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I didn't know about Brendan Eich. That makes me angry. He made a personal decision to donate a small amount to Prop 8, and extreme political activists completel

I didn't know about Brendan Eich. That makes me angry. He made a personal decision to donate a small amount to Prop 8, and extreme political activists completely annihilated him and forced him out of his job. "Critics of Eich within Mozilla tweeted to gay activists that he had donated $1,000 to California Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California until 2013, when it was declared unconstitutional and marriages were allowed to resume. Eich stood by his decision to fund the campaign, but wrote on his blog that he was sorry for “causing pain” and pledged to promote equality at Mozilla. Gay activists created an online shaming campaign against Eich, with OkCupid declaring they would block access to the Firefox browser unless he stepped down."

morgante 10y ago
> I didn't know about Brendan Eich. That makes me angry. It makes me angry too, but also raises (for me) some interesting political questions around what level of disagreement is "too far." I would never fire someone for being a Republican and personally/privately opposing gay marriage. But I would also immediately fire someone if they were a Nazi. So where is the line if what's an acceptable level of tolerance (and where does Trump fall on it)?
- Hondor 10y ago
  Is Nazism really that bad? They want to favor some groups of people over others, even if it means killing some of those others. That's also what patriotism does (see every war ever) and we seem to be fine with it.
  - morgante 10y ago
    > Is Nazism really that bad? Yes. Please take your Holocaust apologia elsewhere. Killing millions of people for no other reason than that you don't like their ethnicity is pretty much the baseline of immorality. Heck, killing millions of people for more legitimate reasons (being Nazis) also would be pretty abhorrent. Also, for the record, "we" are not generally okay with senseless wars. There's a reason that murdering innocent civilians is considered a war crime.
- metamicah 10y ago
  Maybe it's just practicality: there's not much business sense in having leaders that publicly work against some of the most deeply meaningful interests of a significant portion of their employees.
- ubernostrum 10y ago
  So consider Proposition 8. This was a ballot measure whose sole purpose was to enshrine in law the idea that "this group of people over here aren't legally equal to everyone else". Privately believing someone has done something wrong, or belongs to a bad group, is one thing. Trying to enshrine that belief in law and disenfranchise the targeted person or group is quite another thing, and if you honestly are unable to see the difference between the two I'm unsure how to assist you.
  - morgante 10y ago
    > Privately believing someone has done something wrong, or belongs to a bad group, is one thing. Did I say they were the same thing? I absolutely think that "let's make gay marriage illegal" is categorically worse than "I don't like gay marriage." As bad a Prop 8 was, the policies Trump advocates are 1,000 times worse, yet I don't see anyone working to boycott or quit his companies.
    - ubernostrum 10y ago
      As I walked home from work yesterday I was listening to a podcast about economics which mentioned that the Trump brand has been permanently devalued by his campaign -- people no longer want to stay in a Trump hotel, for example. And people have been leading efforts to drive potential students away from his "Trump University", and potential customers away from his other businesses. It's possible you haven't seen such efforts, but that is not identical with "no efforts are occurring".
      - morgante 10y ago
        I've definitely heard about direct economic effects for Trump (though I think he'll end up gaining a lot more economically from the massive diehard fanbase he has now built) but why hasn't there been more backlash against Thiel? In my book his cause is a whole lot worse than Eich's. Would you feel comfortable working at Peter Thiel's company?
        10y ago
- josinalvo 10y ago
  I'll just repost an old comment, advocating that the limit is: is it speech and ideas? Then do not fire. "I fundamentally disagree with you about this very important issue, and we should still find a way to cooperate" is a crucial idea, hard won and, as we are seeing, easily lost. It underpins multi-religious societies, working democracies, and in general, any group of people that need to do something. Unfortunately, right now we have groups of people that say the polar oposite: "It is good and moral to shun people who disagree with X". I totally agree with marriage equality. But I think it can be (and mostly was) won on dialogue, not shunning. And I will always be against the shunners (though I hope not to shun them :P). btw, all I just said applies just as well to klanspeople/nazis: Are they harming the employees? No? Are they aligned with the mission? Them keep them. And tell them they are stupid over a beer. Talk the shit out, and fight their stupid ideas in the right places. Do not allow political disagreement, even of the most grievous kind, to cut oportunities for dialogue and cooperation.
  - morgante 10y ago
    > is it speech and ideas? Then do not fire. How far will you take that principal though? What if you have an employee who consistently comes in and talks about how he'd like to kill all the non-white people? What if he talks about how many guns he has? I think this would make the office an unworkable environment for most of my other employees (particularly any PoC) and I would be very justified in firing them.
newscracker 10y ago
I wonder what kind of outrage will be exhibited, if any, in this case and which companies that Peter Thiel has stakes in would be boycotted en masse. My guess is nothing. I'm not in favor of Brendan Eich's personal choice, but I feel the reaction was far too strong in that case. Here we have something more than a thousand times larger that supports many oppressive things.
ubernostrum 10y ago
I was working at Mozilla when this was going on. I likely would've quit if Eich had remained. I've written at length about Proposition 8 and the fact that it was not simply a matter of opinion or personal belief. It was, shorn of all the attempts to make it sound non-controversial, about taking a basic premise of a free society -- equality of all people under the law -- and putting it up for popular vote. Proposition 8 was literally a ballot measure to say "these people shouldn't be equal to everyone else". I am OK with applying social pressure to people who attempt that sort of thing, to make them feel as alienated from the core principles of society as they actually are.
- sangnoir 10y ago
  > I was working at Mozilla when this was going on. I likely would've quit if Eich had remained I don't know you or what you did at Mozilla: if it were up to me, I would rather had you quit than Eich (no offense). Frankly, Mozilla has lost focus and I think it would have done much better under Eich. Edit: more thoughts on the politics. Eich's opinion was far from controversial- half of Americans held the same belief. I would guess half of Mozilla users in the US also had the same opinion: were those people also disposable? Supporting prop 8 (to me as a lefty) is more benign than supporting Trump; yet I don't see any calls to boycott or quit companies with executives that support Trump. Finally, it was a dangerous precedent for left wing politics to adopt, what if the right wing had adopted it and gotten someone fired for affronting beliefs held as strongly as yours?
  - cygx 10y ago
    Just to clarify, Eich did not get fired - he got pressured into resigning. Note that people in fact have been fired (in some cases, allegedly - I'm too lazy to verify all the stories I just googled) for being gay, supporting Occupy, supporting Obama, or more trivial reasons like bikini photos on facebook or because the employer found their short stories offensive.
  - ubernostrum 10y ago
    As I've said in other comments, I think the line is when you decide to move from "I believe this" to "the law should enforce my beliefs on everyone". There have been plenty of people calling to pressure people who support Trump; pg is one of them, and has been getting lit up on Twitter recently for continuing to work with Thiel. Finally, you seem to think this is something unique to "left wing politics". Which is perhaps true: left-wing movements tend to resort to social pressure, boycotts and similar methods. Right-wing movements tend to attempt to outlaw or in some cases just literally exterminate the people who disagree with them. Which sort of world would you rather live in: the world where people who disagree with you simply refuse to associate with you, or the world where people who disagree with you seek to have your existence made illegal? (and for the record, I no longer work for Mozilla, but that's unrelated)
radmuzom 10y ago
So now you're angry when liberals exercise their right to free speech?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

morgante 10y ago

> I didn't know about Brendan Eich. That makes me angry. It makes me angry too, but also raises (for me) some interesting political questions around what level of disagreement is "too far." I would never fire someone for being a Republican and personally/privately opposing gay marriage. But I would also immediately fire someone if they were a Nazi. So where is the line if what's an acceptable level of tolerance (and where does Trump fall on it)?

Hondor 10y ago
Is Nazism really that bad? They want to favor some groups of people over others, even if it means killing some of those others. That's also what patriotism does (see every war ever) and we seem to be fine with it.
- morgante 10y ago
  > Is Nazism really that bad? Yes. Please take your Holocaust apologia elsewhere. Killing millions of people for no other reason than that you don't like their ethnicity is pretty much the baseline of immorality. Heck, killing millions of people for more legitimate reasons (being Nazis) also would be pretty abhorrent. Also, for the record, "we" are not generally okay with senseless wars. There's a reason that murdering innocent civilians is considered a war crime.
metamicah 10y ago
Maybe it's just practicality: there's not much business sense in having leaders that publicly work against some of the most deeply meaningful interests of a significant portion of their employees.
ubernostrum 10y ago
So consider Proposition 8. This was a ballot measure whose sole purpose was to enshrine in law the idea that "this group of people over here aren't legally equal to everyone else". Privately believing someone has done something wrong, or belongs to a bad group, is one thing. Trying to enshrine that belief in law and disenfranchise the targeted person or group is quite another thing, and if you honestly are unable to see the difference between the two I'm unsure how to assist you.
- morgante 10y ago
  > Privately believing someone has done something wrong, or belongs to a bad group, is one thing. Did I say they were the same thing? I absolutely think that "let's make gay marriage illegal" is categorically worse than "I don't like gay marriage." As bad a Prop 8 was, the policies Trump advocates are 1,000 times worse, yet I don't see anyone working to boycott or quit his companies.
  - ubernostrum 10y ago
    As I walked home from work yesterday I was listening to a podcast about economics which mentioned that the Trump brand has been permanently devalued by his campaign -- people no longer want to stay in a Trump hotel, for example. And people have been leading efforts to drive potential students away from his "Trump University", and potential customers away from his other businesses. It's possible you haven't seen such efforts, but that is not identical with "no efforts are occurring".
    - morgante 10y ago
      I've definitely heard about direct economic effects for Trump (though I think he'll end up gaining a lot more economically from the massive diehard fanbase he has now built) but why hasn't there been more backlash against Thiel? In my book his cause is a whole lot worse than Eich's. Would you feel comfortable working at Peter Thiel's company?
      - 10y ago
josinalvo 10y ago
I'll just repost an old comment, advocating that the limit is: is it speech and ideas? Then do not fire. "I fundamentally disagree with you about this very important issue, and we should still find a way to cooperate" is a crucial idea, hard won and, as we are seeing, easily lost. It underpins multi-religious societies, working democracies, and in general, any group of people that need to do something. Unfortunately, right now we have groups of people that say the polar oposite: "It is good and moral to shun people who disagree with X". I totally agree with marriage equality. But I think it can be (and mostly was) won on dialogue, not shunning. And I will always be against the shunners (though I hope not to shun them :P). btw, all I just said applies just as well to klanspeople/nazis: Are they harming the employees? No? Are they aligned with the mission? Them keep them. And tell them they are stupid over a beer. Talk the shit out, and fight their stupid ideas in the right places. Do not allow political disagreement, even of the most grievous kind, to cut oportunities for dialogue and cooperation.
- morgante 10y ago
  > is it speech and ideas? Then do not fire. How far will you take that principal though? What if you have an employee who consistently comes in and talks about how he'd like to kill all the non-white people? What if he talks about how many guns he has? I think this would make the office an unworkable environment for most of my other employees (particularly any PoC) and I would be very justified in firing them.

newscracker 10y ago

I wonder what kind of outrage will be exhibited, if any, in this case and which companies that Peter Thiel has stakes in would be boycotted en masse. My guess is nothing. I'm not in favor of Brendan Eich's personal choice, but I feel the reaction was far too strong in that case. Here we have something more than a thousand times larger that supports many oppressive things.

ubernostrum 10y ago

I was working at Mozilla when this was going on. I likely would've quit if Eich had remained. I've written at length about Proposition 8 and the fact that it was not simply a matter of opinion or personal belief. It was, shorn of all the attempts to make it sound non-controversial, about taking a basic premise of a free society -- equality of all people under the law -- and putting it up for popular vote. Proposition 8 was literally a ballot measure to say "these people shouldn't be equal to everyone else". I am OK with applying social pressure to people who attempt that sort of thing, to make them feel as alienated from the core principles of society as they actually are.

sangnoir 10y ago
> I was working at Mozilla when this was going on. I likely would've quit if Eich had remained I don't know you or what you did at Mozilla: if it were up to me, I would rather had you quit than Eich (no offense). Frankly, Mozilla has lost focus and I think it would have done much better under Eich. Edit: more thoughts on the politics. Eich's opinion was far from controversial- half of Americans held the same belief. I would guess half of Mozilla users in the US also had the same opinion: were those people also disposable? Supporting prop 8 (to me as a lefty) is more benign than supporting Trump; yet I don't see any calls to boycott or quit companies with executives that support Trump. Finally, it was a dangerous precedent for left wing politics to adopt, what if the right wing had adopted it and gotten someone fired for affronting beliefs held as strongly as yours?
- cygx 10y ago
  Just to clarify, Eich did not get fired - he got pressured into resigning. Note that people in fact have been fired (in some cases, allegedly - I'm too lazy to verify all the stories I just googled) for being gay, supporting Occupy, supporting Obama, or more trivial reasons like bikini photos on facebook or because the employer found their short stories offensive.
- ubernostrum 10y ago
  As I've said in other comments, I think the line is when you decide to move from "I believe this" to "the law should enforce my beliefs on everyone". There have been plenty of people calling to pressure people who support Trump; pg is one of them, and has been getting lit up on Twitter recently for continuing to work with Thiel. Finally, you seem to think this is something unique to "left wing politics". Which is perhaps true: left-wing movements tend to resort to social pressure, boycotts and similar methods. Right-wing movements tend to attempt to outlaw or in some cases just literally exterminate the people who disagree with them. Which sort of world would you rather live in: the world where people who disagree with you simply refuse to associate with you, or the world where people who disagree with you seek to have your existence made illegal? (and for the record, I no longer work for Mozilla, but that's unrelated)

radmuzom 10y ago

So now you're angry when liberals exercise their right to free speech?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]