programming languages might out-weigh these factors in the minds of people who are evaluating whether they'd like to work with/for him? If you're arguing that Eich should not have the job on pragmatic (rather than purely principled) grounds then you'd need to consider such other factors.
Freditup was asking why this is different than questioning a CEO's political views on abortion. My answer: because his donation suggests an irrational bias against his employees.
I'm not arguing that Eich should or should not have the job. I don't have enough data to say. But I am saying that apparently having an irrational bias against gay people is legitimately problematic for gay employees, and is therefore material in considering his fitness for CEO in a way that isn't true for other political views.
The parallels you offer are missing the point, because none of them suggest a CEO has an irrational bias against a significant fraction of his employees. This donation, though, does. Unless Eich has convincingly apologized and demonstrated different views, you have to bet that a lot of people in the San Francisco office and elsewhere are wondering, "Given that my new boss may have an irrational bias against me, is this going to affect my benefits, my chance at promotion, or my working climate?"
That's entirely material to his position as CEO. Mozilla is competing with the world's top tech companies for talent, and their main advantage is a clear belief that they're doing good. Anything that taints that could make hiring harder.