3 ms·
I'm willing to forgive him that one donation to a cause I personally strongly disagree with, because I think he's already suffered enough for it, and I don't th
by forgotmypw17 5y ago
I'm willing to forgive him that one donation to a cause I personally strongly disagree with, because I think he's already suffered enough for it, and I don't think it's worth "canceling" someone's contribution to tech over their personal views.
I don't know much about his stance on Corona policies, but I also think it's not worth "canceling" someone over that, especially given how quickly the consensus seems to change on those things, and how much damage they have done to people's mental and physical health.
My stance on bringing up an individual's personal shit in the context of an article which doesn't even mention their name, as you have done, is strongly negative.
- KennyBlanken 5y agoHaving donated to a campaign to deny a minority outgroup of basic human rights, he was unfit to lead an organization that exists to fund a foundation substantially focused on intersections of technology and human rights and to be head of an organization with numerous LGTBQ employees. The foundation's fellows include several people working on projects adjacent to LGBTQ human rights, for example. Even if it the donation wasn't specific to stripping LGBTQ people of human rights: in general when you tend to view one group of people as sub-human and undeserving of basic human rights, you're probably going to do it for other groups you don't like. Assuming he wasn't purposefully seeking the role to nix Mozilla Foundation's LGBTQ-related work: it is his fault, and his fault alone, that he lacked the self-awareness to realize he was unsuitable for the job. My stance on using snarl words like "cancelling" (aka the new hip way of complaining about "political correctness") is strongly negative.
- forgotmypw17 5y agoHow do you feel about basic human rights for people who made mistakes in the past?
- KennyBlanken 5y agoOkay, fair enough. If I were to accidentally press the "donate money to groups fighting human rights" button it would really suck if that means I'm out of the running for being CEO of one of the most prestigious open source software companies in the world. It's right next to the return key on my keyboard. Totally unfair. To be less sarcastic: I feel that marriage equality is a human right and LGBTQ a protected class due to being a minority outgroup. I feel being an asshole is not a protected class. I feel making a mistake is not a protected class. I feel that a person is entitled to marry the person they love. I feel that a person is not entitled to be CEO of a particular organization. Also, it was hardly a "mistake", because he also donated to anti-gay-rights and prop-8-supporting politicians across 2-3 decades. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/02/controversial-mozilla-ceo-made-donations-right-wing-candidates-brendan-eich https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/02/controver... > In 1990, a year before Eich’s first donation to his campaign, Buchanan said in relation to the Aids outbreak that “our promiscuous homosexuals appear literally hell-bent on Satanism and suicide”. A a few years earlie he said “homosexuals have declared war on nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution”. > Ron Paul's campaign four years later was aided by Buchanan, who was again running for president. But it was overshadowed by the release of more than two decades of newsletters that Paul had published. They contained a number of homophobic and racist remarks, such as Paul's claim that "homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities". > Eich's political donations also include money given to more mainstream candidates, such as California's Tom McClintock, to whom Eich donated $750 over the course of 2008, and Linda Smith, who ran for senate in Washington state. McClintock opposes same-sex marriage; as does Smith, who has said that "homosexuality is a morally unfit inclination". Mistake indeed.
- forgotmypw17 5y agoSo given all this research you've done, I have a couple of follow-up questions: What is appropriate punishment for these transgressions, and how long should a person continue to be punished for them? Five years? Ten years? Twenty years? The rest of his life? More importantly, what does it have to do with the paper, which, again, was not authored by Eich, nor mentions him? I say this as someone who supports the right to marriage for everyone, and am still myself in one of the excluded groups as far as legal marriage is concerned.