13 ms·

When looking to effect change, one has to build coalitions, which sometimes means picking battles. Eich apparently does not believe that I deserve the same rig

• fingerprinter 13y ago
  If he was a developer, architect or something else like that, I'd generally agree. However, he is now CEO. Imagine just how many people he'd alienate inside Mozilla by basically saying "I don't think you should have the same rights as me". This is not just another political topic, no matter how people would like to frame it that way. This is about treating people the same. You can still think that homosexuality is wrong and support gay marriage. But someone who goes so far as to say no to gay marriage is basically saying they view that group of people as less than another group of people and should have less rights. This is unacceptable.
  • twoodfin 13y ago
    This is unacceptable. C'mon. In 2004 and 2008, with this very much a live issue, something north of 90% of American voters voted for a presidential candidate who professed to be against gay marriage. You are getting and will continue to get the social change you want, but it's crazy to ostracize someone for having the same political view as 2008 candidate Barack Obama. Try to be graceful and persuasive.
    • josefresco 13y ago
      Yes because we all know statements made on the campaign trail meant to appeal to both sides are a 100% accurate portrayal of the candidate's actual position.
      • mscarborough 13y ago
        At some point Obama might have to take an actual stand on something, and then follow up on it. Him being a politician doesn't absolve him of his uselessness. Last example: ooh Putin, you're going to face costs for these shenanigans!
    • wpietri 13y ago
      Are you saying that a boss of gay people shouldn't get called out for effectively saying, "Hey, you people don't deserve the same civil rights the rest of us do"? That he should be able to just coast along? Because that sounds like horseshit to me. That gay people can now get married in some minority of American states is progress, sure. But I'm not seeing why that means people, gay or straight, can't call a bigoted action a bigoted action. If somebody is obligated to be graceful and persuasive here, surely that's Eich, who started this out by doing something a lot of his employees find obviously hostile.
      • skybrian 13y ago
        I think someone should ask him whether he's changed his mind. It seems fairly likely; public opinion on gay marriage has changed a lot since 2008.
        • wpietri 13y ago
          Hi, Brian! In 2012 he refused to say: https://brendaneich.com/2012/04/community-and-diversity/ https://brendaneich.com/2012/04/community-and-diversity/
          • catshirt 13y ago
  • dhimes 13y ago
    I think your best bet is to treat him as someone who is ignorant and afraid. I moved to MA a decade ago. I wasn't sure what to expect with the legalization of gay marriage. (I support gay rights, voted in favor of gay marriage, have gay friends and family, etc., just like everybody else. The only reason I thought about it was because I had young children.) Answer: not much changed. No big deal. I didn't have to explain anything to my young children- turns out the kids worked it out for themselves.
    • wpietri 13y ago
      I think that's good advice generally. That's certainly what I do when I'm dealing with, say, people on Facebook. But having a boss who's ignorant and afraid? Maybe of you? That's some bad news.
      • dhimes 13y ago
        No, he's probably not afraid of gay people, exactly, but is certainly ignorant of how gay people love. Often, though, once it gets humanized, this type of fear goes away. So I'd say, give him a chance. Think of the win if he is convinced to change his mind.
  • mindslight 13y ago
    > But someone who goes so far as to say no to gay marriage is basically saying they view that group of people as less than another group of people and should have less rights Or they just think the practice of government marriage-sanctioning should be scrapped altogether, rather than extending the privilege to one more politically-popular group and pretending that you're ending discrimination.
    • fingerprinter 13y ago
      And, in the meantime we continue to deny an entire set of people rights they should have and bury our head in the sand to the current real world problems this poses. Even if you hold the position you stated and wanted that change, we can't deny someone rights in the current system for some future better situation. There is an immediate and real world problem that needs to be addressed while you strive to implement your preferred system.
      • mindslight 13y ago
        Except that when you put your energy into lobbying instead of going your own way and DIY, you're supporting the machine known as government and legitimizing its role as arbiter-of-all-that-is-good. When your campaign succeeds, it does so at the expense of pigeonholing the entire issue of unnecessary marriage regulation into the simplistic "gay marriage", and people consider the entire issue solved and look for the next thing to feel progressive about. But even worse, your narrow success then serves as an advertisement of the system working and covers up the fact that you're actually three steps back due to increased government intervention everywhere else.
        • tommorris 13y ago
          Yeah, the "DIY" approach: ask all the gay couples out there who tried that with big expensive packages of legal documents that ended up being worth sweet fuck all precisely at the moment they needed it. Part of the reason there is a push for gay marriage is because the alternatives (civil partnerships, "DIY" marriages using contracts) and they've failed to provide the necessary protections for couples in the way marriage rights seem to. There is a compelling societal need to be able to say "here are people who are in an intimate, long-term trusting relationship for the purposes of decision making, finance, tax and so on". I wish you luck in your campaign to find a compelling and convincing political and intellectual argument for something that would serve the social goods that marriage does and would effectively replace marriage for gay and straight couples. Until then, I'd quite like to be able to get married to someone of the gender I'm actually attracted to. (And as of Saturday, I will be able to, thanks to the marriage laws in England changing.)
  • yummyfajitas 13y ago
    This is about treating people the same. Gays and straights are treated the same - both are free to marry people of the opposite sex. Gays may prefer not to do that, but they do have the legal right. As for finding your preferences are not legally favored, that happens to lots of people. I prefer to have no fixed address, which is NOT a legally favorable preference to have (try opening a bank account, etc). I prefer not to buy insurance covering procedures I will never need [1]. Are laws preventing me from satisfying my preferences on these matters all unacceptable? If Eich favored Obamacare or "Know Your Customer" banking laws, would that also be unacceptable? [1] Supposing that I lived in the US.
    • wpietri 13y ago
      Your notion of "treated the same" matches approximately nobody's, aside from a handful of wordy bigots. More importantly, it doesn't qualify under the 14th amendment, which is the standard that matters here: http://www.freep.com/assets/freep/pdf/C4220110321.PDF http://www.freep.com/assets/freep/pdf/C4220110321.PDF
      • yummyfajitas 13y ago
        You can demonize me all you want, but you've still provided no philosophical justification for the viewpoint that penalizing preferences in general is acceptable except for gay sex preferences. Citing an activist court opinion (which totally misuses the rational basis test) is not a substitute for thinking through your own views. If your actual opinion is merely "gays are on my team, therefore I support them", that's fine. But don't couch it in abstract principles like "treating people the same.
        • wpietri 13y ago
          "Activist court" used to have a pretty specific meaning, so I'm sad to see it become, "issuing opinions I don't agree with". There's no legislating from the bench here. There was a law that was judged to be unconstitutional, so it got struck down. As it has in other jurisdictions for strikingly similar reasons. And that Random Internet Guy disagrees with a variety of federal judges on how to apply the rational basis test is interesting I guess, but you can see how I'd be unmoved. The purpose of civil marriage is mainly to promote families. That being the way we insure the continuance of our society down the ages. Some people make their families in a way that is perfectly fine on outcome measures, but other people find squicky. My view, one with which the courts are agreeing, is that "eeew" is not a rational basis for excluding those people from the institution of marriage, because the 14th amendment demands (and our sense of natural justice requires) that people be equal before the law. Of course, I am also on team gay, because I have gay friends and gay family members. And also because I'm not a bigoted asshole. But happily, it fits in with my "treating people the same" bias, one I have carefully considered, so this one hasn't required a lot of extra thinking. And since this bias is conveniently baked into American jurisprudence already, I'm looking forward to this working itself out over the next decade or so as the "eeew" brigade dies off. And I'll add that I have no obligation to provide justifications for views that I don't hold, like the kookily put one in your first sentence. If you'd like to keep putting yourself forth as a pillar of rational discussion, I'd suggest you stick to holding people to account only for what they've said, not the things you imagine while getting freaked out about gay sex.
  • laughinghan 13y ago
    You seem to be either implying or assuming that not supporting gay marriage necessarily means believing homosexuality is wrong, but in my experience, that is false and only the converse is true. The people I know who don't support gay marriage have no problem with homosexuality or homosexual people (that is, they have no problem with people identifying as gay nor having gay sex), they just believe that allowing gay marriage would be redefining "marriage". (Which I believe is a bigoted opinion, but I am sympathetic to their ignorance and fear.) I don't believe this is sampling bias on my part; in fact, I thought that was exactly the position on gay marriage taken up by both Obama and McCain in 2008, I specifically remember there was some debate or joint interview or something where Obama opened by strongly asserting that gay people deserve all the same rights, and McCain opened by strongly asserting that he doesn't believe in "redefining marriage", and they proceed to find that they completely agree with each other.
  • Tactic 13y ago
    Your summary of what Eich is "basically saying" seems misleading and intended to incite others. I am highly doubtful that he believes other people don't deserve the same rights he does but instead disagrees as to if certain things are right or privileges. While I do not agree with Eich's views, framing the argument this way accomplishes nothing but fanning the fires. It makes one side feel oppressed and the other attacked. It puts everyone into a defensive mode rather focusing on the real issues. At worst it is manipulative at best it is close minded.
• apendleton 13y ago
  His position as CEO (as opposed to CTO or whatever it was before) changes things. Many companies, for example, offer spousal benefits to their LGBT employees' partners even in states where gay marriage isn't legal and they're not required to so by law. That the CEO doesn't believe LGBT people are entitled to the equal benefits as compared to straight people may predict the likelihood of such an organization to take enact such policies, or maintain them if they already exist. It also may not, but as a gay person, were I a current or prospective employee of Mozilla, this would give me pause. Even leaving aside whether "hate," "homophobic," etc., are appropriate here, there are potential practical implications here, and the insistence that this is a private political matter that has no impact on his professional life is problematic.
  • mbrubeck 13y ago
    For the record, Mozilla does provide employee benefits that cover same-sex domestic partners, and I would be shocked if any CEO attempted to change this. (I am a Mozilla employee.) The Mozilla community is governed by participation guidelines that state: "support for exclusionary practices must not be carried into Mozilla activities," and "support for exclusionary practices in non-Mozilla activities should not be expressed in Mozilla spaces." http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/participation/ http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/parti... UPDATE: In a meeting with Mozilla staff this morning, Brendan reiterated that he was involved in the creation of that code of conduct, and supports it 100%. He also specifically said that he should be held accountable to it, and that it's important for those in positions of power to be accountable to those with less power.
    • Argorak 13y ago
      It would have been nice if he also addressed that issue in this message instead of a staff meeting. I mean, like, there is literally a world watching (geographically, not necessarily when it comes to population).
      • mbrubeck 13y ago
        We (the staff) asked for a public statement of some sort, and he seemed open to that.
• mscarborough 13y ago
  I did not know this was a thing. Wow. I don't care about how he donated his money to support Proposition 8, privately or publically, but monetarily and personally supporting discrimination is wrong.
• coffeemug 13y ago
  "One can not do right in one area of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in another. Life is one indivisible whole." - Ghandi This is true of individual contributors, but it becomes progressively more relevant for people whose primary role is setting the vision for other people. The best companies tell the same story to their employees, investors, users, and journalists. Their people, products, marketing, and culture is one indivisible whole. A homophobic CEO could run an oil company just fine. It's much harder to do that for Mozilla, where brand, community, and ethos is a much bigger point of differentiation than the products themselves.
  • magicalist 13y ago
    Independent of Eich's wrongs, no human exists that is "right" in all areas of life. A demand for someone who is right in all areas is how you get the blandest of all people in politics: they dare not utter an actual opinion lest the media snatch it up and hang them with it. So they say absolutely nothing with a whole lot of words. I'd rather see actual humans in positions of power, struggles with life and all.
    • coffeemug 13y ago
      > No human exists that is "right" in all areas of life. Being right in all areas of life is a personal and cultural struggle, a never-ending pursuit of an elusive destination. That much is obvious. Still, some people are further along on this path than others, and one would hope that these would be the people who occupy positions of power.
  • humanrebar 13y ago
    "Whoever among you is guiltless may be the first to throw a stone...." Among other things, this is a hypocrisy issue. It has been unironically stated elsewhere in these comments that it is good to be intolerant of intolerance. That can actually true, but it is hypocritical to be intolerant in the name of inclusiveness.
    • SimHacker 13y ago
• jessaustin 13y ago
  When looking to effect change, one has to build coalitions, which sometimes means picking battles. If only this could have been the last word on this issue. I salute you, 'chimeracoder, for your fairness and rationality. Was the recently-mooted "comment pre-approval" process delayed for some reason? If any HN comment thread could be rescued by that, surely this is one.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• akmiller 13y ago
  I wouldn't call denying certain groups of people rights a "political view". It's not a political view to say that a black person shouldn't be afforded the same rights as a white person...it's racism. Call Brandon what he is...a bigot. He believes that because of the way a person is born they don't deserve the same rights as himself. So, to answer your question, no you shouldn't support him no matter what views you have in common. And definitely don't give credence to this idea of denying a group of individuals rights by calling it a "political view"...it's bigotry plain and simple.