What is regrettable in all this is that no one seems to consider the possibility that people may have nuanced views about gay marriage. According to the mob you're either a saint or a bigot, and thus Eich's value as a human being was supposedly entirely determined by this one opinion he voiced in 2008.
I'm staunchly in favor of gay marriage, which I consider to be a no-brainer -- but it seems to me the motivations of Prop 8 proponents differ a lot in nature, with some being much more excusable than others in their wrongness.
For example, there are people who have nothing against homosexuality but are attached to the symbolic value of 'marriage' as a Christian institution and would be completely fine with another civil contract with the same rights but a different name. This seems to be somewhat in line with Eich's actions (I remember reading a memo from Eich stating he had no plan to amend Mozilla's gay-friendly policies and employee benefits). Although I still think this view is guilty of being wrongly attached to outdated models of society, this is not nearly as bad as what Eich has been accused of.
There are other possible reasons one could have (for example, those who in ignorance of the many studies that showed that children of homosexual households grow up just fine could have unfounded reservations about gay adoption, but would be ready to change their mind if shown the evidence; I've encountered a couple myself), but my broader point is that there is a huge range in the degree of bigotry between those who voted Prop 8 and one should not jump to conclusions so easily as they do not all deserve the same level of condemnation.
Now, I can understand why Eich's views could make him unsuitable as a CEO because, in a purely pragmatic sense, holding views that most of your workforce despise is obviously detrimental to your ability to lead and especially so at such a peculiar organization as Mozilla where ideology matters arguably more than in other companies; it also matters because, as many have said, a CEO is the face of the company and his views and those of the company are sometimes hard to disentangle.
But going from there to making a call to boycott Firefox is a huge jump and smells like a pure appropriation of the controversy for PR purposes. This revelation about Sam Yagan seems to strengthen this feeling. Come on people, we're better than this. Being on the right side of history about an issue does not automatically waive us from intellectual rigor and moderation.
So many on the left (including myself) revere the style of politics of Nelson Mandela and yet when it comes time to actually behave like Mandela would in a given situation they completely fail, and conduct the same style of embittered, vengeful politics when they are asked to treat the other side with an attitude of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Do you think Mandela systematically purged all those whites who once supported apartheid from their positions? He did not. Why? Because forgiveness was more beneficial to the nation than recrimination.
Now that gay marriage is clearly on the march supporters, who are winning, need to treat their opposition the same way. With magnanimity and not vengefulness.
Eich is wrong about gay marriage, but he didn't deserve to be fired.
For forgiveness you need Truth and Reconciliation. There's a reason that committee was set up.
"Forgiving and being reconciled to our enemies or our loved ones are not about pretending that things are other than they are. It is not about patting one another on the back and turning a blind eye to the wrong. True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the hurt, the truth. It could even sometimes make things worse. It is a risky undertaking but in the end it is worthwhile, because in the end only an honest confrontation with reality can bring real healing. Superficial reconciliation can bring only superficial healing."
That's Desmond Tutu, another important figure in the struggle against apartheid.
Do you think Eich has owned up to the hurt and abuse he committed? He's not even apologized. You can't have forgiveness if the person you want to forgive isn't even willing to apologize.
Truth and Reconciliation was about truth, and not punishment. It did not demand that former supporters renounce their heresy or be punished, just that a historical accounting was made, the facts were laid down.
"I know some will be skeptical about this, and that words alone will not change anything. I can only ask for your support to have the time to “show, not tell”; and in the meantime express my sorrow at having caused pain."
I'm not sure Eich fully understands the hurt and abuse he committed, which makes owning up to it somewhat difficult. My understanding of truth and reconciliation was that the process was intended to educate those responsible for apartheid just how truly awful it was, not just demand an apology. Thousands of people demanding for resignation over the Internet seems more likely to reinforce his current views than help him truly understand.
You make an important point, but I want to add a caveat. We know a lot about how long we have to wait to deal with "regime crimes" in order not to jeopardize the political system of the successor state.
It seems that in the case of maximum scale crimes, the right number is somewhere around 30 years (one generation). That was approximately the time between the end of WW2 and the 1968 student revolts in Germany, and the Bonn republic survived it. As another example, given the divisive nature of the incredibly bloody Spanish civil war, societal "digestion" of the Franco dictatorship also had to wait for almost 30 years.
What happens if winners rapidly turn on the former suppressors can currently be observed in Egypt.
So far, so interesting, but what it doesn't tell us, is what the time scale for a (comparatively small) intrasocietal adjustment of morality is (gay marriage = sin -> gay marriage = fundamental right).
One decade? Five years? Fifteen? I can't think of any precedents that can truly be compared to the gay marriage situation.
My personal feeling is that the reaction to Eich was not appropriate considering where he stands on the currently applicable bigotry scale.
But that is also just a gut feeling. The question remains: What is the right time to wait before a step of progressive change in society should be "enforced", so that the backlash remains minimal?
So - what you are saying is that you support radical, armed struggle in support of marriage equality? Just as Mandela supported radical, armed struggle against apartheid?
Yes, before he went to prison Mandela was engaged in armed revolution.. But after he got out of prison he did everything he could do to avoid bloodshed and war, even if it meant negotiating with those who had imprisoned him for 27 years.
> For example, there are people who have nothing against homosexuality but are attached to the symbolic value of 'marriage' as a Christian institution
Yes, they were also attached to its symbolic value when they used it to condemn miscegenation.
Given atheist, muslims, jews or hindus can get married, and so can blacks, browns, reds, yellows and whites (with one another too, which once upon a time was against "the symbolic value of 'marriage' as a Christian institution"), I'm pretty sure civil marriage has nothing to do with "the symbolic value of 'marriage' as a Christian institution".
> and would be completely fine with another civil contract with the same rights but a different name.
Because "separate but equal" had such a good run last time around eh?
> This seems to be somewhat in line with Eich's actions
No it is not:
1. Eich donated $1000 to prop 8. Prop 8's goal was to prevent future homosexual marriages in california and to break up existing ones (since prop 8 was passed specifically because proposition 22 had been struck down and homosexual couples were getting married). It did not propose the introduction of an equivalent contract or amend californian law to effectively introduce one
2. Eich refused to acknowledge such an intent and stonewalled instead behind "me giving to people trying to destroy your marriage does not mean I'm a bigot". Does not sound like "separate but equal" was his intent, as distateful as that would have been
3. "I would prefer an alternative to it therefore I donate to amend the constitution in order to ban it" is not what I would call sane and sensible reasoning
I think you're misreading the above post. The point is not to say there is a justifiable argument against gay marriage but to say that not all opponents are like Fred Phelps -- i.e., not all opponents are motivated by pure animus as opposed to ignorance, FUD, or just faulty reasoning.
A big part of that ignorance is many (if not most) gay marriage opponents simply don't believe it's an immutable characteristic and don't fully appreciate how damaging it can be to suppress one's sexual orientation (e.g. don't ask, don't tell). And if you don't believe that sexual orientation is an immutable characteristic, then a gay marriage ban isn't discrimination against a minority but simply yet another public morality law in line with bans on drugs, polygamy, or public nudity.
That doesn't make the argument any less wrong, but IMHO, intent matters. Ignorance or stupidity don't deserve the same level of condemnation as outright hate.
It has nothing to do both "separate but equal" if the only difference is the legal term used ("marriage" for heterosexual couple, "civil union" for homosexual couple) and not the rights associated with it.
Separate but equal was about physical segregation of minorities, not just about using different legal terms for the same thing. And, by the way, something that a ton of people don't know about the separate but equal doctrine (because it doesn't appear to be taught in American public schools): It actually refers to the government's legal authority to mandate that privately owned businesses provide separate nut equal facilities for blacks. That's a lot different than the usual portrayal of Brown vs. BoE, as the government stepping in an conquering private racism.
> It has nothing to do both "separate but equal" if the only difference is the legal term used ("marriage" for heterosexual couple, "civil union" for homosexual couple) and not the rights associated with it.
It's the exact same theory: "different legal regimes but the same rights" and "different physical facilities but the same quality".
"Legal regime" sounds fancy, but if it's just a word difference I wouldn't see much of a problem. Similarly, we have word differences like "brother"/"sister" that are descriptive but which don't involve any difference in rights.
if the only difference is the legal term used ("marriage" for heterosexual couple, "civil union" for homosexual couple) and not the rights associated with it.
Which was not, is not and has never been the case in any of the gay marriage cases across the country.
I'm not disputing that. I'm not an expert in California marriage law. I'm just saying that if the only difference is the legal term, and there were no difference in legal rights, then the situation is not as simple as "bigotry" vs. "equal rights."
It's worth pointing out here that having it be a unified institution means the way it works in the one case and the other case are tied together (unless you introduce an explicit distinction). Having them under two separate umbrellas potentially allows them to drift apart or (more easily compared to the one-umbrella case) simply be changed to be different at a later date.
Your understanding of civil rights and Jim Crow is so wrong it's just astounding. I suggest you start with reading the wikipedia article on Brown v. Board of Education and Jim Crow laws.
Can you give me something more specific? Are you referring to the fact that Brown vs. BoE applied specifically to public schools rather than private businesses? That's true, but the separate but equal doctrine allowed states to prohibit private businesses from having integrated facilities regardless of whether the business owners were racist.
Are you implying there were a bunch of southern business owners who wanted to provide integrated service, but were unable to because of Jim Crow? That's what it sounds like, and it's so wrong it's astounding.
I'm well aware of Jim Crow laws. They mandated the racial segregation of public facilities, the military, restrooms, etc. What is the mistake you think I'm making about Jim Crow laws?
Surely there must have been at least a few business owners that didn't want to spend their resources on separate facilities. Otherwise the state laws which forced segregation wouldn't have been necessary.
What mistake do I think you are making? You said: "It actually refers to the government's legal authority to mandate that privately owned businesses provide separate nut equal facilities for blacks". No law ever forced private businesses to serve blacks in the south until the civil rights act. They may have been forced to racially segregate, but no law every forced white southern business owners to serve blacks.
> I'm pretty sure civil marriage has nothing to do with "the symbolic value of 'marriage' as a Christian institution".
The difference is that you are more rational and clear thinking individual than many many others. Trying to apply your logic to their "logic" will just result in frustration.
The Cognitive Therapy approach to argument ("Well let me show you how your argument is internally inconsistent") doesn't often work in such case.
So what does that mean in this case. It means that they can have a deep belief that civil marriage is tied to the Christian idea and still accept that atheists and Hindus also take part in it. There is vague religious mythology associated with the Founding Fathers, Constitution and the idea of exclusivity of this country. We are shocked how some Islamic country go full on and just base their legal framework on Islamic rules, but there are swathes of Americans would love nothing more that see that happen here but with Christian ideology.
They have been also losing ground (abortion etc), saw a resurgence with election of Bush junior (a large Evangelical backing) and now they are losing ground again and are being backed into a corner. Instead of seeing the crazy irrationality of their action they lash out and create Prop 8 like campaigns. Tea parties and so on.
> Do you take the same hardline stance with others who were opposed to gay marriage a few years ago and advocating civil unions?
I'm fine with civil unions existing (they're useful, for both same-sex and different-sex couples) and I'm fine with civil unions being a stepstone.
But civil unions is not marriage anywhere, least of all legally and across country lines.
So the issue is murkier, on the one hand once civil unions are in and civilisation hasn't ended it's easier to drive for marriage equality and the "opponents" to gay marriage can be used to get civil unions (that worked fairly well in most of western europe); on the other hand it means years or decades waiting as a sub-standard citizen (not all of western europe has marriage equality yet), it depletes the store of outrage/combativity for equality proponents it's not necessary[1] and I'm not sure it makes the overall process shorter: there seems to be a ~>10 years lag between partnerships and marriage equality.
[0] Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Iceland added same-sex partnerships in the early 90s and superseded them with gender-neutral marriage in the last 5 years; France added civil unions (for both homosexual and heterosexual couples) in 1998 and extended marriage to same-sex couples in 2013; Finland enacted registered partnerships in 2002 and support full same-sex marriage has been falling ever since — from 45% back then to 65% now; Great Britain added civil partnerships in 2004 and further added full same-sex marriage in 2014.
[1] the netherlands skipped civil unions and just went straight for marriage equality in 2001
Eich was not 'stonewalling', he was following the guidelines that all Mozilla employees adhere to, which include not bringing personal views into the workplace. Stating his PoV on gay marriage (pro OR con) as a representative of Mozilla would have been wholly inappropriate. The thing you say would have proven his virtue would have in fact made him unsuitable to hold his position.
This is really not the point at all; we're way way past the debate pro- or against- gay marriage. (Disclaimer: like probably 99% of people on HN, I'm strongly in favor of gay marriage).
The point(s) are:
- is it acceptable to hunt a man down and force him to step down from a job he's highly qualified for, because he has held in the past political opinions that not only differ from your own, but were then mainstream and are now considered "incorrect"?
- is it acceptable for a corporation such as OkCupid to ruin a man's (otherwise impeccable) professional life for a little PR stunt?
- how can the CEO of OkCupid justify this little stunt when he himself made a donation to a politician who's an actual, self-professed, public bigot??
Brendan Eich's professional life was impeccable. he had a stellar resume, and was CTO of a successful company. he could've gone anywhere from there. Now, he's thought of in SV as a bigot, despite all his efforts to reverse that opinion. His impeccable professional reputation is ruined. I see no lowering of the bar when staing this fact. Perhaps you could explain why saying he was ruined professionally is false?
After looking through your comment history, you seem to be posting the same downplaying arguments throughout the thread. And when you're disagreed with, the replies to you are downvoted. very interesting. perhaps you could explain that as well?
> Now, he's thought of in SV as a bigot, despite all his efforts to reverse that opinion.
He's expressed his bigotry, he's in fact made political maneuverings to enact his bigotry. He's done nothing to apologize or rescind his bigot actions. People are judging him off his actions and lack of words, the best criteria.
> Perhaps you could explain why saying he was ruined professionally is false?
How about the dozen or so huge honchos who have so far made statements about standing with him? They clearly don't care about his actions and as you can see on this website a majority find valor in him making donations like he did, so no I don't see his professional life ruined (sadly) by his actions.
There's also a karma threashhold for downvoting. You actually need a sockpuppet account with a decent chunk of karma and there are voting ring detectors to put a stop to most shenanigans.
> is it acceptable to hunt a man down and force him to step down from a job he's highly qualified for
No one forced Eich to do anything. His choice to step down was as free as his choice to donate to Prop. 8.
Plus, I'm not sure there's much evidence that Eich was "highly qualified" for the CEO job -- he was clearly highly qualified for his previous job as CTO, but his appointment was controversial within the Mozilla board even before the Prop. 8 controversy.
> is it acceptable for a corporation such as OkCupid to ruin a man's (otherwise impeccable) professional life for a little PR stunt?
OkCupid didn't ruin Eich's "(otherwise impeccable) professional life". OkCupid was fairly late in piling on -- insofar as the Prop. 8 controversy damaged Eich, much of that damage had already been done by the time OkCupid acted.
Minor point: you speak of Prop 8 opponents, but you're talking about Prop 8 proponents. Remember they were explicitly trying to roll back rights permanently, in the California Constitution, not trying to stop a new law from passing.
Anyhow, something to consider: there were onced nuanced segregationists--there's a funny clip where Jimmy Carter's ex chief of staff said he went from being an extreme segregationist, to a moderate segregationist, to a moderate integrationist.
That viewpoint seems insane now, because with the benefit of hindsight we can't conceive of how an extreme viewpoint can be viewed as moderate if you're living within it. But thems the breaks. If someone's a bigot, they're a bigot, no matter how complicated an ideological edifice they've erected to prove they're not a bigot.
I agree with pretty much everything you said, but I take issue with judging Mr Eich unsuitable. I think as outsiders we are simply unable to reasonably evaluate his fitness as CEO of their organization. Employees and their managers have differences of thought all the time, but that doesn't preclude a mutual respect for each other's work.
From what I understand the employees of Mozilla for the most part had glowing reviews of his work, and ultimately that (and I guess the general performance of the company) should be the true judge of his suitability to the job.
It is despicable to wish to deny equal treatment under the law to any group. But even if in a person's private life they harbor such wishes, it is not the place of the general public to judge the company they work for.
You will rue the day that a person's ability to lead is judged by how well ago their views align with those they lead. Especially on matters only on the fringe of the primary goal of the workplace and especially in instances whee the workplace actions are aligned. Shared vision is different than group think and mob rule.
What is regrettable in all this is that no one seems to consider the possibility that people may have nuanced views about gay marriage.
The norm portrayed on television and in so much of the media is that nuanced views are just a cover for being a "bad guy." In a story, black and white morality is so much more palatable for the least common denominator audience. News media now also follows this pattern, as do political commercials. However, reality is actually pretty complicated, and informed opinions are often nuanced by necessity.
There are other possible reasons one could have (for example, those who in ignorance of the many studies that showed that children of homosexual households grow up just fine could have unfounded reservations about gay adoption, but would be ready to change their mind if shown the evidence
A college housemate of mine was dead-set homophobic when she first moved in. However, she eventually became the best friends of a gay man who lived with us. Understanding in a pluralistic society comes from the everyday interaction of normal, decent people. This is how prejudices are debunked and the wounds of societal injustice are healed. The actions of OkCupid are vindictive and only unproductive in this regard.
I thought HN as a whole was smart enough to not fall for these black and white moral plays. Either they are that gullible overall, or there's some serious astroturfing going on here.
Problem is a Marriage license is not defined by a religion in power as a government.
Marriage license should be religion netrual when you get down to it..all should be allowed to marry as many people at once as they want irregardless of creed, sexual orientation, gender, etc.
The reaction to Eich is best seen through a lens of human group power dynamics, as it isn't logically consistent with some supposed ideals (civil discourse, etc.). Geeks have a harder time understanding this social acceptability aspect, especially within a given group or tribe. For this particular political question, a "no gay marriage" opinion has passed into the socially unacceptable in the Bay Area tech crowd.
I'm not saying it's right or wrong to react or ostracize like this, it's just the way crowds of people tend to work. And when tides shift in one direction, a desire by the winning side to celebrate, express power, and pick on the losing happens.
In 2008 it may have been a serious political question in California and the United States as a whole - and we totally can judge based on popular opinion - the difference is supporters narrow the judgment of social acceptability to Eich's narrower group of Bay Area techies. That's why saying it's "obviously wrong" or "there are no rational arguments" is a cop out - and the same denying civil rights argument can be applied to say abortion (denying women's right to choose! Murdering unborn infants!) or opposing affirmative action (racist against minorities! discrimination!).
The main difference? Public opinion rapidly moved against Prop 8 whereas for gun control or abortion it has been far more steady. [Even though over 20% of San Franciscans voted for Prop 8, the number among the educated tech crowd was likely far lower, and same among California as a whole]. Meanwhile, a movement like neo-Nazism is more universally reviled and not socially acceptable in 2014 US, although it may have been mainstream in 1938 Germany, and speaking out against it would leave you ostracized. This is where the "right side of history" aspect becomes interesting. Everything happens within the context of your time and your tribe, and this morality breaks down after these context changes.
Because the opinion on gay marriage is so universal within the tech crowd of the Bay Area, Eich doesn't really have a way out in this. (Look at the contribution numbers for employees of Google, Facebook, etc.) Meanwhile minority opinions on gun control, abortion, etc. are still socially acceptable but will still trigger suspicion. Ditto on economic issues and the entire anti-libertarian techie backlash, even though libertarianism continues to be weaker than liberalism. For another industry and group, look at Whole Foods' CEO writing an anti-Obamacare Op ed which triggered a backlash - the difference is that Eich said nothin, and most definitely continued to adopt gay-friendly policies at his workplace.
In medieval Europe, the adherence to your group (or broader society) was enforced through excommunication, in communist Russia, through purging and re-education camps, in Hollywood during the Red Scare, via McCarthyism and impossibility of finding a job. In Silicon Valley, is it by Internet campaigns and removal from high-ranking positions? What supposed Eich defenders are saying is - let's try not to be like that, no matter how righteous we believe our opinions to be.
Which is not really correct though. Eich said he was sorry for the harm he caused, by not for the thoughts he had. He could have said "back then I thought one way about the matter, and even supported causes in that way, since then I've been educated that this is harmful and regret how I thought back then. My views have evolved and for anybody who was harmed by my thoughts and actions back then, I'm very sorry and will do my best to make amends."
We all make mistakes, and our thinking changes over the years. Eich is no different. He's as forgivable as we are. But forgiveness requires repentance, which he hasn't done. The current theory about why is that he still holds the same thoughts.
>2008 it may have been a serious political question in California and the United States as a whole
Mozilla operates in a much larger space though.
Holland says hi!
>That's why saying it's "obviously wrong" or "there are no rational arguments" is a cop out - and the same denying civil rights argument can be applied to say abortion (denying women's right to choose! Murdering unborn infants!) or opposing affirmative action
Here's a rational argument why anti-gay people are at war with humanity, and why it is different from your examples:
- abortion concerns the interests of three parties: the mother, the father and the unborn child. The point of society is to streamline and govern the situation when individual interests overlap.
- human rights, the notion that any human being is equal, irregardless of their race, hair color or gender, implies no law should be passed mentioning gender. Hence any anti-gay bill, which can not be defined without mentioning gender, is a political action directly opposing human rights.
- in the constition of my country (Holland) as well as yours, equality of all individuals is considered to overrule majority opinion. This is also established in international law: Violators of human rights commit "crimes against humanity". This is all irregardless of majority opinion of some region.
I keep hearing the word civil debate and opinion. Financing human rights violations is not "having an opinion". It's active treason against humanity. It's partaking in a global civil war, that has been going on for centuries, and is often fought with bombs, guns, sanctions and boycots.
Remember when ..
- the people in the US went to war with each other over equality? (the Civil War)
- the US went to war against the Nazi's over equality? (As a dutch citizen i'm very happy they did)
- we all boycotted a whole nation because of equality? (South-Africa)
- your founding fathers put equality in your constitution, as it being more important than democracy itself?
- most nations in the world got together and established the notion of "human rights" as a notion stronger than the right of nations to self-govern?
Fortunately, democracy often seems to allow for a way to fight this war, without killing, but human rights are not up for civil debate or election. When majorities, dictators, elites or whoever try to violate human rights the common response is "over my dead body". Not "lets agree to disagree". We might often prefer civil debate over full-out-war, but that's out of practicality, not morality.
So, that's why all this cultural relativism is falling on deaf ears: One can not be a neutral observer, when it comes to human rights.
There are some good points in here that make us question what human rights are and how we treat them.
All human rights are up to majority vote or dictatorship decree at some point. (Who created the UN, or whatever international body you want to use? Who elected the officials who appointed the courts?) And if human rights are truly universal, who gets to decide? Is it you? Or me? Is it Holland? Or the US? China? Iran?
By your definition, the right to own firearms is also a human right as defined by the US constitution. Similarly, in the United States there is a human right to free speech (including offensive speech such as Holocaust denial), but in Germany this is illegal. Would this be a human rights violation by Germany?
Similarly, one can say pro-choice people are at war with humanity, by denying the human right of the unborn child to life (the right to life is in all constititions) - stripping that right via an abortion is essentially murder. How do we reconcile these differences in moral systems?
One can say Muslim nations operate in a much "larger" space as it comes to rights. Hello sharia law!
Maybe some differences are worth going to war over, to settle the score. Is the right to vote or the right to free speech also in this category? Some agree, and have invaded countries on this basis and attempted to set up a democracy. Others disagree, and only apply sanctions. Or less. Usually, countries are not as idealistic, and require their own group to be threatened militarily for this to happen. See the US not partaking in WW2 until attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor. Or the US invading Iraq to gain advantages of oil and Middle Eastern control. And ignoring human rights violations by Saudi Arabia because it's politically expedient.
If no bill can be passed without mentioning gender, we should remove the US "Violence Against Women" act as being anti-male as well.
Basically the idealistic black and white moral analysis, while noble, fails to explain what happens in the world.
>By your definition, the right to own firearms is also a human right as defined by the US constitution. Similarly, in the United States there is a human right to free speech
Yes. At the very least, those are rights, that supercede your democracy. Those rights are not 'majority preference decides'. Those rights were decided by 'who is more stubborn and willing to fight an eternal war and not give anybody peace until they get their freedom'.
>Who created the UN, or whatever international body you want to use? Who elected the officials who appointed the courts?
This is not meant to be cynical though; in practice this turns out much nicer than you would expect. It's not a biggest bully on the block kind of anarchy.
Why? Because people who just have a 'prefence' are not part of the calculation. The armchair opinion of civil debate, the talk radio, whatever. It does not matter. If they are not willing to fight/kill/die to get their way, they are not part of the negotiation. And they shouldn't be, because obviously they don't care enough. They are not invested enough. The deaf kid doesn't get to pick the music.
>Basically the idealistic black and white moral analysis, while noble, fails to explain what happens in the world.
Yes. The notion we can settle these core principles with civil debate is ridiculus. Rights are not the result of debate. They are the result of negotiation. We're all actively counting guns, bombs and bullets.
The world may debate about health-care, taxation or pot. Because whatever our position is, we consider it less important than our rights and democracies. Yet there are values we will die for. Values outside of the realm of debate.
In that light, witch hunting whatever forces are actively violating or trying to violate those rights, can be both logical and moral. It's war. The harder the pro-equality people come down, the more likely the anti-equality people are to give up, accept and surrender.
>If no bill can be passed without mentioning gender, we should remove the US "Violence Against Women" act as being anti-male as well.
I'm not aware of any nation without any law referring to gender. But i also never ever heard anybody make a rational case, that the gender of a person is anybody's bussiness. If anything, it's a reminder just how sexist we all are. So many laws referring to genitalia, yet none refer to our eye or hair color.
Here's one for the lurking spin doctors. "Stop being perverts. End genetalia-based laws now!"
So, bottom line: Eich was forced out by an astroturf campaign led by professional boycotters (waving the gay rights flag this time) and sleazy opportunists/publicity addicts like Yagan.
If Eich is a homophobe, I would like to replace the rest of the world's homophobes with him. While he may have disagreed in private, his public persona was inclusive and friendly. There are multiple testominies from people that never knew he harbored wishes to limit their rights before the controversy came out. Even the LGBTQ* Mozilla employees/volunteers spoke up to say this. Meanwhile, in Montana/Utah, if the CEO learns you're gay, you're likely to be found dead in the middle of the night.
But the mob had already formed, and they wanted blood. Blood is what they got. And the Mozilla project suffers as a result.
The Eich story, and the lynch mob that followed it, permanantly reduced my respect for HN. While I would not ever donate to a campaign (let alone one that denied equal rights to human beings), this made the gay community of HN (and their supporters) look like easily-influenced livestock. I used to click on the HN comments link before actually clicking the story it was about, because I could rely on the spin being kept to a minimum. I no longer have that guarantee. Similarly, I no longer have the guarantee of fair discourse, and fully expect future comments to be downvoted to oblivion (much like reddit) when one has a dissenting opinion. If someone says you hate gay people (correctly or not), the HN community has proven they will prosecute before a proper inquiry has been made.
Even more disturbing, I have now learned that the militant LGBTQ* members in Silicon Valley are just as easily-influenced, and as easily driven to boycott, as members of Stormfront, or the AFA, or the PMRC. This seems to be such a big issue in the Silicon Valley that I'm now solid in my decision to stay out of SV for any new startup ventures. Intolerance (even intolerance for bigots) is not something I want to immerse myself in.
(disclosure: this pseudonym is owned and operated by a lgBtq*)
It really irks me when people conflate calling for someone to step down from a CEO role with "lynching", "blood", or "militant". As you know, actual LGBTQ people are actually lynched, and our blood is actually shed. Your metaphors are, frankly, offensive.
(disclosure: I am also a member of the LGBTQ community.)
right. ignore the validity of my comments. just take offense to the words.
Whilst living in Montana, I have been harrassed multiple times for my sexuality. I have been beaten to unconsciousness by people I didn't even see approaching me, left with a sign saying "HOMO" on my body. I have had a rope around my neck, and three men lift my drugged body to a tree so I could die. Thankfully, a less bigoted person scared them off with a shotgun and got me medical attention. It's why I left the states and moved to Canada.
I know the words I'm using. I feel entitled to use them, as I'm fully calibrated to their meanings.
Now, perhaps you haven't learned that a "Political Lynch Mob" is a thing. And that angry mobs are often out for blood, literally AND figuratively. Perhaps you haven't seen any political lynch mobs in the past, and never seen them literally go for blood. Allow me to inform you that they do happen. I invite you to crack open a history book. Perhaps start with the Boston Tea Party, which, while not a literal lynch mob, did in fact irreparably burn a politician with hot tar, and then cover him in feathers as a sort of public mockery. because of Taxes on Tea. If you think that is somehow more justified than a group of people that (I completely believe) would beat Eich in the street if a group of them found him alone, for donating money to a cause they found abhorrent, I don't know what to say to you.
if you think I'm exaggerating about how groups of angry citizens almost always lead to senseless violence, you should probably crack open that history book again.
>if you think I'm exaggerating about how groups of angry citizens almost always lead to senseless violence
If you're saying that groups of angry people always lead to senseless violence, you're wrong, and there's no history book that will back you up. Yours is the typical argument against the concept of anger in defense of of a person who has inspired anger. Completely empty.
To say that a particular reaction isn't justified in a particular case is one thing. To say that to react to anything in anger makes one dangerous and therefore bad is silly and an argument that can be directed at everyone on every side of the argument with equal vacuity.
Was the lynch mob the one that decided not to use or support the use of a particular product, or was the lynch mob the group of people all over the country who combined forces to help defeat an element of gay rights in a single state? Answer: neither. No one was lynched, people weren't prevented from expressing themselves, and people weren't prevented from expressing objections to those expressions through their own personal choices: Eich got to donate money to help keep gays from getting married, and people stopped using Firefox because they didn't want the company that makes their browser to be run by a homophobe.
If you wanted to use Firefox twice as much to show your support for people being able to express any view (or even just the views you like) without personal consequences, you were always free to - Chick-Fil-A, Duck Dynasty, Cracker Barrel, Hobby Lobby, and Paula Deen still do good business.
You have set up a straw man by omitting the "almost". You're right, though; if I had said they always led to violence, everything you said would be true, but I didn't. So it isn't.
You seem to have set up a straw man for each paragraph. And they're all unique.
I don't think it does. I think too many people are trying to short circuit real discussion around this issue by either calling people bigots, or taking offense to the term "bully".
hdishn's comments expressing the same are dead, but it is utterly ridiculous and immensely offensive to claim that it is likely a homosexual will be murdered by the CEO of their corporation if he works in Utah or Montana.
Yes, the world would be a better place if all anti-equality people had donated $1000 to fund constitutional amendments preventing gay marriage. Please.
You can't pretend to be a good citizen for equality while donating $1000 to a cause whose only purpose is anti-equality.
And look, he could of just apologized and he would have been fine. He didn't. That is why I find this backlash backlash to be just "mob justice" the other way. His actions brought the backlash upon himself, and he didn't do any of the common sense things he could have to fix it. He shouldn't be treated like a martyr.
What a fantastic strawman you've constructed! Give me a minute to marvel at it. You do excellent work.
Okay, now that the dazzle has worn off, perhaps you could tell me when I said that Anti-gay activists donating money to fund constitutional amendments would be a good thing? because I really don't remember saying that.
However, I agree with your second paragraph. You can't be a good citizen for equality while donating money to a cause that is anti-equality. I appreciate your condemnation of Sam Yagan for doing exactly that.
What a fantastic strawman you've constructed! Give me a minute to marvel at it. You do excellent work.
Please don't use aggressive sarcasm on Hacker News. It adds no information and corrodes civility.
Consider how much better this comment would be if one deleted everything before "Perhaps". Editing out inflammatory language is the low-hanging fruit of optimizing for signal/noise ratio.
> Editing out inflammatory language is the low-hanging fruit of optimizing for signal/noise ratio.
I'd like to gently suggest that you put that, or something to that effect, in the HN guidelines.
> Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
> Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them.
By my assessment, your observation adds information that is not currently covered. "...calling names..." is a facet of the inflammatory language that hacker news could do without. But blatant name calling is a relatively small (and obvious) portion of the noise generating language that actually occurs. The other more insidious forms of inflammatory language are either less obvious or more likely to be rationalized.
I feel like some hacker news commenters* are more likely to add inflammatory language if they feel like the rest of their* comment(s) is/are otherwise high signal.
It's kind of like dipping into a savings account to break (the spirit of) the guidelines. They* rationalize the [sarcasm, incredulity, overt disdain, indignant rage, mockery, etc.] because they* feel entitled to the luxury and misjudge the consequences of it.
* Weasel words: I know I've done this. But I suspect I'm not the only one.
Gentle suggestion gently received. We're definitely going to do something like this. It'll to take time for the pieces to fall into place, though. It's trivial to edit the guidelines; what's not trivial is to think until you see the next good thing to do.
You and me both, by the way; it took me a long time to realize that the sarcasm I used to put into my comments (mainly because I wanted them not to be bland) was amplifying the wrong things. And I still have to consciously catch myself.
On another topic, this might be the best moderation I've ever received on any forum ever. So thanks for that. This restored a little faith I had lost when I was convinced HN had eternal-septembered.
He was asked repeatedly, over and over, privately and publicly. He consistently demurred, leaving the only thing to go on being his past actions and his lack of repudiation of them in any manner.
The hypocrisy of okcupid was evident even before this little bit of info (Yagan's past political contribution) was shared. As I and others pointed out, okcupid went on using javascript!
As for okcupid occupying the moral high ground, I still remember when, right after their purchase by match.com, they removed one of the most interesting posts on their blog. It was about why you should never pay for dating web sites and why paid dating website were not worth it. As with all of their blog posts it was backed up with data and evidence.
After the purchase and change of monetization model, poof! it was gone. Why? because it was rightly critical of match.com !!
You seem to have a contradiction within your three sentences.
Eich was CEO of a company called the Mozilla Corporation. Mozilla Corporation employs people to work on free projects. one of these projects, Firefox, is governed by The Mozilla Foundation, a completely different entity that Brendan Eich is not a member of. Javascript is handled by ECMA, which is a completely different entity that Brendan Eich is not a member of. Brendan Eich was instrumental in the creation of both, but he has no brand or direct authority over either Firefox or Javascript.
So while your first two sentences were technically correct, the further understanding makes the third sentence a contradiction. Why is it perfectly fine to boycott a brand Eich has no authority over, but not ban another one for exactly the same reasons?
You have the mozilla governance structure a little wrong. Mozilla owns the Firefox brand and license it to the Mozilla Corporation which in turn are responsible for development and deployment of Firefox.
So while the corporation do have to answer to the foundation, they are not just a bunch of developers hired to "work on Firefox", they are very much responsible for everything Firefox, both day to day development and marketing, but also most long term stuff you can think of is the responsibility of the corporation.
Thank you, this was fairly enlightening. So the Mozilla Foundation keeps all liability at arms-length, and could revoke the corporation's formal license to work on the product, should they prove to mismanage it.
Why don't more open-source projects copy this business model?
To be fair, he could simply decide to step down voluntarily.
I doubt he will and I don't like searching people's donations like this, but he could do that to preserve his personal integrity to some degree.
EDIT: Curious about the reason for downvoting? I do say that I oppose this sort of thing, but that's no matter who is on the other end of it. If he believes that anyone who made donations like that should step down from a C-level position regardless of whom, he has here an opportunity to prove that here.
Yeah, the "boycott" always struck me as misguided. Being annoyed at one particular person in a company doesn't preclude you using their stuff, moreso if that use doesn't imply any kind of support.
Lars Ulrich might be the biggest asshole in music, but that doesn't mean he doesn't make great music.
Forgive the nitpick, but I'm not sure Lars makes great Music. Cliff wrote all the early material. All the stuff now is written by Kirk/James, and then the producer has the final say. I'm not sure I can think of a song he's written that I enjoy. Can you?
However, you may be right that Lars is the biggest asshole in music. how many people (other than Prince) sue their fans? how many people flaunt their massive art collections while suing their fans?
Lars may be an asshole, but it is unfair to say that he made less of a contribution to the writing that Cliff did. Lars has writing credits on 8 tracks of Kill'Em All [0], 8 tracks of Ride the Lightning [1], 8 tracks of Master of Puppets [2], and 9 tracks of ...And Justice for All [3], whereas Cliff only has 1, 6, 3, and 1 tracks on said albums respectively. Furthermore, James wrote nearly all of the lyrics himself, so I really don't see how Cliff can be considered the driving force behind the writing of Metallica's early music.
On the other hand, wasn't Lars the driving force between the terrible mastering of their more recent albums? I remember reading something where he said basically that because he didn't personally hear any clipping and it sounded good in his car that it was good.
From what I understand, Rick Rubin wanted it mastered that way so it sounded "louder" (yet another casualty of the loudness wars) and the band just went with it. Unfortunately, the average consumer (or band member apparently) couldn't care less about audio quality, so it is no surprise that Lars has no qualms about it.
Heh, fair enough, that was just immediately the first thing I could think of about a horrid person that does something I like. I happen to be a fan of some of their tunes.
While it would be foolish to categorize companies as adhering to a messianic mission or being pragmatic and responsible to shareholders, since no company is entirely one or the other, it does affect the credibility as to how ideological such a stand actually was, or whether it was a strategic decision with projected benefits.
There are many types of relationship sites. There are those that focus on marriage or on casual sex, and ones that take your religious background into strong consideration. And, that's even before you get into the ones that focus on specific religions, ethnicities, or other demographics.
It's not immoral to have a business strategy, and an ideological stance doesn't have to hurt to meaningful, but given what it sounds like from the reporting, it's doubtful whether they have the moral authority to insist on the CEO of another company being fired for having been on the wrong side of an issue that has already lost. I seems like it was a business strategy that has no effect on the issue of gay marriage, and a decision that was made without concern about Mozilla or the guy who was fired because it isn't relevant to their business.
I doubt this means very much, or is worth anything but FWIW...
I had arranged for myself and 2 friends to go have lunch with 2 people from OkCupid specifically about whether or not we would be a good fit into the company and what they would be able to offer. I'm only looking for an entry-level front-end dev position so my time isnt nearly as valuable, but out of the other 2 friends one is an ex-Googler, the other from Morgan Stanley, both as back-end engineers.
After this stunt by OkCupid we cancelled the lunch and will not continue on with OkCupid.
If you'd avoid a job due to politics, you'd probably leave a job due to politics. Maybe you think you're rising above public opinion concerns to polish some kind of sycophantic business mindset, but you're acting just as emotionally as the board of Mozilla.
More so, because they have consumer pressure concerns.
Maybe your canceled lunch will appear as sober apolitical moves to ... someone. In my opinion you just flushed your credibility down the toilet.
Or maybe it is political, and that's all right, and it's generally your choice to decide who you want to do business with and why, outside of a few federally protected classes (due to historical reasons.)
The other point to make is that OkCupid's protest cost them nothing. If they really cared, their registration page could have the usual checkbox: I hereby agree to blah blah terms and conditions, and a second checkbox saying: "I affirm my support for gay marriage rights." Failing to select both boxes would bounce the user off of the OkCupid side.
But no, they wouldn't do that, because that might cost OkCupid business.
It's worse than that. Central to OkCupid's algorithm are the match questions, several of which are explicitly about homosexuality.
Not only does OkCupid make money from the homophobic, they are precisely aware of exactly how much of their income is derived from the homophobic market.
Perhaps they could write one of their famous data-driven blog posts, showing the world exactly how much money they make from anti-gays, creationists, climate-change deniers and the like.
There are 7 billion people in the world. Those posters who make the assumption in their posts, that "of course" everyone agrees with their position that Prop 8 was wrong, might want to reflect that probably less than 500 million, or less than 8%, agree with them.
The debate that such posters believe has already been settled, will be going on for a long time.
You think that we haven't considered the relationship between morality and popular opinion, and that we should give more weight to popular opinion? And that if we did, we'd see it makes a better basis for morality than models that highlight equality and enumerated rights?
Not at all; however I think there is, how shall I say it, "whistling past the graveyard"? "wilful blindness"? when it is expressed as if it is a majority opinion among humans.
It is like the anecdote about the woman living in the cocoon of NYC's Upper East Side, who said after Nixon's landslide win of the presidential election of 1972 "I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him."
The IAC senior leadership has no (0/13) people of colour, and only one woman (thats 1/13). And in fact, they don't even have anyone who wears glasses. IAC is the owner of OK cupid, and Sam Yagan is on the parent company's wesite here:
Google at least has a much more diverse company leadership teams. Ya know, men and women and people who wear glasses and hair color other than "middle brown".
For Yagan to take on his own Board as a subordinate, calling them a bunch of "racist bigots" --not for their private beliefs, but for their "public" actions-- as witnessed by their hiring policy, would be quite a stunt.
Prop 8 groups are single issue donations. A donation means exactly and only that you agree with the cause of anti-gay marriage.
Politicians are many-thousand issue donations. I know of exactly zero people who I agree with on everything. A donation to a politician can have thousands of motives, and even be done in staunch disagreement about certain issues (especially in the case where their opponent is the same on the issue you disagree with and worse on everything else)
On net I'm conflicted about the whole thing. But I do think that people who value tolerance should be intolerant of the intolerant.
The CEO of a non-political company is even more of a many-thousand issue than a politician, so I am not sure that this removes the hypocrisy. He was calling for Eich to resign based on one issue which wasn't related to his job, but donated to a politician in spite of that same issue that is directly related to the politician's job. (I made the same argument you did to someone else, and this was his good counterargument)
Tell that to the people who were citing Eich's other donations to "anti-gay" politicians, to further damn him.[0][1] (I'm guessing parent poster is not one of them, though.) If it counts against Eich, let's not let anyone else get a pass for the same thing. At the least it seems perfectly fair to grill Yagan pretty hard on this. Maybe nobody will because the story is saturated and/or this headline is not as juicy.
You could say a variant of the "donation ... can have thousands of motives" about Prop 8 or any single-issue group, too. In another sense, once you donate, you don't really have control over what the campaign does, just as you don't over what a politician does. Of course there's not as much latitude, but I'm concerned people ascribe the worst animosity possible to single-issue donors but the most charitable viewpoint to politician donors.
If you think there is no morality/empathy gradient on reasons for supporting Prop 8, that supporting it at all is repugnant, that's understandable. Are there any politicians who are so anti-gay-marriage, that donating to them would be just as bad as donating for Prop 8? Maybe this Chris Cannon, who has a "special kind of hate for gays", is one of them?
I'm also kind of conflicted. When you get into guessing people's feelings and motives from public documents about multifaceted ideas, it's not black and white. Maybe it's only fair to apply the same logic to anyone who who may have been hypocritically criticizing him, though.
Yes, you could say "donations can have thousands of motives" in the same way about a single issue group. But saying that would be unnecessarily obtuse and argumentative - one supports a single cause the other supports thousands of stances.
You only donate to anti prop 8 if you are sufficiently opposed to gays marrying to spend money on it. I think it is by definition a bigoted act, and to use your words, morally repugnant.
Perhaps I am being too nitpicky, fair enough. Personally, I'd still rather entertain shades of gray, then turn into a bigot against people I think are bigoted.
I'm interested in your distinction "sufficiently opposed to gays marrying to spend money on it". This has turned up quite a few times in these threads. Apparently merely being opposed to gays marrying is, like, unfortunate, but doing anything about it crosses the line to absolutely insufferable. Are you saying this? Then what's the point of being "allowed" to have an opinion some people don't like, if actually doing anything about it is "wrong"? Is it the money that makes it bad? Trying to convince others to your viewpoint? Any action besides just voting? Is voting against gays marrying worse than just thinking to yourself that they shouldn't?
This may again be nitpicking, but I'm not trying to argue, just wondering where people draw the lines.
Money ~= power. Prop 8 was to reduce freedom of gays by non gays. Gay marriage has only "eww factor" affect on straight marriage.
Thus, while it is fine to prefer gays not marry, it is wrong for group a to exert power against group b to limit group b's freedom when group a suffers no harm either way.
Having the opinion is questionable. But when you exert your power over another group, you enter a sphere of active rather than passive bigotry.
The difference between these cases is that Mr. Yagan donated to a Congressperson's election fund, while Mr. Eich gave directly to supporters of a cause many find abhorrent.
The degree of separation is important: although Rep. Cannon was anti-gay-marriage, we don't know whether that was the motivating factor for Mr. Yagan's donation. It could have been for some other reason: perhaps Mr. Cannon helped him or his company in some way, or perhaps Mr. Cannon's opponent's views (relating to things other than gay marriage) were more objectionable to Mr. Yagan than Mr. Cannon's were.
It's also important to note that this donation occurred in 2004, when few politicians openly supported gay marriage, and most publicly said they were against it.
Politicians have views on all sorts of matters, some of which we agree with and some of which we don't, and most of us aren't single-issue voters. A donation to a politician is not strong evidence of the donor's agreement with all of the views of that politician. A donation to an organization that is specifically trying to pass a law, however, is pretty strong evidence of the donor's agreement with the aims of the law.
You're downlplaying the fact that he donated to an openly anti-gay, pro-PATRIOT ACT congressperson. If you didn't look at the link provided with the original article, showing how he's historically voted (and still continues to vote), you should probably do so. Cannon's record is pretty clear and unwavering.
I would be hard-pressed to think of a way in which donation to a staunch anti-personal-liberty candidate would be preferable to their electoral opposition. Usually, you see a Republican (like Cannon) up against a Democrat. Perhaps you could provide us with a scenario in which his opponent was so horrible that voting for Cannon was the lesser of two evils? Perhaps he was running against Senator Palpatine?
It also seems you are trying to dismiss the voting record with a stance that Politicians change their stances depending on how the wind blows. If so, perhaps you could explain why voting for someone whose vote is up for sale is any better than being a publicly anti-gay congressperson?
It seems you're more willing to conclude, despite the lack of any evidence other than the donation itself, that Rep. Cannon's anti-gay voting record was the direct motivation for Mr. Yagan's donation than I am. In my view, that's a pretty long logical leap of faith.
I hadn't looked at Rep. Cannon until now, but he represented the State of Utah. As of 2004 there were few states more conservative about the question of gay marriage than Utah was, and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised had his opponent, even a Democrat, taken the same stance on it at the time as Rep. Cannon did.
Also in 2004 nearly every politician, Republican or Democrat, was still strongly in favor of the PATRIOT Act. When enacted just three years earlier it passed the Senate 99-1 and only 15% in the House voted against it.
Perhaps you could come up with a logical reason why someone would vote for a staunch "pro-family-rights", "pro-bible", "pro-USAPATRIOT Act", anti-gay-marriage conservative if they didn't agree with him.
Perhaps you could also come up with a logical reason why incumbents that supported the USAPATRIOT Act are still being elected by people that don't necessarily support that stance. I'm having difficulty with that one myself.
Has the politician spent tens of millions of dollars in a campaign slurring gay people with some of the most hateful and darkest tropes about them, all the while trying to permanently remove their human rights by amending the Constitution?
I think you missed my point. And besides, it's impossible to vote for or contribute to a politician who doesn't have views that some minority will vigorously object to.
This is a "leftist singularity", when the least revolutionary half of the population is purged, and then the least revolutionary half of the purgers is purged, ad infinitum. It ends when the most righteous leftist kills the second most righteous leftist, or outside events intervene.
For examples, see French and Communist revolutions.
Unfortunately, I doubt it that this makes much of a ripple. "OKCupid blocks firefox to send message to Mozilla" is short and easily tweetable. This follow up requires more explanation.
As far as PR nightmare backlashes go your example is a walk in the park. I thought it went without saying that the sound bite needed to be accurate but I guess not. The donation was made to a politician, not to an issue group. These two are not equivalent. The inaccuracy makes it very easy for OKC to dismiss your response and no semi-decent journalist is going to discuss your inaccurate claim. Your response also suffers from the fact that it does not name OKC or Yagan by name and you are relying on the individual having previous knowledge of the issue.
So you take the Scumbag Steve hat, and photoshop it on Sam Yagan's head, then place the text I mentioned. I invite you to look into image-based memes, as it seems you're confused on their execution.
sound bytes are almost intentionally inaccurate. if you could take such a complex issue and fit it into twenty words or less, you're probably losing a lot, or it wasn't a substantial issue.
As far as PR nightmare backlashes go, the Eich one is a walk in the park. An efficient corporate PR campaign would have taken Eich's initial response, and ran with it, having Eich personally donate money to LGBTQ campaigns that aren't related to Proposition 8. That would have crippled the backlash, because half the LBGTQ's would've pointed to the donation as a sign that Brendan-Now is different than Brendan-Then.
Sadly, they didn't respond fast enough, or effectively enough. How many other CEO's have been ousted because of their Gay Rights stances?
* knows about OKCupid because her son introduced her to a girl he met
on OKCupid.
* knows Firefox because it is "the thing she is supposed to click on
instead of the internet browser (sic) icon."
* reads news on websites. This story was all over: bloomberg, usa today,
nyt, huffpost, time, newsweek, csmonitor, fox news, etc
It's not as if he hasn't had 2 years to get ahead of this and express some kind of understanding of why it offended people. Instead, in his public comments since, he has focused on the fact that Mozilla's name was on the donation roll (an issue the first time around when people didn't understand what was going on, perhaps, but less so this time) and apparently that people in a conservative country think he's just fine and dandy.
There were definitely statements he could have made, personally, in the intervening time that would almost certainly have defused this quite a bit. He did interviews during those two years that focused on this issue several times. I doubt he even had to go so far as to completely recant on it, so much as just express some understanding of how his donation can be seen to have hurt real people, many of whom he now worked with and had to lead.
Well, good hope you like the outcome, because outcome will be radicalization of opinions.
After this whole fiasco, I'm actually questioning my whole thoughts on the matter. While I was pro-LGBT, I'd now definitely don't seem myself siding with this block of zealots.
I definitely understand being bullied your whole life, but then deciding that after going through all that the best way to win sympathy is to bully everyone else, that I cannot condone.
In my honest opinion, I think the point here is that Mozilla is an organization that promotes good principles like equality. OkCupid, in contrast, is just a dating site.
Do people really expect good principles from a dating site?
On this situations, I end up wondering what's the right level of intolerance to intolerance. How much hate can one pour on someone that is being a bit bigot before you end up being just the same, but with a mirror?
Then one starts to question if being intolerant with the people that are intolerant of those that are intolerant is any better, and whether we are working in a system that allocates the call stack in the heap or in a defined stack, because too much thinking in this direction would cause a stack overflow in the JVM.
Finally, someone who understands the true meaning of hypocrisy. Pretense is a large part of hypocrisy. People often misunderstand that by saying someone who does something opposite of their beliefs is a hypocrite. No, it's both that and pretense. And, Sam Yagan seems like the proverbial hypocrite.
Everyone with strong ties in marketing world will know that dating sites are one of the most shadies businesses balancing on the line of legal/illegal.
OKCupid action was blatant marketing stunt - but thei CEO is immune.
No one cares what he did etc.
No one on the board or anyone working for him will be approving his departure upon this news. Mozilla case is probably one of the most ethical ways to get publicity this guys did in years...
I have no issues with gay marriage, and I don't think that individual religious views have any place in the creation of laws that will affect people's everyday lives. However, this idea that someone can't keep their personal political views outside of their workplace is the territory of small-minded idiots. A good CEO can, indeed, support causes in his personal life that don't wind up becoming policy at the company he or she runs.
See this for what it is. The left is trying to make it OK to punish anyone that has ever supported a conservative cause. Everyone should now fear that their political views will endanger their jobs. This is perhaps the most slippery of all slopes, as this marks the beginning of the end of political discourse in the US. If the right made demands like this, they would be skewered in the media. Yet, because our media has an extreme liberal bias, this has, sadly, gained traction. Just say no.
> I don't think that individual religious views have any place in the creation of laws that will affect people's everyday lives.
How can you keep religious views out of law making? The US as we know it today was founded for religious freedom. Also, religion like Christianity is a way of life. How people interpret the Bible will vary between people, as can be seen with the various denominations of Christianity. How people apply those beliefs to their daily interactions will also vary.
What I'm trying to get at is, how can someone remove religion from their thinking and actions when it is core to who they are. Could you remove science and technology from your decision making?
A good CEO is the most public figure of the company, under constant media scrutiny.
If you think that's unfair or that the public shouldn't care about public figures, that high horse will only take you as far as hand waving theory.
OKCupid made a business decision. It could have been as superficial as Eich's hair color but there it is. This pathetic whining about "fairness" to the leadership of such a consumer oriented company is naive and disingenuous.
>>However, this idea that someone can't keep their personal political views outside of their workplace is the territory of small-minded idiots.
That can't be true for everything. If you think it's possible that a KKK member could be an effective leader/planner/organizer for an outreach program for the all the kids of low-income in Oakland, then you'd be wrong.
Did anyone ever think this was anything more than a PR stunt? I don't agree with Eich's opinion at all but what OKCupid did was pretty shitty. They wanted cheap PR and they were hypocrits about it (continued using JS and now the news of Yagan's donations).
Prediction: those who insisted that political actions and professional life should be separate will call for Sam Yagan's head, completing the ouroboros of hypocrisy.
The author's basis for the claim that this was a PR stunt is that Sam Yagan made a donation similar to Brendan Eich's. Like Brendan Eich, he has the opportunity to say he's changed his mind on the issue in the years since, or provide more context for the donation. Brendan Eich's mistake was avoiding the issue entirely.
Prediction: those who insisted that political actions and professional life should be one and the same will respond with "meh," completing the ouroboros of hypocrisy.
Summary: The co-founder of OKCupid made a donation to a homophobic senator in 2004.
There's a lot wrong with this "scandalous" revelation. Do we have any direct word on Sam Yagan's change of heart to support the oust of Brendan Eich? This blogger does not, from Yagan's actions we have to assume he feels differently now, a decade later.
And so, these toothless allegations of hypocrisy fall apart. This point from the rant:
> This was a PR stunt, and as I show below, nothing but a PR stunt.
The stunt had the intended result, so this statement is either false or in doubt. Or, if the stunt is unrelated to Eich's removal, then it reflects popular sentiment to boost the OKCupid brand; it's familiar bland commercialism and no kind of hypocrisy.
It's like saying 'well, he's a white supremacist, but he has pretty good views on economic policy!' - if those issues are important to you (and they probably should be!) it's not reasonable to overlook them. You have to draw a line somewhere, even if you are occasionally willing to ally with people you disagree with to achieve a common goal.
He simply does not qualify as a 'sane' republican. The lesser of all evils and all that, sure, but when both candidates are absolute monsters you really shouldn't fund either of them (even if, given no other option, you vote for one)
I find the entire Eich scandal disheartening. A man lost his job (one he was undoubtedly qualified for) because people find it easier to heap hatred on someone they've never met, than to act with dignity and respect.
We have some serious issues in this country, and our inability to compromise or respect a person we don't agree with is frightening. Life is filled with shades of grey, compromise is not "that nice thing your kindergarten teacher told you about" it's a critical aspect of a functioning democracy. One we seem to be losing.
>because people find it easier to heap hatred on someone they've never met, than to act with dignity and respect.
Turn it around. Eich found it easier to treat millions of people he's never met as second class citizens, than to act with dignity and respect.
There are two sides to this story, and you seem to be very eager to tell the one and handwave the other for a "why can't we all just get along" platitude.
> There are two sides to this story, and you seem to be very eager to tell the one and handwave the other for a "why can't we all just get along" platitude.
We should treat people with respect. Not create a sensationalist backlash. Not punish people for having their opinions & being politically active on a gray area.
Most of all, a rational discourse should take place. Not these sensationalist headlines that are designed to manipulate people's unnuanced emotions.
> Eich's behavior impacted a hell of a lot more people than the backlash did
The backlash affects everybody. It creates a hostile environment where your opinion can cost you your job. That coupled with ever growing levels of transparency means everybody needs to have a politically correct opinion or face consequences.
The ends do not justify the means.
Also, what does firing Eich achieve for the gay rights movement? Nothing. This is revenge politics. This is the dark side.
As Ghandi said: "An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind".
>It creates a hostile environment where your opinion can cost you your job.
It would probably already cost you your job to publicly declare (let alone financially support) similar non-equality views of both blacks and women. Why is this so much worse?
Oh no, one more particular flavor of bigotry becomes socially unacceptable. However will I cope. </sarcasm>
>Also, what does firing Eich achieve for the gay rights movement?
An object lession that being bigoted against LGBTs is just as unacceptable and repugnant as being bigoted against blacks or women. Regardless of your position in life. A double standard that I, for one, am glad we are reversing.
Eich said he supported equality. He supported taking care of domestic partners. If you have issue with his "support" then have a respectful dialog. If he is wrong, then that will become obvious. Instead, the movement acted like a bully & does not have the moral high ground anymore.
You are conflating the state not recognizing gay marriage with a human rights issue. Not everyone agrees. Besides, the notion of marriage enforces the status quo of monogamy. I think Polyamory should also be recognized with equal benefits. Or better yet, all people should receive the benefits of a married person.
While I agree that there are equality issues with banning gay marriage, I don't think it's a human rights issue. For example, I'm single. Is it a human rights issue that I don't receive the tax benefits of being married? It's unfair, but I wouldn't say my human rights are being violated.
Support for Prop 8 doesn't necessarily mean that person is a bigot. This labeling is irrational & meant to stir up hatred. There are different reasons to support Prop 8. It's a cultural battle. However, ostracizing is a type of bullying. That behavior is wrong & needs to be called out.
I hope we can be respectful toward each other. It was not that long ago where gay rights activists were in the minority and treated with disrespect. We have an opportunity to have a more tolerant society. Let's not miss this opportunity.
I've said this before here, but I have much less problem with the (small) donation (to a failed cause) than I do his subsequent behavior.
His subsequent hypocrisy proves beyond any reasonable doubt that those views are still very personal and very real to him, regardless of what comes out of his mouth.
One does not abdicate a CEO position, something of great prestige, power, and compensation, on a lark. He was asked, multiple times by multiple people what his true thoughts were and declined to elaborate. He could have just (heartfeltly) apologized. He could have just thrown another $1000 at GLAAD/HRC/etc.
>You are conflating the state not recognizing gay marriage with a human rights issue. Not everyone agrees.
The same could be said of women's suffrage or the equlaity of blacks. The fact that it's a state issue does not preclude it being a human rights issue.
I have skin in this game. I see the behavior of people like Eich as a personal affront to me and people close to me. A proclamation that people like me should remain second class citizens because of some outmoded religious belief.
> However, ostracizing supports makes the ostracizers act like bullies.
Again, how is this any different from publicly announcing your support of some other anti-equality group? How well do you think a CEO would do if it came out that they were donators to Stormfront? I keep hearing this "bullies" line but it doesn't add up.
>I see the behavior of people like Eich as a personal affront to me and people close to me.
Yet you aren't going to get fired for having expressed those views five years ago. How would you feel if your boss decided to fire you over your personal beliefs, overlooking your professional merits? Do you really want McCarthyism again?
> Yet you aren't going to get fired for having expressed those views five years ago.
There was a time, during my own lifetime where it is was perfectly acceptable to openly discuss weather whites and blacks should be allowed to get married or not. Social change can occur quickly, like a wildfire, the recent history of a change is not all that important -- the fire has already happened.
I know more than one transgendered person who was let go from a tech job because of "culture fit" when they decided to transition. So I'm not really sure what the difference is except that it's a white male under the gun.
Those who know him say he treated everybody equally. He set policy & a supported a system in Mozilla that promoted equality. His heart is in a decent place. We all have moral blind spots. He has his past. We all need to grow in some areas.
Painting Eich as some "extremist" is disingenuous.
> How well do you think a CEO would do if it came out that they were donators to Stormfront?
Prop 8 had 52% of the vote. It is a mainstream opinion. Stormfront is a fringe group. Eich does not seem to belong to any other extreme group. He just supported a Proposition.
Numbers does not mean morality, however it does indicate that someone is relatively in line with the rest of the population.
I struggle with this because there are things that most people are ok with that suppress rights of those who don't have a voice right now.
Whenever I bring up those issue, I face the risk of ostricization. That is why I oppose ostracizing Eich. That behavior opposes equality & tolerance. It make it "ok" to be kneejerk judgmental.
If there's one thing that we learned from gay rights, black rights, & woman rights, it's we need to be more tolerant as a society. We need to treat everybody with respect.
> He was asked, multiple times by multiple people what his true thoughts were and declined to elaborate.
Over a period of a few days? He did apologize for hurting people.
He obviously felt strongly about this issue. It's coercive to make him change his mind from social pressure. Actually, it probably meant he would have to lie. He chose to not talk about it, as it would have cause more emotional distress. Given his position, he acted in a respectful manner.
> I have skin in this game.
We all do brother or sister :-)
> I see the behavior of people like Eich as a personal affront to me and people close to me
I see public shaming and bullying as a personal affront to me. I've been unfairly bullied online (and offline). The problem with online bullying is the target's motive & the truth does not matter. Only perception matters.
When you damage someone publicly, you are assaulting them. Especially today where things online stick with you forever. There are also emotional consequences to being bullied.
I have some opinions that are not mainstream. I want to be heard without being disrespected.
I want tolerance. Seeing people act like bullies makes be nauseous.
You can't deny how I feel about your opinion, just like I cannot deny how you feel about my opinion. However, if I don't like your opinion about something, it is not right for me to label you as a bigot or some other loaded term.
Let's not hate people. Let's understand that people live within a context. Let's change the context.
If that was truly the case he would have explained this when asked about it. He did not. He quit his job rather than do this.
Prop 8 had 52% of the vote. It is a mainstream opinion.
With ads like this [1] I'm not surprised. His money went to support those, by the way. And you probably meant was.
"ok" to be kneejerk judgmental.
You and everyone else I've asked this question to seem to dance around it. How is this any different than supporting any other kind of anti-equality thing?
* Don't say his views were in the past, they clearly are not, given his post-reveal behavior.
* Don't say this is different unless you can objectively prove a way that this particular right is somehow different from the right of women or blacks to vote.
So which is it? Why is disliking people because they think women are beneath them or think blacks are sub-human any different than this? It's the same xenophobia dressed up in new clothes - that makes it okay now?
it's we need to be more tolerant as a society. We need to treat everybody with respect
And part of which is naming and shaming those that fail this relatively simple task. Being tolerant does not mean accepting intolerance in the same way that being pacifist does not mean accepting war.
He did apologize for hurting people
Which holds about as much water as "sorry you were offended" in my book. The view underpinning the action he (sort of kind of weaselly) apologized for is still there as strong as it ever was. He couldn't even be bothered to give a counter donation.
The problem with online bullying is the target's motive & the truth does not matter
This is where we diverge. I have no problem what-so-ever castigating someone for bad behavior if it's actually proven that they did engage in bad behavior. Mis-aimed outrage is a huge problem with online communities.
However, I see no such mis-aiming here. You've got someone who failed in two big respects - the ability to treat other people with respect in private, and the ability to handle basic CEO duties such as PR and recognizing conflicts of interest.
He was unfit to be CEO and did not deserve that position, with those two things in mind. Maybe that's a value judgement, but that's mine to make.
I want tolerance
Rejecting intolerance is the first step.
However, if I don't like your opinion about something
Again, you're mis-framing Eich's action as if it were a mere opinion or thought that crossed his mind one day, and not something he gave money to support (this in particular: [1]) and gave his job rather than repudiate. That tells me all I need to know about his "personal beliefs" and how he feels about them.
> You and everyone else I've asked this question to seem to dance around it. How is this any different than supporting any other kind of anti-equality thing?
He has not said anything hateful.
In many ways, I think his opinion is not conducive to equality. In fact, the notion of marriage is unequal. It's unequal to people who don't want to get married or are polyamorous. Also, there are many natural inequalities. There are many gray areas. Also, everybody has prejudices and promote inequality in some contexts.
However, just because someone has an opinion of inequality, doesn't mean he should be the target of a smear campaign.
Tolerance is important.
> Rejecting intolerance is the first step.
That's why I'm rejecting the gay rights movement's online bullying tactics. You don't get a free pass just because you were an oppressed minority in the past.
> Which holds about as much water as "sorry you were offended" in my book.
He said he is sorry he caused pain. He admitted to causing the pain and apologized for that. He did not turn the blame around to say your perception is wrong.
He is the target of your hate. Let go of your hate. Hate is the dark side...
> I have no problem what-so-ever castigating someone for bad behavior if it's actually proven that they did engage in bad behavior.
It's not proven that he behaved badly. Also, who is the proper judge of this? The mob always feels like they are the right judge. The mob always feels justified. How else could the mob justify the bad things that mobs do to their victims?
> you're mis-framing Eich's action as if it were a mere opinion or thought that crossed his mind one day
Have a rational dialog about this. Express how much pain Prop 8 caused. Express why this is an inequality & how that affects you. Don't act with vengeance.
That is why Martin Luther King & Ghandi were successful. They did not act like their oppressors. They had the moral high ground. If they acted with vengeance, equality would not be as far as it is today.
No, he just gave them money. Given the choice, I'd rather he stand outside of Mozilla's corporate office holding an allcaps sign covered in slurs ala Westboro Baptist than financially support them. At least his personal actions don't contribute to further oppression in that case.
doesn't mean he should be the target of a smear campaign
What smear campaign? Every criticism of Eich that I've both read and given focuses on 3 objective and concrete things.
1. He donated money to a group that can be charitably described as a "hate group". This alone wouldn't be so bad, but:
2. He had a chance to walk that back, say that he changed his mind, say that was a long time ago, and did not. In fact, he quit his job rather than do so. Which leads into:
3. He poorly handled this entire event, which calls his credentials for being a CEO in the first place into question.
That's not a smear campaign by any conceivable definition of the words.
That's why I'm rejecting the gay rights movement's online bullying tactics.
Again, 3 facts. Not opinions, facts. Facts cannot be bullying, else any critical analysis of something important to a person becomes "bullying".
He did not turn the blame around to say your perception is wrong.
He went well out of his way to avoid directly confronting anything that would have confirmed or denied this verbally. But, his actions did that for us.
He is the target of your hate
I appreciate your zen, but I do not hate Eich. I think he was a poor choice for CEO and is a hypocrite. He's not someone I'd care to work with or under since he demonstrably dislikes me for who I am, having never met me.
That is not hate. If I have any vitriol at all, it's directed at his defenders and those that want to make him a martyr for "freedom of speech".
It's not proven that he behaved badly
Donating $1000 to a hate group is not "behaving badly"? This is a matter of public record.
Express how much pain Prop 8 caused. Express why this is an inequality & how that affects you. Don't act with vengeance
Which I've gone well out of my way to do. Yet somehow, just be repeating facts about Eich's observable actions, I am acting with "hate" and "vengeance".
The political organization that's behind Prop 8 (the people that Eich donated to, since you can't donate to a bill) quacks like a hate group in a number of ways, not least of which is they dehumanize and make fun of LGBTs.
If you have not already, please view that slate.com link I sent you a couple posts ago. You can ignore the text there as it's basically what I've been saying here verbatim, but I would ask you to pay special attention to the videos - they are actual ads that the group put together and which actually aired in California.
Maybe then you'll see why I apply this label - I didn't just arbitrarily dredge it up as the worst possible thing I could think of to call them.
>That sounds like you hate me now.
I find it very puzzling that you say I am practicing all this hatred by saying I find Eich's actions repugnant, and now you're saying I'm practicing hatred toward you by simply having a (remarkably civil and productive) discussion with you.
Yet Eich is the guy who wants people to be second class citizens.
My response is that Eich didn't personally approve these ads, and may have had no way of possibly knowing what his money would actually fund. (I'd be interested in evidence about the visibility of any prior work, the timing of his donation, etc., though.)
If you find simply supporting the idea repugnant, sure, but then arguments like "he donated to a hate group" and Slate's "The Campaign for Prop 8 Was Unprecedentedly Cruel" aren't really necessary. If they pushed a law that is hateful to the core, it's less relevant how hateful or not the group itself was.
I suppose if he did see and regret the ads, he could have said so, but AFAIK has said nothing. Then again, he probably felt that doing anything other than a long thorough apology, donating to pro-gay-marriage groups, crying for forgiveness, etc., would dig the hole deeper.
> I find it very puzzling that you say I am practicing all this hatred by saying I find Eich's actions repugnant
> If I have any vitriol at all, it's directed at his defenders and those that want to make him a martyr for "freedom of speech".
I'm saying Eich freedom is being violated. I'm just repeating what you said and referring to your "vitriol".
I understand where you are coming from. However, it's easy to misconstrue a position that someone took. Notice I used some weasel words such as "it sounds like". I could misconstrue your statement as you hating me.
I believe that Eich's support & position is being misconstrued. He should be able to express the reasons for his support without fear of reprisal. I would not be surprised if he & his family were harassed, as harassment seems to accompany such emotionally charged situations. I would be fearful if I were publicly targeted like that. Even if you are right, you never bully people into agreeing with your position.
I watched the commercials. The last one is ridiculous, since the couple should have answered that marriage is about love and not necessarily about having children. However, none of the commercials struck me as overtly discriminatory. The one with the two princesses, is somewhat discriminatory; However the position of parents (with religious convictions) should have control over their children's education at least deserved some consideration. To a parent, it coercive to (without warning), teach a child something that they disagree with.
The ads expressed some legitimate concerns that should be addressed. There was even a point where someone was afraid that people's jobs would be targeted for their beliefs. Obviously that fear is well founded.
I'm failing to see how this is a hate group. I believe some of the Prop 8 supporters were bigots, however, the campaign itself does not seem like it is based on hate.
I fail to see how Eich is an aware supporter of hate groups.
But it simply isn't. First, consider the fact that he chose to step down. He wasn't booted out by Mozilla.
Secondly, You have no entitlement, legally or morally to any particular job with any particular company. Eich is free to support any cause he wants, and everyone else is free to react to that how they want.
That's freedom of speech - plain and simple. This same noise was made when A&E chose to (temporarily) end their contract with one of the stars of Duck Dynasty over his public comments in a magazine - again, no freedom being violated. That person was free to make whatever comments he wanted, and everyone else is free to criticize those comments, and the company in question is free to conduct their business operations in accordance with whatever contract law.
Freedom of speech does not, and never has meant, freedom from criticism/repercussions. This is the system working as intended.
I believe that Eich's support & position is being misconstrued
How so? In what other circumstances does one donate to any cause, go out of their way to avoid directly addressing concerns with said donation, and eventually quit their jobs rather than address those concerns?
That's not misconstruing, that's basic logical induction. If you have another plausible theory, I'd love to hear it.
He should be able to express the reasons for his support without fear of reprisal.
Again, freedom of speech != freedom from criticism. You do not have the right to say anything and never be challenged for it. You do have the right to say whatever you please and not have the government take some action against you.
However, none of the commercials struck me as overtly discriminatory.
We will have to agree to disagree on that. I find them to be offensive, inaccurate, hateful fear-mongering. Partially because they target me personally.
Hate doesn't necessarily imply violence or the threat thereof.
The campaign itself does not seem like it is based on hate.
> But it simply isn't. First, consider the fact that he chose to step down. He wasn't booted out by Mozilla.
He stepped down under enormous political pressure. Also, OK Cupid had a campaign against Firefox, not Eich. Firefox's brand was being hurt. At that point, he did the honorable thing under such attack, which was to step down.
> You have no entitlement
Does that mean discrimination is ok? If we have no entitlement, than someone can fire another for being black, gay, a woman, a member of a religion, a political outlook? At what point does the attacking stop? Why does being gay give you more protection than having a private ideology where nobody is hurt by you?
> In what other circumstances does one donate to any cause, go out of their way to avoid directly addressing concerns with said donation, and eventually quit their jobs rather than address those concerns?
When no matter what you say, you are going to get backlash. He said he does not want to be coerced into changing his opinion. That is his right. I think his is also right to have that opinion. He also deserves respect, like any other human.
> That's not misconstruing, that's basic logical induction. If you have another plausible theory, I'd love to hear it.
First of all, attacking others solely based on our "theories" is a "preemtive strike". It's an unprovoked assault. You don't know the truth. You are only speculating. This speculation has grown rampant. No matter what Eich does, he will be criticized. There is no way for him to win. That's the nature of mob mentality.
My theory is he & his family were being harassed from this. People usually start receiving death threats & other drama that causes unhappiness & suffering. I also think he didn't appreciate the group coercion to change his stance on an issue. Coercion is bad. Sometimes, a job is not worth that drama.
> You do not have the right to say anything and never be challenged for it
Challenging is fine. However, it should be done with respect of the person. Having manipulative press activity is not fine. Having a mob mentality is not fine. It's legal, but it's also not conducive to a tolerant society.
> I find them to be offensive, inaccurate, hateful fear-mongering. Partially because they target me personally.
I didn't see any targeting. The ads never said "homosexuality is wrong" nor did they attack homosexuals. The last ad had some questionable premises, however it was obviously ridiculous from a moderate's perspective.
They were mainly appealing to people's autonomy, respecting moral stances on this issue, and protecting people's careers for having a certain stance. Yes, even intolerant people should be able to have work. Aren't we all a little intolerant? I understand that you are persecuted. I'm also persecuted in some areas of my life. Everyone is persecuted to some degree. We need to remove the persecution. If we can reduce or remove this societal issue, then people change in positive ways.
Politics is never black & white. Prop 8 has positions & a constituency. Even if it does not pass, popular support brings leverage on related issues.
> The campaign itself does not seem like it is based on hate.
> Then what is it based on?
It's not based on one thing. There are a number of motivations for Prop 8. Some people are motivated by hate. Some people have legitimate issues. I think most supports don't approach it from a standpoint of hate.
Eich did not seem like a hateful person. He never spoke out publicly against homosexuals. His campaign donation is not speech. It was meant to be private.
I'm for making campaign contribution public. However, we should also be responsible & not jump to conclusions about supporters of a campaign. Maybe it's evidence. However, it's not proof of anything.
If Eich openly discriminated against homosexuals, that's one thing. However, supporting a Proposition is not proof.
The notion that Prop 8 is H8, is conjecture & a political campaign in itself. It's a redefinition that you obviously buy into. I was a supporter, but now I'm not because it seems to give people license to demonize Prop 8 supporters (without any other evidence of discrimination). I disagree & I think it's dangerous to our culture & it's dangerous to Progressive movements. This demonization is against the progressive ideal of tolerance & intelligent discussion.
Also, the tone of justifiers of this demonization seems off. I'm often a contrarian & think differently from the crowd. The force of this justification reminds me of how groups will force individuals to change & to stop thinking independently or face ostracization. Ostracization is a powerful force. It's has a strong psychological influence on someone's well being & happiness. People are often more afraid of ostracization than death.
Not all discrimination is bad (another difference between the legal and dictionary versions of the same word). In particular, I think the common difference between okay discrimination and not-okay discrimination is judging people for what they are vs what they do.
The first is unfair and cruel, the second is a necessity of daily life and may or may not be cruel depending on circumstances.
Judging someone because of their race, sex, orientation, religious beliefs? Things they have absolutely no direct control over? Pretty much universally decried as unfair at best.
Judging someone because their actions negatively impact other people? The only way laws are created and society moves.
No matter what Eich does, he will be criticized. There is no way for him to win.
First, this is false. The things Eich could have done are wide and varied, and detailed in particular by me and others elsewhere in this very thread. This isn't about "winning". Critical evaluation of actions is not a game where there are winners and losers.
Why does being gay give you more protection than having a private ideology where nobody is hurt
Having a private ideology is one thing. You can think as negatively as you want to of any race, sex, orientation or gender identity. At the moment you throw money at a cause to legislate that thinking, to directly repress people you don't even know, or speak about those opinions in public, it ceases being private. And per the freedom of speech we all get in this country, everyone has the right to comment on it.
Freedom of speech != Freedom from criticism.
Oh, and as mentioned elsewhere, it's expressly illegal in this country to have civil rights unequally applied. Case law recognizes marriage as one of those rights, so even if we remove all ethics from this discussion, it's still illegal.
It's legal, but it's also not conducive to a tolerant society.
And again we disagree at a basic level. Tolerance does not mean accepting intolerance. Intolerance should be named, shamed, and driven out of our society as an ugly and corrupting influence.
This is a favorite tactic of social regressives, mind - upon making some comment or taking some action that incites mass outrage (Akin's "legitimate rape" comment from the election comes to mind, or Limbaugh's calling a woman a "slut" for campaigning for birth control coverage), trying to paint the opposers as the true evil, and usually invoking these flawed, incorrect comparisons to freedom of speech in an attempt to turn the outrage around.
It seldom works.
First of all, attacking others solely based on our "theories" is a "preemptive strike". It's an unprovoked assault. You don't know the truth.
One does not directly support the backers of a bill unless they want that bill passed. His reasons for doing so are irrelevant, but supporting something that unfairly targets and attempts to remove rights from people can be recognized for the evil that it is. Evil doesn't necessarily imply malice aforethought.
Further, his continued support after being informed that this was seen as unacceptable has only one logical conclusion.
Challenging is fine. However, it should be done with respect of the person.
Why should I respect someone who has absolutely none for me, and wants to make my life miserable having never met me? Respect is a two way street, and Eich has not only not earned mine, he's actively went out of his way to destroy any respect he might have had.
You don't support an attack on rights on people you "respect".
My theory is he & his family were being harassed from this.
Your theory has no more support than mine.
I also think he didn't appreciate the group coercion to change his stance on an issue. Coercion is bad.
I'm sure the people who support apartheid didn't appreciate the group coercion to change their stance either. Yet without that coercion, blacks would still be treated as three fifths of a human for the purpose of law. And women would be unable to vote or have most civil rights. And interracial marriages wouldn't be allowed.
Not all coercion is bad. Sometimes coercion is necessary for progress.
Aren't we all a little intolerant?
Thoughts and actions are different things.
One of my coworkers, who I respect greatly, was raised as a devout Christian and thinks that gay marriage is wrong from a moral perspective. You can't logic someone out of something they didn't logic themselves into in the first place - and believe me we've had some interesting talks bout this very topic :)
Do you know why I respect him? Because despite those beliefs, he doesn't support legislation that codifies his moral restrictions on other people into law. He doesn't vote for politicians that do that. He doesn't give money to boosters of laws that would restrict my equal rights. He did what Eich does not - he recognizes that what people do in their private lives has no effect on him or his morals. He doesn't attempt to legislate his moral restrictions in this matter so that everyone must abide by his narrower version of allowed conduct.
We're getting more into legislative philosophy here, but in this country, generally things are allowed unless there is a good reason for them not to be. Restrictions need to have a good reason, and religious beliefs and personal moral qualms are not a good reason for restricting the conduct of the population. Even less so when that comes to restricting a recognized right.
I think most supports don't approach it from a standpoint of hate.
Maybe, maybe not. But I can only judge what they do - and the fact that they want to treat me as a second class citizen is a case of either ignorance (they don't know that this is a big deal, why this is important, why change what isn't broken), arrogance (they feel they have the right to impose their moral restrictions on the world), disdain (they actually feel that I am strange, broken person that should not have my weirdness recognized by law), or religion (they feel that by denying me this right, they are preventing me from sinning against their deity of choice)
All four of those things reflect pretty badly on the person supporting the law. And you're probably tired of hearing me beat this particular drum, but the same four failings I just mentioned played heavily in the interracial marriage fight many years ago... which is why I find it very puzzling that someone can support interracial marriage (or not speak out against it) and then turn around and oppose gay marriage. Puzzling to the point it calls the supposed pure motives of the person into question.
Also, the tone of justifiers of this demonization seems off.
You keep bringing up this word, "demonize", "disrespect" and so on. Why do you think that morally judging Eich's actions is either of these things? I'd bet that if you were to poll the people who spoke out against him, you'd find very little "hate" for him, and a great deal of exactly what I've mentioned here, the 3 facts why this is unacceptable, based not on his motivations, but on his actions.
> Tolerance does not mean accepting intolerance. Intolerance should be named, shamed, and driven out of our society as an ugly and corrupting influence.
Tolerance means respect for all people. It benefits us as a community as well. Positivity or Negativity spreads. Precedents are set by behavior.
I'm against labeling people, because it encourages them to fulfill that label.
'labeling theory postulates that it is possible to prevent social deviance via a limited social shaming reaction in "labelers" and replacing moral indignation with tolerance. Emphasis is placed on the rehabilitation of offenders through an alteration of their label(s)'
> You keep bringing up this word, "demonize", "disrespect" and so on. Why do you think that morally judging Eich's actions is either of these things?
The line is crossed when you judge Eich as a "bigot". You can criticize his support of Prop 8. But when you attack him, you are assaulting his character & giving him the identity of a bigot. It does not help him. It does not help you. It does not change his mind. Tolerance does change minds. Removing fear changes minds.
The perpetrator/victim role dynamic that we ascribe to others goes beyond this Eich scandal. It's a pattern & certain aspects of the so called "rights" movement have created such a story.
Gay rights & Women rights are emotional subjects. Speaking as a heterosexual male, I'm aware of the power a woman has to get her way. If she were to accuse me of violence, even if it's not true & even if there is no other evidence, I'm going to jail. There is no due process. There are also a number of other rights that the male does not have in these situations.
Public perception is conditioned to side with the "victims" against the "perpetrators". In this example, people are going to side with the woman, independent of evidence in this situation. This also includes harsh & unthoughtful anger toward those who are viewed as perpetrators & even those who speak out against the group. There is a air of self-righteousness to this anger, which makes people even less understanding.
That is the dark side of moral righteousness. The target of the crowd are often the victims of brutality, motivated by self-righteousness.
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> Freedom of speech != Freedom from criticism. it's expressly illegal in this country to have civil rights unequally applied. Case law recognizes marriage as one of those rights, so even if we remove all ethics from this discussion, it's still illegal.
I agree with both points. Prop 8 was overturned for good reason. I'm mainly disturbed by the mob mentality & how quickly someone is labeled as a "bigot" (a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices). That is a serious accusation & label to put on someone.
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I suspect that there is a personality divide on people's opinions. I'm relativistic. I appreciate how morals change with society. Our society is also diverse. One aspect of society enforcing their morality on another aspect of society creates conflict. This is part of culture & ideas. Sometimes, there's a battle.
I'm proposing that we settle this through reflective, mature, & deflamatory discourse. The same facts will come out. The same conclusions would be drawn. There would be less shame, stress, & other resentment. I suspect you would have gotten a more satisfactory answer from Eich.
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> Your theory has no more support than mine.
Exactly. We don't know what happened. He is silent on the issue. There's no evidence of him being a "bigot". He supported prop 8. It would be interesting to know why. Silence is a common response to group criticism.
> the people who support apartheid didn't appreciate the group coercion to change their stance either
Those people were in power used coercion to silence their critics & perpetuate apartheid. The whole system of apartheid was based on disrespect of the individual & labeling races as "inferior".
The only avenue against this system was resistance & to gain the support of other nations. Nelson Mandela did not demonize his opponents. He had respect for his opponents. He won because his vision respects autonomy, inclusiveness, respect, & intelligence.
I'd say the lesson is that, Despite evidence of overwhelming hypocricy amongst one of the biggest and most vocal supporters, LGBTQ's in the valley will form a mob and start boycotts that prove to be just as damaging and counter-productive as anything the conservatives and white power idiots can do.
Another lesson is that if I started a company in the Silicon Valley, released a combination AIDS/Cancer vaccine for free, and used the South Park Redefinition of "Faggot" (referring to insensitive harley motorcycle riders), I would destroy my company and people would boycott the cure for AIDS and Cancer.
Another lesson is that Silicon Valley is just as socially intolerant as Utah, but like most geographically-distinct cases of bigotry, the "lower class" is different. in Mississippi, it's African American crack users. in SV's case, it's anyone not 100% in-step with GLAAD. one is no better than the other.
(disclosure: I'm an lgBtq that thinks that marriage should not be a government institution. if you want tax breaks, incorporate.)
There needs to be a Godwin's corollary for invoking racism about discussion of issues not involving racism at all. If you can't reason about a political issue without comparing your opponents to Hitler or slave owners, then you probably have a terrible opinion.
An equality fight is an equality fight. The closest parallel to this one were the early/mid 1900's ban on interracial marriage - in fact aside from the personal characteristics being argued about, the concerns are identical.
> I'd say a fundamental portion of respect is not encoding your personal beliefs of other people's personal lives into law.
I keep seeing this line from gay marriage supporters. I always have to ask, what exactly is the pro-gay-marriage movement about then? It sounds to me like it's exactly what you're describing here.
There's a fundamental difference between recognizing that what people do with their lives is their business, and attempting to force them to stop through legislative fiat.
Nobody's forcing you to do or not do anything by allowing marriage equality. The same cannot be said of its opponents.
See, the anti-gay-marriage crowd doesn't see it that way. Marriage has historically been a religious ceremony, and by legalizing gay marriage we're codifying what opponents view as an assault on their deeply-held religious beliefs. You might say they are wrong, and you're entitled to say that in our free society. Where my problem comes in is when we try to stamp out any opposing view with the trump card of "bigotry". It's a very strong label that kills any meaningful dialogue.
There seems to be this sect of the American left that prescribes that everyone follow the left-wing cultural viewpoint, while claiming to be inclusive and diverse. The cognitive dissonance is palpable.
>Marriage has historically been a religious ceremony
This is patently false. Religion does not hold a monopoly of any kind on the concept of matrimony.
There is a massive problem with your view. You think a religious belief holds any legal sway. It does not. Laws based on religious overtones are absolutely forbidden by the supreme law of the land. This might be different in other countries, but here? No law concerning an establishment of religion.
In other words, whether or not a law conflicts with any given religious belief is utterly irrelevant to that law. It should not at any point enter the discussion.
>There seems to be this sect of the American left that prescribes that everyone follow the left-wing cultural viewpoint, while claiming to be inclusive and diverse. The cognitive dissonance is palpable.
Yada yada being intolerant of intolerance is actually intolerance.
Because in quite a few cases since 1888, SCOTUS has specifically recognized "marriage" as a fundamental right or all people. Rights recognition like this is specifically granted in the U.S. Constitution (Amendment IX).
Simply put, if 2 same-sex people wish to partake in "marriage" they have a fundamental, unquestionable right to do so. They also have a right not to do so and partake in some other formal or informal coupling agreement at their discretion.
However, there are a tremendous number of laws which grant specific allowances, rights and responsibilities which are specifically tied to the legal meaning of "marriage", which as a fundamental right same-sex people can choose to exercise, is the only coupling agreement that will qualify them for those things.
In terms of efficiency, changing thousands of laws, and the U.S. Constitution to allow for some other separate but equal coupling agreement is less efficient than just ensuring that same-sex couples can exercise the rights they already have.
There's some argument that the government shouldn't be in the marriage business, but it's what we have to work with right now.
No, SCOTUS has affirmed "marriage" in the general sense as being a fundamental right 14 times. There's not a lot of qualification in the recognition of the right.
e.g. Maynard v. Hill (1888)
"Marriage is something more than a mere contract, though founded upon the agreement of the parties. When once formed, a relation is created between the parties which they cannot change, and the rights and obligations of which depend not upon their agreement, but upon the law, statutory or common. It is an institution of society, regulated and controlled by public authority. Legislation, therefore, affecting this institution and annulling the relation between the parties is not within the prohibition of the Constitution of the United States against the impairment of contracts by state legislation."
Meyer v. Nebraska (1923)
"While this Court has not attempted to define with exactness the liberty thus guaranteed, the term has received much consideration and some of the included things have been definitely stated. Without doubt, it denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint, but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men."
Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942)
"But the instant legislation runs afoul of the equal protection clause, though we give Oklahoma that large deference which the rule of the foregoing cases requires. We are dealing here with legislation which involves one of the basic civil rights of man. Marriage and procreation are fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race. The power to sterilize, if exercised, may have subtle, far-reaching and devastating effects. In evil or reckless hands, it can cause races or types which are inimical to the dominant group to wither and disappear. There is no redemption for the individual whom the law touches. Any experiment which the State conducts is to his irreparable injury. He is forever deprived of a basic liberty."
Griswold v. Connecticut (1965)
"We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights -- older than our political parties, older than our school system. Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any involved in our prior decisions."
etc.
So it's actually a modern assertion that gay-marriage is not allowed by law as "marriage" in the general sense has been recognized and reinforced numerous times, without specificity as to the nature of the parties involved. It's the modern dawning realization by parties wishing to marry and being denied, and by parties wishing to deny them, that the scope of who can marry is largely unconstrained.
Persons against gay-marriage are actually in a battle to contract the existing right, while persons for gay-marriage are looking for explicit confirmation that they are included in the right. Given the general trend of rights expansion over American history, it's unlikely that an argument to contract an existing right will win without a general rewrite of several Constitutional Amendments (privacy, due process, etc.) explicitly naming the minority class that they wish to specifically oppress.
Just so you won't feel your efforts here have been entirely useless (as one can often feel in such conversations), you have convinced me of this point, that restrictions on marriage are a modern view and not supported by ample case law.
Thanks for the reply. I too have strong emotions about this subject, but am trying to keep conversational about it.
If in question about the Constitution and the intent of it, I usually just refer to the first bits of the Declaration of Independence
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"
Which is a longer and more arduous process to fix. In the mean time, you've got a constitutional issue that must be addressed now.
California had a few options here.
* Redefine all "marriages" as "civil unions". Makes the religious folks and libertarians happy, but introduces a problem in that you've deleted something that every other state recognizes. How will marriages in other states carry over? How about contracts that recognize a marriage (out of state insurance comes to mind)? Etc? Those would all be invalid. You've also ensured that any union in California (ANYONE's, not just LGBT's) would be invalid in any other state because they're legally not marriages anymore.
I say this solution introduces what would be known in the packaging world as dependency hell. Too many other things rely on the first thing to exist in its current state. You've introduced a change that is going to break a lot of things without dealing with them first.
Bad idea all around.
* Amend the legal definition of marriage to include any two people. Simplest thing that could possibly work, ensures that marriages performed in the state will be recognized elsewhere and for other purposes. No dependency issues. Annoys the religious folks a bit, but religious views have no say in law anyways!
This is a rational argument, and this is the argument people should be having with those who oppose it rather than name calling and mudslinging. But nothing that you say here justifies calling those who oppose this bigots, etc. Either way, the California legislature is probably the wrong place to have this discussion, as a marriage in California wouldn't necessarily be recognized in other states anyways.
I think that was part of the goal of redefining marriage legally. Which is pretty damn brilliant once you think about it.
The full faith and credit clause ensures that contracts (which is what a marriage technically is) are valid in all other states in the union. This completely sidesteps any local laws that might be otherwise inferior, and also ensures that the case can be easily escalated (all the way to SCOTUS if necessary) in case of issues.
> Marriage has historically been a religious ceremony
This depends on where and when you constrain your view. Marriage is a diverse institution with as many manifestations as there are years in the existence of civilization.
> Marriage has historically been a religious ceremony, and by legalizing gay marriage we're codifying what opponents view as an assault on their deeply-held religious beliefs.
Let's buy that argument for a moment. And let's suppose that religious interference in law isn't explicitly forbidden by the U.S. Constitution.
Which religion or religious faction then should supply the law? The particular Christian denomination I was raised in says gay people can marry and they'll even do the marrying. And they can even become priests! They represent over 2 million (1 in 150) Americans. I can think of at least a half dozen other Christian denominations alone that not only allow for same-sex marriage, but will perform marriage and otherwise allow for full religious participation of gay members.
Why should the teachings of my religion be shut down in favor of somebody else's? Who gets to pick which religion we follow? Am I now being forced to follow somebody else's religion?
(I don't support forcing other religions to observe same-sex relationships, people are free to leave their religion and go somewhere else or nowhere as they please).
> Marriage has historically been a religious ceremony, and by legalizing gay marriage we're codifying what opponents view as an assault on their deeply-held religious beliefs.
Couldn't the same be said about civil marriage in general? Yet I don't see many religious groups opposing civil marriage between a man and a woman.
There's a fundamental difference between supporting the government's authority in the realm of marriage, and supporting the government's authority to ban homosexuality itself. One can, for example, easily oppose laws which ban homosexual cohabitation, while also opposing government having any role in marriage.
> I'd say a fundamental portion of respect is not encoding your personal beliefs of other people's personal lives into law.
I fully believe that claim, but that's because I'm a crazy anarchist. If you're not a crazy anarchist, then you probably don't fully believe that claim.
And yet elsewhere in this thread you're saying a man who literally made laws negatively affecting gays should be able to keep his job because hey, the economy.
If you'd stop willfully misinterpreting my posts, you'd know that was not what I was saying at all. The whole point there was that certain things are more important than other things at certain times.
And I did say five years ago, which you conveniently omitted from your little summary here.
But you're single issue on Eich. Who wasn't actually making laws against same sex marriage, but instead made open source software that improved the world.
The other side of this coin is that marriage has religious significance to many people, and by forcing the definition to change, pro-gay rights groups are also codifying personal belief into law.
Both sides fucked it up. The only proper response should have been to remove all legal rights associated with marriage, and force all couples to get a civil union. Tax that instead. Churches are welcome to marry people all they desire (on both sides, gay or straight as they please according to their beliefs)
>religious significance to many people, and by forcing the definition to change, pro-gay rights groups are also codifying personal belief into law.
The establishment clause to the constitution says that religious beliefs do not get to be encoded in law. And considering I have not seen one single anti-equality argument that wasn't either religiously motivated or a gigantic mass of "appeal to tradition" fallacies, I suggest the "anti" side move to a different country where theocracy is an accepted form or government. Because this isn't one.
> The only proper response should have been to remove all legal rights associated with marriage, and force all couples to get a civil union. Tax that instead.
I'd be okay with this, but it's not a change that happens overnight. There are too many things.. insurance benefits, tax benefits, inheritances, visitation rights, etc. associated with the spousal relationship. Those will take some time to work through. In the mean time, this is a suitable band-aid.
There already was a suitable band-aid, it was called domestic partnerships, and had the full legal rights of marriage in California.
Co-opting the word marriage in law, rather than asking for it to be removed was actively choosing to force religions to accept your personal beliefs.
That's bullying.
--
That said, I generally fall much closer on the scale to you than to the supporters of prop 8, but you have to be able to recognize and draw a line as to where your rights end. Attacking a personal donation made as part of a democratic process is not something I can condone. Particularly when the end result cost a man his job.
Ah yes, "separate but equal". Where have I heard this before...
>actively choosing to force religions to accept your personal beliefs.
Nonsense. Churches do not have a monopoly on the word or the concept of matrimony. If there was any consistency in religious beliefs whatsoever, there would be infinitely more backlash at the Vegas drive through chapels than two people wanting to live their lives together in peace.
And my response to the separate but equal argument is literally sitting in my comment above, and part of my argument, remove rights from the word marriage. There is ONLY civil unions. There is no separation.
You yourself claimed that appropriating the word marriage was a band-aid, and yet you ignore that a band-aid was in place, and a much more rational argument would have been to remove rights associated with marriage.
Instead you continue to argue that codifying your beliefs into law was correct, even while you denounce the other side for trying to do that.
Come back when you can intelligently make an argument that is internally consistent. I have to agree with the others commenting on your posts, you have some serious cognitive dissonance.
> Come back when you can intelligently make an argument that is internally consistent. I have to agree with the others commenting on your posts, you have some serious cognitive dissonance.
Could it be that you've managed to ferret out hypocrisy in their mental model in just a few short minutes?
Or are you (and others) just straw-manning their position to be "Discrimination is bad no matter what!" so you can tear it down easily? I hope you yourself don't subscribe to that mental model, because it's not only overly-reductive, but like you said, it actually just plain doesn't work - neither in favor of the status quo or for changing it.
>and part of my argument, remove rights from the word marriage.
And as I said before, I'm fine with this, but it's a process that takes longer than fixing the inequality now. You could write a law that says all marriages are now civil unions, but in doing so you've broken the dependency chain to any out-of-state agency that uses "marriage" as anything in particular underpinning any kind of contract.
The simplest, easiest thing to do is to amend the legal (not religious) definition of marriage to fix this problem. The religious definition of marriage is irrelevant to the legal one.
>Instead you continue to argue that codifying your beliefs into law was correct
Yeah, fuck me for wanting equality like blacks and women.
Yo, FUCKHEAD: You claimed appropriating marriage was a band-aid. BUT... you ALREADY HAD THE FUCKING RIGHTS. You JUST WANT TO ARGUE ABOUT WHAT MARRIAGE IS.
FUCK YOU. You don't give a SHIT about the rights, because you don't even know that you already have them. You JUST WANT TO FORCE RELIGION to let you call it marriage.
And we've already had the separate but equal argument, don't even fucking bother with it. You can't stand that you can't make a coherent argument here, because you're a bully. A fucking FUCKHEAD bully.
I'm not going to delete it, it's there for a reason.
Maybe you're just so busy arguing with everyone else that you can't remember who said what, or what we were even talking about. But you've intentionally walked in circles, and had problems making a consistent argument.
You claim you wanted rights without even knowing that you had them, or acknowledging that my proposed solution also does away with the separate but equal bullshit.
And yes, you insult me every time you make derisive comments like "Yeah, fuck me for wanting equality like blacks and women." That's just a plain lie. There's no lack of equality, and I'm even agreeing with you about the separate but equal statements. You still demand that you're right though, and insist that I must be a bigot.
That's demeaning to me, and it short circuits a real discussion, like you've been trying to do all along. You're JUST as bad as the supporters of prop 8, and that's what I'm trying to call out.
>I'm not going to delete it, it's there for a reason.
Demonstrating your hypocrisy when you throw around the word "bully", apparently.
> or acknowledging that my proposed solution also does away with the separate but equal bullshit.
That particular argument was debunked both by me up top (what about other states? what about federally? what about non-government entities?) and by other people in this thread. Your proposed solution does nothing of the sort considering that you completely ignore the time issue I've brougnt up twice now.
>You're JUST as bad as the supporters of prop 8, and that's what I'm trying to call out.
More insults?
You have shown beyond any doubt that you are incapable of having a mature discussion without pounding the keyboard like an impudent child ("FUCKHEAD", really?) completely ignoring points that are inconvenient for your argument, and all around going well out of your way to misinterpret what I say and lower the standard of discussion here.
Prop 8 was part of a long-running--to this day--national campaign to create and maintain this separation across many jurisdictions with different takes on marriage and civil union. The campaign has employed every negative tactic imaginable. You have to look at it in that context to understand why it's still an issue, even if it seems okay on the level of one state.
The trouble is, it's easy to give one class new things that the other doesn't get, making them unequal again. Making marriage equal ensures everyone acts fairly when modifying the legal institution of marriage.
edit: Since HN won't let me reply to bluntly_said --
Trouble is, the fight to move those rights to civil unions and properly separate church and state is a decades-longer fight. I would like to be able to get those essential legal protections within my lifetime. We can finish the job in a few years when marriage equality is universal.
But I think this is still wrong. Giving marriage any rights at all is respecting a religious practice in the government.
I think we solve the problem not by forcing those who are religious to accept gays, or by forcing gay people to accept a different word for the same rights. I think we solve it by acknowledging that marriage should never have had rights, and forcing anyone who wants the rights currently afforded to marriage, gay or straight, to get a civil union. Or hell, if you don't like civil union, call it a taxed co-habitation rights application.
Once the government has no interest in marriage, no one can stop a gay person for getting married if they'd like to. Just like no one can force a very religious community or church to recognize that marriage.
A practice that religion happens to do - not a religious practice. Marriage did not originate as a religious ceremony, but as a legal contract to deal with things like childen and property.
The fact that various churches horned in on this should carry no meaning, or else you're setting a really bad precedent, namely that anything enough churches do cannot be legislated on in any way.
Sorry, but I find it incredulous that the only reason that some folks are unwilling to give LGBT folks the right to marry is because of what the state happens to call the practice.
Why is that hard to believe? A lot of people demonstrably oppose calling it marriage, even when homosexual couples already have the same legal rights and benefits as heterosexual couples.
I think the issue is that as long as the state endows rights to religious practice (marriage) there is a problem.
If the state only gave rights and taxed civil unions, the churches cannot, by definition, control if other people get married. All they'd need to do is find a church willing to marry them, or start their own.
To quote from another of my posts:
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I think once the legal implications are removed, churches would lose their control over the word by default. It doesn't have meaning outside of the church at that point, and the government "shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" So if gay people wanted to get married, no one could stop them.
> I think the issue is that as long as the state endows rights to religious practice (marriage) there is a problem.
Legal marriage and religious marriage are already not the same thing. That was the entire point of my statement - that legally, it didn't matter what the state called it because it is a separate institution. You can get legally married without a religious ceremony.
I agree with this point of view, and have always been a bit skeptical of the gay marriage movement because of it. But on the other side, it sounds like Prop 8 is the exact opposite of what we're talking about - a measure to codify the definition of marriage and define it as exclusively heterosexual into the constitution. I can't think of any decent reason to support it.
Treating people with respect also means holding their opinions up to a respectable standard. There are some opinions that are disrespectable that otherwise good people harbor. Because you respect them, those opinions are even less tolerable.
As Karunamon states, no more evidence is needed than his financial support for a bigoted law, and his subsequent failure to rescind this support.
It's kind of sad that this needs to be repeated so often, but Proposition 8 was an attempt to limit the rights of a minority of the population (a minority I happen to belong to, as a bisexual man). It is an unprovoked act of aggression -- bullying, if you want.
If Eich had donated $1000 for a law seeking to prohibit marriage between Jews, would you still be asking Karunamon to "elaborate on when Eich said they were second-class citizens"?
I just want to add that I applaud Karunamon's cogent and spirited defense of LGBT rights.
So, I can interpret your reply as "no. I could not find any examples of Brendan Eich saying that gays were second-class citizens." I appreciate your agreement in this.
I am not familiar with the asterisk variant: LGBTQ*. Initially I thought it was a italic formatting error but you have used it in a number of places in addition to lgBtq. What does the added asterisk represent? And is there any significance to the capitalization of "lgBtq"?
in recent years, most pride marches and supporting organizations have adopted the asterisk to handle the inclusiveness of all those that aren't neccessarily "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, genderQueer", but still fall under the umbrella of the movement. Recently, this has included Genderfluids, Furries and the Polyamorous as well.
I capitalized the letter in which I personally identify. though I can't capitalize the asterisk. :)
You're demonstrating the exact problem the person to whom you were responding was discussing.
You can take a "damn them all and defeat them at all costs" stance if you want to. There's always something that "the other side" did at some point that you can avoid looking past or working with.
Grind that axe forever, I guess... but as the previous poster said, that level of intransigence is disheartening.
> Eich found it easier to treat millions of people he's never met as second class citizens
You act as if Prop 8 didn't pass by 52.24% of the voting public, or by 7 million people. But no, Eich was dictator of California, enslaving millions of gays. Or whatever.
I'm not qualified to tell the other side of the story. I don't know why Eich made that contribution. Neither do you.
It might have been family pressure, it might have honestly been that he's religious and doesn't believe the word "marriage" can be applied to same sex couple (who had Domestic partnerships available in California, which provide the same legal rights as marriage, so I find the "second class citizen" argument entirely lacking. [although now I'll wait to be attacked for simply stating that, even if you have no idea what my personal beliefs on the matter are])
Again, life is filled with shades of gray. Hell, maybe mozilla even benefited from the donation in ways that aren't clear (and they didn't want to put out in the media) You just don't fucking know. Instead you've decided this man should lose his livelyhood based on hearsay and rumor, and outrage on the internet.
We have public information. The public information is damning: he donated to an organization that ran a campaign of hateful slurs against gay people in order to permanently deny them their human rights in the California Constitution.
I guess there might be some private exonerating information, but I have a hard time imagining what it might be.
Again, the "deny them their human rights" argument fails to pass the bullshit test.
The had domestic partnerships, they had the full legal rights marriage granted available. Prop 8's entire quibble was over the word marriage, so was the pro-gay rights movement. Both sides are trying to codify belief into law, both are wrong.
The first is that you simply have your facts dead wrong. Domestic partnerships did not grant all the benefits of marriage. The federal government did not recognize them, and other states didn't recognize them, and other countries didn't. The only way Californians could fix that inequity was through supporting marriage.
Two: if this was such a quibble, why did Prop 8 proponents feel the need to spend tens of millions of dollars attacking gay people with dark and disturbing allegations? If it's just a matter of terminology, why be so hateful and angry about it?
"Family" or "religious" pressure is fucking pathetic.
We're supposed to be talking about adults here, why don't you change his diapers while you're at it?
If family or community is such a strong force in our lives, maybe the systemic criminalization of those concepts for certain people is a bigger tragedy than you admit.
I'm not qualified to tell the other side of the story.
What a cop out. You're, like everyone else who disagrees with this, downplaying Eich's behavior and trying to turn activists into the "real" monsters for speaking out.
Why the double standard? Why does one man, Eich, get a pass on speaking out for his personal political beliefs (with cash), but you demonize the the (hundreds? thousands? more?) people who did nothing but say that it was unacceptable?
You want pathetic? Look at your own post. Realize what you're defending. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Nope. Not one bit. Shitstorm like this just reinforces my people that all people are equally capable of evil and good. This time with emphasis on evil.
I don't get what does his private belief have to do with making Firefox? Seriously, what?
Also replace this scandal with person X becoming CEO and then media discovering he fucked a cat once. Do you think he'd really rise to top ranks and suddenly turn the firm into a place for cat orgies?
I appreciate the intensity of the issue, but personal attacks are not allowed on Hacker News.
Edit: thanks to seertaak below for pointing out that this was trivial compared to what Karunamon was responding to.
I get that it gives the wrong impression to admonish one person while ignoring something much worse. On the other hand, we (and certainly I) can't read all the comments, so there's inevitably some randomness here. I can't promise to get everything right, but I do promise to listen to correcting feedback.
You understand you're the definition of a schoolyard bully, right?
I've read all my posts, several times. I'm internally consistent, and I almost always favor cautious respect over ignorant bashing.
I'm not even defending Eich, again, I don't know him. I'm stating that a social environment where a man loses a job Mozilla thought he was qualified for because of private personal beliefs and internet outrage is not only actively undemocratic, it's foolish and childish.
> loses a job Mozilla thought he was qualified for because of private personal beliefs
Ah yes, this again. The old, "yes, his personal values seriously conflict with the employer's values[1] but hey, he can still check his opinions at the door when he comes in to work and do a good job!" gambit. My opinion is that this is transparently balderdash. The CEO represents the brand. The CEO's values matter. The CEO's values will out. People don't have firewalls in their heads between personal and professional like that.
I would like to state that me and others expressing our opinions here in normal language does not constitute bullying, a "lynch mob" and does not compel Mozilla or any other company to do anything. Characterising it as other than free speech is incorrect.
>I'm stating that a social environment where a man loses a job Mozilla thought he was qualified for because of private personal beliefs
Private "personal beliefs" that he reached into his wallet and tried to force into law. This is the one thing that people don't seem to understand. Eich didn't just think gays were second class citizens. This isn't a "thoughtcrime" he's being pilloried for.
It was the action. The donation, coupled with his complete refusal to backtrack, explain, or apologize. Just evade and spin all day long.
I have absolutely no problem stamping Eich with "unrepentant bigot" on his forehead because he's proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that those are his beliefs. It is both unreasonable and inconsistent to give him "the benefit of the doubt" after his behavior when the donations came to light. There is no question anymore.
>actively undemocratic, it's foolish and childish.
I don't think you know what democracy means.
Publicly proclaim your allegiance to Stormfront or a group that holds similar regressive views for women, and tell me your life will remain unaffected.
Hey this is my first post. The word "bigot" seems to be used a lot in these post. I was curious to find out what was the exact definition of the word and found this on m-w.com: "a person who strongly and unfairly dislikes other people, ideas, etc...one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance" I have a hard time believing that a guy who worked for a company as diverse as Mozilla with almost no signs of mistreating his gay or lesbian employees could be given such a strong label, again, someone who "strongly and unfairly dislikes" gays.
As someone new to this post, your comments seem to be more aligned with this definition then Eich's. For someone who seeks equality, your post seem full of "hatred and intolerance."
And remember that "a hate group" is actually "more than one hate groups" because Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul definitely qualify as haters and bigots.
If you have the stomach, google yourself up some Pat Buchanan quotes -- it's really vile and disgusting stuff, and he absolutely and without question qualifies as an archetypal "bigot".
In fact, the Guardian article that recently outed him as contributing money to Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul happened between the short time that he announced in an interview he was NOT going to resign, and between when he DID resign, so it may have been a factor, the straw (or rather the bay of straw) that broke the camel's back.
No, I think you've decided that when democracy doesn't cater exactly to your personal morals, it must be wrong.
Making a donation based on private, personal beliefs is ENTIRELY the point of a democracy. The correct action is to speak out in support of your ideas, not to cast hatred on those who disagree.
Instead of sitting here arguing, you could have gone and made a 10 dollar donation to a pro-lbgt group, and done a lot more good. Instead of forcing Eich to resign, you could have used it as a rallying point to get A LOT of other like minded people to make that same 10 dollar donation. You could have chosen to voice your opinions with both words and monetary support, (like Eich did) instead of attacking the opposition. You aren't doing that.
So in other words, if you as an activist do anything that has a real impact, you're a "fucking bully", but you "support my actions" if I take meaningless, "feel good" steps.
I'm gay, and I would classify my feelings towards Eich more as fear than hatred. Eich very directly donated towards a cause that was bent on restricting my rights. Though fear often breeds hatred, I truly don't bear Eich ill will. I'm not happy to see him lose his job--on the contrary, I share your sadness that a talented, qualified man lost his job. However, I am relieved that a man who feels that I should not be allowed to marry is no longer in a very influential position at an influential company.
Now, whether or not OkCupid should have been casting stones is another matter. But that seems to have been thoroughly discussed, so I'll end this here.
I'm seeing a lot of disagreement over the facts of Proposition 8. Several people are saying that homosexual couples in California already had a legal partnership with all the same rights as "married" heterosexual couples.
Okay, let's take the facts in question off the table and say that there are absolutely no differences between marriage and domestic partnerships besides the name. At best then, Prop 8 kept us "separate but equal". History has shown that doctrine to be discriminatory and oppressive. There's an inherent inequality in my inability to say that I'm married.
I don't think it's appropriate to invoke separate but equal if the only difference is the legal term used. Separate but equal was about separate physical facilities. And as far as I know, it was never illegal for any couple to claim that they were married. It's just that the official legal term would not be "marriage."
And I think the separate but equal problem is a very compelling reason to remove rights from marriage entirely. Codifying religious beliefs into law shouldn't be accepted. Trying to redefine religious beliefs in law stirs up more controversy than it should.
Amending the law to force all couples to get the equivalent of a civil unions satisfies both camps.
Further, once marriage holds no rights, the government cannot stop a gay couple from getting married if a nice tolerant church wants to marry them (of which there are plenty). The issue is solely religious at that point. And "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ..."
Just like the government can't force a church to marry someone, or force a very intolerant religious community to accepting that marriage.
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between a secular and a religious "marriage". Religious institutions have always been allowed to marry or not marry as they see fit. Quite a few religions and religious factions have provide same-sex marriages long before it was ever explicitly allowed in law.
When most people get a regular 'ol marriage, it's actually two events. Their religious marriage, as recognized by their faith, and the civil "marriage" as defined and recognized by law. You can get one without the other if you wish. Just get a religious marriage, and don't bother with the legal licensing and registration, or conversely, just get a legal marriage and don't bother with the religious aspects of it. I can't say it's always been this way, but it's basically always been this way.
The problem comes from the simply face that there's a very large body of law that required people to enter into an agreement specifically called "marriage" for those laws to apply to them. More importantly SCOTUS has recognized "marriage" as a fundamental right.
In theory, same-sex couple always had the right to get married, legally and religiously (if their religion allowed), and should have had those laws apply to them. But it was only recently when same-sex couples tried to enforce the application of those laws on themselves that the legal hypocrisy became apparent and government attempted to separate those people from their legal right.
If law had used the word "quijibo" instead of "marriage" it wouldn't have mattered any. People could have gotten religiously married, then filed for their quijibo. The word choice is irrelevant, other than the legal inertia that's already behind the word.
> Religious institutions have always been allowed to marry or not marry as they see fit.
Correct me if I'm reading this wrong [0], but it seem that a New Jersey court ruled in 2012 that a religious facility could not deny usage to homosexual couple for civil union ceremonies. From my quick Googling, it seems this is a big concern for Christian groups in the US, but I don't know how credible their concern is.
Edit: with a bit more Googling, it seems fairly common for state governments to prohibit discriminating based on sexual orientation for the sale of goods and services, which would (I assume) apply to churches being used for ceremonies. There have also been court cases involving wedding cakes, flowers, and photography.
It is a major fear for religious groups that belong to a religion that won't recognize/perform same-sex marriages.
But it won't likely happen (or won't be upheld on challenges up to SCOTUS if it does happen at a local level). Religious freedom includes religions that sometimes hold beliefs that may not be popular.
For example, most Zoroastrian organizations forbid conversion to Zoroastrianism and won't permit marriages to outsiders. However, it's highly unlikely a law would be passed stopping this kind of ethnic discrimination. Many Christian preachers go on about the evils of paganism, but outlawing speech against Wicca or Hinduism or whatever is unlikely to happen as would a law forcing believers in those religions to convert to an acceptable non-Pagan religion.
> which would (I assume) apply to churches being used for ceremonies.
Churches or other houses of worship have a special protected status different from that of businesses. They're kind of like a private club. They aren't free from all laws, human sacrifice is not permitted for example.
More importantly, people are free to leave and join other religions as they see fit (or no religion), or spin out their own sect that allows for whatever they want as they wish.
This was seen as important enough that it's actually the first part of the first amendment, before speech, press and assembly.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
It'd be very hard to pass such a law and not have it run afoul of this.
Then how do you explain the links I posted in that comment? Do you think those rulings are only in place because the Supreme Court hasn't been involved yet?
I'm not so sure that the Supreme Court would rule that churches can refuse to offer a service due to someone's sexual orientation. They have obviously ruled that private businesses and organizations cannot discriminate based on race (as well as several other attributes).
Business and religious organizations are significantly different kinds of recognized organizations in the U.S. It's not correct to try and draw a parallel between them. Just like it's not correct to draw a parallel between U.S. criminal law and the UCMJ.
In this case, the property was held by the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association. Not a church. However, majority ownership in the association is held by the United Methodist Church. Board members must be members or clergy in UMC. Meaning they formed the association as an organization outside of the Church and thus is required to follow the laws any other owned organization must follow...including non-discrimination.
This would be analogous to a church buying a McDonald's franchise and then claiming they can not hire minorities or women because of some religious tenant.
UMC owns a large number of businesses and properties that it leases for business or residential use. As a matter of fact, a better analogy is UMC might form a non-profit company that owns a low-rent apartment complex (as a social outreach program) and only allow low-income people to live there. But then deny an application based purely on somebody being gay. Or property that a restaurant leases and then demands the restaurant not serve gay patrons.
In this case the
In this case the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association owned about a square mile of beach front property that it used for both religious services (my guess would be with a fee paid to the Association by UMC) and rented out for various functions including weddings. It'd be no different than an owner of a large function hall renting it out for weddings 6 days a week and for church service on Sundays (which is actually quite common).
The Association then sought private organization (not religious) tax-exemption as part of a nature preservation agreement. A legal requirement under this exemption is that property be available for public use on an equal basis.
You can see where this is going and the rest of the opinion is good reading to help flesh out the story. It's relatively clear cut, and doesn't infringe in any way on the UMC to exercise their religious beliefs. In fact the UMC's defense was an effort to push out their religious beliefs into the public sphere in clear violation of the law. A law that, BTW makes clear exceptions for religious organizations and their practices -- even if discriminatory.
It's become a big issue in Britain - but that's mostly because they have a state church. It's certainly not outside of the realm of possibility, but I've heard of mixed race marriage ceremonies being explicitly denied by churches in the US, and don't ever remember any recourse that the couples had other than the court of public opinion.
Well they always had a recourse. Get married someplace else. Go to a different church, or if your sect forbids it, get to a different sect, and if your religion forbids it, make your own sect, and if that's too much work, just get a civil marriage.
I know it's not quite that simple, people get very hung up on where they spend their Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays, but people usually have options of some sort.
Sure, but one could say the same for "whites only" businesses in the American south. African Americans could just eat, fill up their gas tanks, buy clothes, etc. "someplace else." The Civil Rights Acts makes it clear that the people (or at least the government) does not endorse that form of self-determination.
Except that religious tolerance, including tolerance for religious organization's religiously grounded specific discrimination stances, is specifically enshrined in the Constitution. Businesses have no similar or even remotely analogous protection.
Drawing an analogy between an organized religious organization like a Church and a business like a restaurant is a fundamental misunderstanding of the law. This specific dividing line has been held up over and over again in cases where religious organizations incorporate a business entity, and then wish to push particular discrimination policies specific to their practices into that business.
A White Supremacist church is free to be discriminatory, but the bakery it owns and runs as a separate business entity is not for example.
However, IIR, a religiously owned organization, like a corporation, may choose to discriminate based on religion. So the White Supremacist Church's bakery, let's say it's Lutheran, may choose not to hire non-Lutherans at its bakery. This was actually held up by SCOTUS in a 1987 decision for a Mormon church owned corporation.
I'm entirely against state marriage, religious or otherwise. If you want to pool your finances, form a joint partnership - and feel free to do it with anybody willing to sign the documents. If you want to figure out who gets to visit someone in the hospital, use something else.
From everything I've read, he voluntarily stepped down, without any pressure exerted on him by anyone above him or who otherwise has direct power over him. Has anybody seen any indication otherwise?
In this case, I'm more inclined to see it as a good move overall. He isn't a backroom coder or language designer or something, whose opinions and PR profile don't really matter. As CEO, his whole job is to lead, set the direction of the company, and be its public face. This issue, and his handling of it, seem to show that he isn't really cut out for the job and shouldn't be doing it. It was probably a mistake to take it in the first place, but I don't think he could have a good career just moving to a lower position at the company now.
I will say that I respect him more for stepping down on his own, and for not pulling some bullshit PR move like apologizing or making a token donation to some pro-LGBT cause. That always seemed so slimy to me - like saying "I probably still believe what I always believed, but I will kowtow to the PC gods and make a PR move to save my job without ever actually standing up for what I believe."
OR... You could recognize that his action stands directly against the values of Mozilla and will only lead to less diversity at the top of Mozilla, which even further runs against it's values. Not to mention his politically impotent non-appology appology, where he neither stood up for a separation of personal views nor identified his reasoning and how it has or hadn't changed.
i don't get that sort of thinking. nobody even suspected he made this donation until someone digged through the records.
he founded mozilla among his peers for fucks sake. FOUNDED.
he was there for the manifesto. He was there when Mozilla compensated lgbt couples and the law/taxes didn't. He was there helping them daily.
And all of a sudden, he's fucking satan because his personal views on marriage were different. Views which he never let into his professional world.
And for the other side: because he's not as strong as some, he resigned. So that must be bad too. it must be mozilla who fired him and thus don't accept diversity.
For one, there's about 27 universes worth of difference from supporting a specific law which does a specific thing, and supporting a politician who has different positions on different laws. Maybe the other positions he has took priority over marriage equality?
For instance: five years ago, coming out of the economic mess, I'd have prioritized economic recovery (so, someone who knows what they're doing on that front) over marriage equality. That's not to say marriage equality isn't important, but it's all rather pointless if the economy is trashed and everything else goes with it.
But if you are checking if a person if qualified to be CEO, wouldn't their domain knowledge and ability to lead be better qualities to prioritize than their stance on gay marriage -- especially if their personal views have not been shown to affect how they intend to lead?
Absolutely. However, Eich's behavior after the donation came out revealed a crucial flaw in his ability to handle public relations. Even if this kerfluffle had been about something that isn't so contentious, it's been proven that he cannot handle criticism - something a CEO, the public face of a company, has as one of their primary job duties.
It also reveals a pretty massive conflict of interest wrt. his personal views on equality and Mozilla's views on equality. If it were any other corporation it may be different, but Mozilla's kind of famous for this.
Yagan's personal views don't really matter. In fact, Eich's views don't matter either because in politics, perception is reality.
Yagan contributed to the growing perception that holding anti-gay opinions is socially unacceptable, something that the gay rights movement has been trying to achieve for decades. Regardless of his personal views, past actions or other motives, it helped.
Eich could have easily saved himself. The key problem was the perception of an anti-gay CEO of Mozilla, and this could have been fixed in the same way that all public figures handle shifting public sentiment: with a statement about how his views have "evolved", he realizes now how wrong he was, apologizing for the hurt he caused and so on. Clearly he chose not to do that.
No, it's not "exactly the same." I don't think anyone really benefited from this entire shit show, but stop trying to excuse and water down what Prop 8 supporters did.
Giving money to a bad politician is not the same as giving money to support a war of pure bigotry and hatred against gay people. Perhaps you weren't there in 2008, or perhaps you weren't a target. But the Yes on Prop 8 campaign deployed deeply disturbing and hateful rhetoric that relied on the worst tropes about gay people--that they want to corrupt your children into homosexuality. All this wasn't just to pass a law, but to permanently enshrine and sacralize hatred in the California Constitution.
Here's a question: many people, perhaps you the reader, oppose Eich's forced resignation because of freedom of speech concerns. Great, I'm with you! And why I think this was all a stupid idea that doesn't benefit gay rights at all. But why are we as a society up in arms about this firing in particular? Why are we not focused on ENDA, for instance, which protects you from being fired for saying you're gay? Why aren't we outraged that workers (illegally) get fired for saying they want to unionize? Or, more tech-focused, people getting fired for shit-talking their boss on Facebook? It seems that, as usual, freedom of speech is only a concern in the media if you're a rich, straight white man.
Is it really so hard for you to imagine that not everyone comes from the same background and upbringing? Moreover, is it so hard to believe that not everyone who supported prop8 was a gay-hating bigot who wants to see them all burn in hell or whatever?
With every political standpoint, there is a spectrum of supporters who support the cause - for varying reasons and varying intensity. It's very important to keep this in mind especially with issues like prop8 where the anti-prop8 branded the prop8 supporters as a whole as gay-hating bigots.
Here's the problem: we don't know where Eich fell on the spectrum. We don't know if he hated gays or if he was brought up in a traditional household where marriage is a religious ceremony rather than a love-based ceremony.
Hell, I recall some prop8 supporters whose only problem with gay marriage was that it uses the word "marriage", they were people who wanted civil unions to offer the same legal protections/rules as marriage, but wanted to keep marriage as man+woman so the concept of a marriage ceremony still had the same religious significance as it did before.
My whole point here is that we have no idea why Eich supported prop 8. There's a whole rainbow of possible reasons, many of them which are not quite as damning as people make out. Since we never heard the other side of the story, this whole fiasco looks like nothing more than a huge joke, but is actually a scary reminder of how passionate and defensive people can get over social issues.
If you're willing to donate $1000 dollars to a bigoted cause, you're a bigot. It doesn't matter if his religion tells him it's okay; he's still a bigot. It doesn't matter if gays make him feel squicky: he's still a bigot. If my religion told me "black people are children of Ham, therefore you should separate yourself from them" (an argument that was once used), you'd rightly call me a bigot. What's the difference here?
Prop 8 was incredibly hateful as a campaign: in case you weren't there, view some of these ads they ran [1]. It's seriously nausea inducing. He funded these ads, to deny gay people fundamental human rights. He never apologized for funding these ads, either.
I'm sorry, but Prop 8 passed. By 7 million people.
Boycotting Mozilla? Really? You need to talk about boycotting California. Making a scapegoat out of one single person for what an entire state did is fucking insane.
The number you're looking for is 599,602 people, not 7 million people.
Note that I've not said anything to support boycotting Mozilla or calling for Eich to get fired. I just don't like people laughing it off as just some good ole fun he was having.
Donating money--real money, $1,000--to a campaign of hate is bad, particularly considering the vile rhetoric it used those funds for directly. Bad bad bad. It's also bad to have voted for it, but just bad, not bad bad bad.
I don't think being a bigot means you're inherently a terrible person or that you should be fired from a position. That's situational. I say it was a bad move for the board to make him CEO in the first place--the rage and hurt that'd happen because of that was easily foreseeable--and I'm neutral/too lacking of information on Mozilla's organizational health on whether he should have been fired after he got the position.
I'm staunchly in favor of gay marriage, which I consider to be a no-brainer -- but it seems to me the motivations of Prop 8 proponents differ a lot in nature, with some being much more excusable than others in their wrongness.
For example, there are people who have nothing against homosexuality but are attached to the symbolic value of 'marriage' as a Christian institution and would be completely fine with another civil contract with the same rights but a different name. This seems to be somewhat in line with Eich's actions (I remember reading a memo from Eich stating he had no plan to amend Mozilla's gay-friendly policies and employee benefits). Although I still think this view is guilty of being wrongly attached to outdated models of society, this is not nearly as bad as what Eich has been accused of.
There are other possible reasons one could have (for example, those who in ignorance of the many studies that showed that children of homosexual households grow up just fine could have unfounded reservations about gay adoption, but would be ready to change their mind if shown the evidence; I've encountered a couple myself), but my broader point is that there is a huge range in the degree of bigotry between those who voted Prop 8 and one should not jump to conclusions so easily as they do not all deserve the same level of condemnation.
Now, I can understand why Eich's views could make him unsuitable as a CEO because, in a purely pragmatic sense, holding views that most of your workforce despise is obviously detrimental to your ability to lead and especially so at such a peculiar organization as Mozilla where ideology matters arguably more than in other companies; it also matters because, as many have said, a CEO is the face of the company and his views and those of the company are sometimes hard to disentangle.
But going from there to making a call to boycott Firefox is a huge jump and smells like a pure appropriation of the controversy for PR purposes. This revelation about Sam Yagan seems to strengthen this feeling. Come on people, we're better than this. Being on the right side of history about an issue does not automatically waive us from intellectual rigor and moderation.