4 ms·

I had to look up on wikipedia the details of the Brendan Eich resignation. It sounds like he donated money to California Proposition 8, and politician supportin

I had to look up on wikipedia the details of the Brendan Eich resignation. It sounds like he donated money to California Proposition 8, and politician supporting it, which wanted to pass a state amendment banning same-sex marriage. So he supported denying a human right to a group of people. As a prominent CEO he was called out for it and he made a choice to resign. Is that about right? It is notable that in your summary you refer to this as political fashion swings, and "unpopular" political views, and an overreaction. Would you characterize the civil right movement in the same fashion? You also seem to correlate competent technical leadership with someone who sympathizes with Eich's views. That in my experience doesn't follow at all. If anything competent leadership means you have worked with many people of all different backgrounds and have excelled at leading and empowering them. Mozilla likely has many LGBTQ employees, and if your personal prejudices stifle their contributions, then you are not competent by definition of leadership.

will4274 6y ago
Brendan Eich donated to a proposal opposed to same sex marriage during a year that Barack Obama was opposed to same sex marriage. Do you believe that Barack Obama's opposition to same sex marriage should have made him unsuitable for any executive employment (i.e. in the private sector as a CEO, or in the public sector as a Mayor, Governor, or POTUS)? At companies like Google, Microsoft, and Apple, you can work on a browser regardless of your political views. At Mozilla, you need to think a certain way first. A smaller pool of technical talent to choose from leads to worse technical leadership. Recall that Eich only became the CEO (over the opposition of a portion of the board) after months where Mozilla was searching and couldn't find anybody better. It's not that the people who have particular political views are particularly talented, it's just that some of them are talented, just like the people who disagree with them. If you can include talented people of all stripes, you can do better than if you restrict yourself to talented people from a single ideological group.
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  Eich was Mozilla's CTO when the donation became widely known. Nothing came of it for 2 years until he was promoted to CEO. You can discriminate against LGBT people outside of work and still work on a browser at Mozilla. You just can't be in charge of everything.
  - will4274 6y ago
    > You just can't be in charge of everything. Unless by "everything" you mean the government of the United State of America (the country where Mozilla has its headquarters), in which case, it's OK again (Obama opposed same sex marriage at the time when Eich made his donation). You can dress it up like Eich's views were some big sin that demands banishment from society, but of America's 45 presidents, 44 of them agreed with Eich, and the one who disagreed initially agreed with Eich before disagreeing with him. So, I'm pretty sure you can be in charge of everything with those views.
    - cycloptic 6y ago
      This is really not a productive line of discussion, please stop. If you have any friends who are same-sex couples, ask them who they would vote for if they were sent back in time to all those previous elections. That's a real way to move the conversation forward that doesn't involve speculating about why certain famous and/or powerful people acted the way they did, many of whom are now dead and can't be given the chance to explain themselves anyway.
    - bronson 6y ago
      If the US adhered to the Mozilla Manifesto then you might have a point. Until then, it’s fine to hold Obama and Eich to different standards.
- d3nj4l 6y ago
  > Do you believe that Barack Obama's opposition to same sex marriage should have made him unsuitable for any executive employment (i.e. in the private sector as a CEO, or in the public sector as a Mayor, Governor, or POTUS)? Yes.
will4274 6y ago
> It is notable that in your summary you refer to this as political fashion swings, and "unpopular" political views, and an overreaction. Would you characterize the civil right movement in the same fashion? Just to answer your question explicitly: yes. If somebody had a political opinion that was popular with 40% of the population and had not brought it into the workplace, I would not support firing the person for holding that opinion, even if the opinion were, for example, that schools should be segregated by race. While I personally don't support segregation by race, I don't find firing people for political views kept outside of work to be in the long term interest of liberal societies. I find the notion of segregated but equal schools unworkable (because those with power will always ensure their schools are better) but not inherently evil. And, in some situations (e.g. gender), I do not oppose "separate but equal" schooling. While I personally attended a public school, I have several friends who attended single-sex private schools, and they turned out OK. With all this in mind, your language around "denying a human right" makes it clear that you aren't giving Eich's views a fair hearing. California had domestic partnerships for same sex couples that ensured comparable protections around spousal visitation, etc. While I also disagree with the notion of "separate but equal" for partnerships and support granting gay couples the right to marriage, international organizations (like the United Nations) do not generally consider "separate but equal" to be human rights violations. To be a human rights violation, the separation must be coupled with a disparity in treatment (as in segregated schooling in the United States), which Eich is explicitly opposed to.
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  California civil unions weren't equal to marriages. The US rejected separate but equal 50 years before Proposition 8.
  - will4274 6y ago
    The US Supreme Court rejected separate but equal in the context of race and government provided public school for children. In 2020, it's still legal to provide separate but equal accommodations for gender - and most establishment (public or private) do so with bathrooms. And, government and private organizations provide separate but equal, and in many cases unequal, shelters for their homeless populations by gender. Filing out a different government form isn't a human rights violation - it happens all the time - people with disabilities or those above a certain age fill out a different or additional forms. On the other hand, systematically having dilapidated and unsafe buildings for schoolchildren of one race but not the other is a human rights violations. Do you see the difference?
dependenttypes 6y ago
> So he supported denying a human right to a group of people Marriage is certainly part of UDHR ("according to national laws governing the exercise of this right" which allows said human right to not apply to certain groups of people. UDHR also considers it a human right for someone to be kidnapped and forcefully re-educated so I do not understand why anyone takes it seriously) but that does not make it a human right. Marriage is nothing more than the government acknowledging that two people love each other, I personally fail to see why this should be a human right (or why the government is meddling in it at all).
- viscoelastic 6y ago
  If you fail to see it personally I take it you haven't had many of these rights denied. To be fair I haven't either, but Marriage is not "just" an empty acknowledgment: its the right of inheriting when your spouse dies its the right to be covered by your spouse's insurance its the right to share joint custody of children its the right of spousal privilege in court its that you can file taxes jointly its the rights to benefits as a spouse of a veteran and dozens more of trivial and important legal rights most couples take for granted. These are trivially denied in many social interactions and used to make others feel like second class citizens, and deny them their pursuit of happiness. This was all debated and settled by the Supreme Court in 2015. If the government would stop meddling in all the other legal affairs then I would see the reason for your confusion why they are meddling in marriage.
  - dependenttypes 6y ago
    Whether or not I personally fail to see why marriage specifically should be a human right is not relevant to whether if I had any of these "rights" denied. > its the right of inheriting when your spouse dies You can designate your own heir. > its the right to be covered by your spouse's insurance > its the right to share joint custody of children > its the right of spousal privilege in court > its that you can file taxes jointly > its the rights to benefits as a spouse of a veteran > and dozens more of trivial and important legal rights most couples take for granted And I am arguing that these are not things that should come with marriage - people who decide to not get married and people who are not legally allowed to get married (such as people in polyamorous relationships) should have the ability to enjoy the same rights as married people. Regardless though, not all of these are part of the universal definition of marriage (nor are a necessary part of it), the UDHR says that marriage as an abstract concept is a human right (and only for certain people at certain times as the law allows) - it does not designate any specific privilege between married people as a human right. > If the government would stop meddling in all the other legal affairs ... There is a difference between the government attempting to catch someone who violated the rights of someone else and the government recognizing (or not) the love between people.

will4274 6y ago

Brendan Eich donated to a proposal opposed to same sex marriage during a year that Barack Obama was opposed to same sex marriage. Do you believe that Barack Obama's opposition to same sex marriage should have made him unsuitable for any executive employment (i.e. in the private sector as a CEO, or in the public sector as a Mayor, Governor, or POTUS)? At companies like Google, Microsoft, and Apple, you can work on a browser regardless of your political views. At Mozilla, you need to think a certain way first. A smaller pool of technical talent to choose from leads to worse technical leadership. Recall that Eich only became the CEO (over the opposition of a portion of the board) after months where Mozilla was searching and couldn't find anybody better. It's not that the people who have particular political views are particularly talented, it's just that some of them are talented, just like the people who disagree with them. If you can include talented people of all stripes, you can do better than if you restrict yourself to talented people from a single ideological group.

pseudalopex 6y ago
Eich was Mozilla's CTO when the donation became widely known. Nothing came of it for 2 years until he was promoted to CEO. You can discriminate against LGBT people outside of work and still work on a browser at Mozilla. You just can't be in charge of everything.
- will4274 6y ago
  > You just can't be in charge of everything. Unless by "everything" you mean the government of the United State of America (the country where Mozilla has its headquarters), in which case, it's OK again (Obama opposed same sex marriage at the time when Eich made his donation). You can dress it up like Eich's views were some big sin that demands banishment from society, but of America's 45 presidents, 44 of them agreed with Eich, and the one who disagreed initially agreed with Eich before disagreeing with him. So, I'm pretty sure you can be in charge of everything with those views.
  - cycloptic 6y ago
    This is really not a productive line of discussion, please stop. If you have any friends who are same-sex couples, ask them who they would vote for if they were sent back in time to all those previous elections. That's a real way to move the conversation forward that doesn't involve speculating about why certain famous and/or powerful people acted the way they did, many of whom are now dead and can't be given the chance to explain themselves anyway.
  - bronson 6y ago
    If the US adhered to the Mozilla Manifesto then you might have a point. Until then, it’s fine to hold Obama and Eich to different standards.
d3nj4l 6y ago
> Do you believe that Barack Obama's opposition to same sex marriage should have made him unsuitable for any executive employment (i.e. in the private sector as a CEO, or in the public sector as a Mayor, Governor, or POTUS)? Yes.

will4274 6y ago

> It is notable that in your summary you refer to this as political fashion swings, and "unpopular" political views, and an overreaction. Would you characterize the civil right movement in the same fashion? Just to answer your question explicitly: yes. If somebody had a political opinion that was popular with 40% of the population and had not brought it into the workplace, I would not support firing the person for holding that opinion, even if the opinion were, for example, that schools should be segregated by race. While I personally don't support segregation by race, I don't find firing people for political views kept outside of work to be in the long term interest of liberal societies. I find the notion of segregated but equal schools unworkable (because those with power will always ensure their schools are better) but not inherently evil. And, in some situations (e.g. gender), I do not oppose "separate but equal" schooling. While I personally attended a public school, I have several friends who attended single-sex private schools, and they turned out OK. With all this in mind, your language around "denying a human right" makes it clear that you aren't giving Eich's views a fair hearing. California had domestic partnerships for same sex couples that ensured comparable protections around spousal visitation, etc. While I also disagree with the notion of "separate but equal" for partnerships and support granting gay couples the right to marriage, international organizations (like the United Nations) do not generally consider "separate but equal" to be human rights violations. To be a human rights violation, the separation must be coupled with a disparity in treatment (as in segregated schooling in the United States), which Eich is explicitly opposed to.

pseudalopex 6y ago
California civil unions weren't equal to marriages. The US rejected separate but equal 50 years before Proposition 8.
- will4274 6y ago
  The US Supreme Court rejected separate but equal in the context of race and government provided public school for children. In 2020, it's still legal to provide separate but equal accommodations for gender - and most establishment (public or private) do so with bathrooms. And, government and private organizations provide separate but equal, and in many cases unequal, shelters for their homeless populations by gender. Filing out a different government form isn't a human rights violation - it happens all the time - people with disabilities or those above a certain age fill out a different or additional forms. On the other hand, systematically having dilapidated and unsafe buildings for schoolchildren of one race but not the other is a human rights violations. Do you see the difference?

dependenttypes 6y ago

> So he supported denying a human right to a group of people Marriage is certainly part of UDHR ("according to national laws governing the exercise of this right" which allows said human right to not apply to certain groups of people. UDHR also considers it a human right for someone to be kidnapped and forcefully re-educated so I do not understand why anyone takes it seriously) but that does not make it a human right. Marriage is nothing more than the government acknowledging that two people love each other, I personally fail to see why this should be a human right (or why the government is meddling in it at all).

viscoelastic 6y ago
If you fail to see it personally I take it you haven't had many of these rights denied. To be fair I haven't either, but Marriage is not "just" an empty acknowledgment: its the right of inheriting when your spouse dies its the right to be covered by your spouse's insurance its the right to share joint custody of children its the right of spousal privilege in court its that you can file taxes jointly its the rights to benefits as a spouse of a veteran and dozens more of trivial and important legal rights most couples take for granted. These are trivially denied in many social interactions and used to make others feel like second class citizens, and deny them their pursuit of happiness. This was all debated and settled by the Supreme Court in 2015. If the government would stop meddling in all the other legal affairs then I would see the reason for your confusion why they are meddling in marriage.
- dependenttypes 6y ago
  Whether or not I personally fail to see why marriage specifically should be a human right is not relevant to whether if I had any of these "rights" denied. > its the right of inheriting when your spouse dies You can designate your own heir. > its the right to be covered by your spouse's insurance > its the right to share joint custody of children > its the right of spousal privilege in court > its that you can file taxes jointly > its the rights to benefits as a spouse of a veteran > and dozens more of trivial and important legal rights most couples take for granted And I am arguing that these are not things that should come with marriage - people who decide to not get married and people who are not legally allowed to get married (such as people in polyamorous relationships) should have the ability to enjoy the same rights as married people. Regardless though, not all of these are part of the universal definition of marriage (nor are a necessary part of it), the UDHR says that marriage as an abstract concept is a human right (and only for certain people at certain times as the law allows) - it does not designate any specific privilege between married people as a human right. > If the government would stop meddling in all the other legal affairs ... There is a difference between the government attempting to catch someone who violated the rights of someone else and the government recognizing (or not) the love between people.