7 ms·

Today, it's being anti-gay-rights is acceptable to lots of people. 50 years ago, being a racist was acceptable to lots of people. Would you work for or buy pr

Today, it's being anti-gay-rights is acceptable to lots of people. 50 years ago, being a racist was acceptable to lots of people. Would you work for or buy products from a CEO who was an unapologetic racist just because his beliefs were a product of his family/community? A good question to ask: If you think we will evolve to the point where gay rights are a given, what should we do right now? Should we be respectful for these often-arbitrary beliefs or should we try to make people/companies with these beliefs uncomfortable (but in kind/respectful way)? Honest question.

sentenza 13y ago
Wait. The guy is also the inventor of Javascript. Shouldn't everybody be boycotting that? I mean it has a lot more to do with him than Firefox does. After all, he's the CEO of Mozilla Corporation (not the Foundation), which is only indirectly connected to Firefox, but he _invented_ Javascript! What am I missing here?
- oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
  The fact that it's realistically possible to boycott (i.e. not use) Firefox, but boycotting Javascript is - essentially - impossible. Sure, you can disable it in your browser, but that's nowhere near an outright boycott. (BTW, this is just one difference, one that I haven't seen anyone else pointing out, whilst other, just as good - if not better - differences have been identified in this very post)
  - sentenza 13y ago
    Ok I see that it is quite unrealistic to go community-wide with a Javascript boycott (and I was talking about developers, not users). It's just that singling out Firefox to me seems so arbitrary. Now the target is Firefox, the last big independent browser, even though it was _Mozilla Corporation_ (not the foundation) that made the wrong choice. Mozilla Corporation is IMO the place were pressure should be applied. I realize now that this is probably what annoyed me most about how this affair developed. I am quite attached to Firefox and was rather surprised that it became a target in a scandal that revolves around a stupid move by Mozilla Corporation.
- sentenza 13y ago
  So I'm downvoted to hell, but what about my question? It's easy to do a boycott that doesn't hurt you. Everybody can live without Firefox. So why not get serious about this and show people that you are willing to make an actual sacrifice as a stand against his position? Maybe that would be inconvenient?
  - Mithaldu 13y ago
    >> What am I missing here? > So I'm downvoted to hell, but what about my question? The question does not deserve an answer, but you are obviously not going to realize and will remain enraged, which would be counter-productive. Firstly you are missing that there is choice about browsers; but no choice whatsoever in a scripting language in browsers. They are asking their users to make a choice, one that will not hurt their users. By removing all use of JS they would actively hurt their users. Secondly you are missing that even as CEO of Mozilla he does not remain in control of JS, even if he created it.
- agildehaus 13y ago
  Hey, I would totally be in for a boycott of Javascript. Let's do this.
  - Aldo_MX 13y ago
    Pick a Time Machine, and go back to 1995, I wish you the best of luck.
- kennywinker 13y ago
  The point of a boycott is to pressure some company or person to change. Boycotting Javascript is too abstract to be valuable. Javascript can't fire him, to cite the obvious example.
- matt_heimer 13y ago
  JavaScript is something he produced, think of it as a work of art. The language itself doesn't portray his personal beliefs on topics other than language design. Putting him in charge of people who lifestyle he is not accepting of is different. It will influence the choices he makes in dealing with people and in how the organization behaves. If the language had something like logging levels which were labeled by derogatory terms for a subset of people that'd be another issue but it doesn't. Imagine if Ted Bundy had created a cure for cancer. Would you want to boycott it? Would you put him in charge of people? Now admittedly Bundy might be a bigger danger to a specific subset of people than Eich but Eich is still a danger in some way to a subset of people. Boycotting FireFox isn't about the product, it is about sending a message to the organization that puts him in a position of power over people.
  - Fakeyfakerson 13y ago
    So you're saying you'd boycott Nazi Germany, but you wouldn't boycott an art gallery that displayed Hitler's paintings?
- webwright 13y ago
  A boycott is meant to inconvenience the target of the boycott. If your goal is to nudge the Mozilla Corp into action, Firefox downloads is really the way to do it, as that's pretty much their sole source of revenue. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation
- DavidWoof 13y ago
  You seem sincere, so here's an honest answer. What you're missing is the nature of the job of CEO, especially in Silicon Valley. It's not a job where you bury your head down and get the work done, a huge part of the job is being the public face of the company. The Mozilla Corp. has decided that their public face should be someone who is opposed to equal rights for gays. That's completely different than having a racist working as a programmer or in the mail room or even as CTO. Boycotting javascript would be silly. Nobody is trying to say that everything Eich has touched now has cooties and we should stay away from it. However, it's perfectly reasonable to ask what kind of company Mozilla wants to be when they decide they want Eich as their public representative.
  - marshray 13y ago
    I wonder how many people making this "public face of the company" argument could name the current CEO of Netflix.
    - gojomo 13y ago
      Or, before the recent controversy, name any of the prior Mozilla CEOs. (It hasn't seemed to be an organization reliant on big-personality/high-profile CEOs.)
- frozenport 13y ago
  Have you ever tried to program in JavaScript? It doesn't have classes but the syntax looks similar: this is actually a pointer to that. null == false // false !null // true He should be exiled for inventing JS. </joke?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
stefantalpalaru 13y ago
This is not about gay rights. This is about the married couple privileges being extended to gay couples. Comparing this to the right of all humans to be treated like humans regardless of their skin color is downright outrageous. Before you accuse me of something, I'm against any interference in the institution of marriage by states or churches. I'm also against tax/property/inheritance/pension/insurance privileges for married couples.
- adwf 13y ago
  It is about gay rights. It's about human rights in general. By giving some people less rights because of their skin color, you are treating them as sub-human. Somehow not deserving of the same human rights us Straight/White/Males are entitled to. By giving some people less rights because of their gender, you are treating them as sub-human. Somehow not deserving of the same human rights us Straight/White/Males are entitled to. By giving some people less rights because of their sexuality, you are treating them as sub-human. Somehow not deserving of the same human rights us Straight/White/Males are entitled to. It's really all the same very basic case of denying some people the rights and freedoms that the majority of us take for granted. There is no such thing as Straight/White/Male privilege. There is just Gay/Black/Female disadvantage. The rights I have, I take for granted - They are the norm. When certain segments of society are denied the exact same rights as I have, they are disadvantaged.
tinalumfoil 13y ago
There's a pretty big difference between being forced into labor for the rest of your life and being separated from your family so that you can work for a large plantation owner who isn't afraid to whip, kill, torture or humiliate you and not being able to get a certificate saying you are legally obligated to someone. What I'm excited for is the day when being anti-soda is no longer socially acceptable. There's already a movement against it and slavery was once socially acceptable so it has to happen, right?
- koof 13y ago
  There is a lot more to the rights gained from marriage than just "legal obligation".
- bratsche 13y ago
  The previous poster was talking about racism, not slavery. Slavery was not a thing in this country 50 years ago. You're making a much bigger leap than you think the previous poster did.
intslack 13y ago
More likely his (assumed) belief that marriage can only be between a man and a woman stems from ignorance and his religion instead of bigotry or hate. And while that doesn't negate the harm that his donation caused: please stop comparing him to racists. You don't know Brendan, I don't know Brendan, nobody in previous threads comparing him to fucking racists or the Nazis knows Brendan. It's disgusting, please stop. >Should we be respectful for these often-arbitrary beliefs or should we try to make people/companies with these beliefs uncomfortable (but in kind/respectful way)? Honest question. You should take the moral high ground and send him a personal communication detailing how his donation has caused harm. No one's asking you to respect his belief, though, but this is just majorly unfair to everyone else who has contributed to Mozilla.
- milsorgen 13y ago
  >You should take the moral high ground and send him a personal communication detailing how his donation has caused harm. I think there is far to much 'walking on eggshells' these days in regards to rights being infringed.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- na85 13y ago
  >from ignorance and his religion instead of bigotry or hate I am not one of the fedora-tippers, and I have no problem with individual faith, but it's been my experience that organized religion (of any sort) tends to discourage critical thinking and encourage ignorance. A byproduct of this is prejudice which leads to the dark side. I don't believe you can quite so easily separate religion from discrimination.
  - jebblue 13y ago
    Acts 8:26-40 Read it. I don't know how you conflate religion with racism. It is not the truth.
wwweston 13y ago
> Would you work for or buy products from a CEO who was an unapologetic racist just because his beliefs were a product of his family/community? Do you mean someone like William Shockley, perhaps? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley Also... for your question to be meaningful or relevant to the current discussion, I think you'd have to get more specific about what you mean by "unapologetic racist", and also weigh what other contributions they were bringing to the table as a CEO.
- frozenport 13y ago
  Note: nobody could tolerate Shockley and his story is not a success story. His sharp, unsympathetic and impractical opinions were mirrored directly in this management style. The style lacked pragmatic approaches to problem solving: While Shockley had received a Nobel Prize in Physics and was an experienced researcher and teacher, his managing of the group created harsh working conditions.He chose a strategy for circuit design that failed and created an intolerable working atmosphere. The group of PhD graduates hired demanded that Shockley be replaced. When their demands were rebuffed, they realized they had to leave. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight
kevinpet 13y ago
Thinking that marriage is by definition between a man and a woman is not the same as thinking there's anything wrong with being gay. You can't claim someone is oppressing someone's rights by participating in the public debate about what exactly those rights should be. I disagree with Eich, but I reserve my moral disapproval for those who seek to shame anyone holding an opinion different from that currently politically correct.
- foolrush 13y ago
  However, as is often overlooked, this isn't purely a debate about one's personal ethics and morals; marriage extends into the legal domain, and brings with it a plethora of complex legal ramifications. So, in fact, preventing marriage does impact an individual's rights. I would also point out that “politically correct” is about as dismissive a term as can be found today. Cultural attitudes may shift, and at some point a marginalized concept dismissed as “politically correct” becomes simply “correct.”
  - victorhooi 13y ago
    Well, no, it doesn't. In many countries/states, civil unions are the norm for gay people, and have been for some time. However, the current debate from gay people seems to be that they want to re-use the "marriage" label, which has traditionally been for between a man and a woman. I'm not saying it's right simply because it's tradition - but trying to argue that it has been anything but between a man and a woman for thousands of years is just historical revisionism. So yes, you can try to argue that, we should redefine marriage to include between any two people who want it. However, to claim that they're somehow being "oppressed" because we don't simply let them win their argument is just silly. If this was really about them wanting benefits, then the civil union would achieve that.
    - gverri 13y ago
      Civil Unions don't grant the same benefits as Marriage does. So it's not the same thing. There's no etymology war, you can keep the word "marriage", just give everyone equal rights to marry and have their marriage recognized everywhere.
baddox 13y ago
You seem to imply that societal morals always "improve" (according to some definition) over time. But what if, 50 years from now, being racist is widely acceptable again? Does that suddenly make it "moral"?
tzs 13y ago
> 50 years ago, being a racist was acceptable to lots of people. Would you work for or buy products from a CEO who was an unapologetic racist just because his beliefs were a product of his family/community? It depends. If it were, say, 100 years ago, when racism was the norm, I probably wouldn't take the racial views of the CEO into account when deciding what to buy or where to work. When a small group shuns a business, it generally hurts the small group more than it hurts the business. Heck, it may even help the business if people who agree with the CEO start doing more business with the company in a show of support for his racist views. If it were today, where racism is much much much less acceptable than it was 100 years ago, I'd consider it. The people shunning the business for racism would very likely outnumber those who might increase spending to support it. When 95% of the population believes something, it is pretty silly to shun a business whose CEO believes that. When 5% believes something, then shunning might make more sense. The interesting question is where is the crossover point?
gojomo 13y ago
It's the urge-to-punish that I find objectionable, applied with increasing levels of indirection, and in spheres of life that should be consciously firewalled from religion/politics. Mozilla is clearly a very inclusive project and a pro-LGBT workplace, which also does a ton of good on other issues. So what's "kind/respectful" about boycotting all of Mozilla, because of a one-time outside-the-workplace political donation by one manager? The boycott tactic says: "bend to our preferences or we'll shun/nullify/punish you totally, not just in the zone of disagreement". That's the same kind of zero-tolerance orthodoxy-enforcement that drives censorship or war-making. Look at the "enemies" language OKCupid uses! I prefer instead the logic of coexistence, and cooperation on common interests, even during the deepest of disagreements. That's important, because in our reasonably-wealthy, mostly-free society, every remaining political disagreement involves difficult issues of identity, rights, and morals. I'm hypertolerant. I buy from, and do work for, and consume the rhetorical/cultural output of, people I vigorously disagree with all the time. But also, I don't really buy anything "from a CEO". I don't even know the names (much less the religions or political sympathies) of most CEOs heading firms that supply my daily needs. This goes equally for local businesses: at a restaurant operated by a Catholic family, my 1st question will be, "what are the specials?", not, "have you publicly renounced the Pope's regressive stances on social issues?" Many communities have already evolved to the point where gay rights are a given. In those places it's time to be gracious winners! As easy and fun as it may be to dig up the corpse of Proposition 8, and shoot it in the head again and again, there are plenty of live battles on similar issues elsewhere. I'd prefer California (and our industry) be a positive example of how, after gay marriage is recognized and normalized to become "no big deal", everyone can still get along. Not an example of how retributive anger, and the appetite for economically-punishing losing dissenters, never ends.
sockypuppy 13y ago
> what should we do right now? This is a long answer, so here's the TLDR: All sides of the debate need to tone down the name-calling, demonization, boycotts, and ostracism of opponents. Treat the other side of the debate like they're intelligent and well-meaning, but somehow picked up some misinformed, misguided, or mistaken assumptions and doesn't realize. Try to figure out how to change people's minds so they believe the right thing, instead of focusing on punishing people who believe the wrong thing. I'm the rare HN'er on the opposite side of this cultural divide, so I thought my perspective would be informative. A lot of people who read the previous sentence have probably already characterized me as either a poorly educated hick or a slavering, sadistic bigot. The truth is, that by dehumanizing your opponent and assuming bad faith, you guarantee that people who don't agree with you won't listen to what you have to say. This means you can't really change minds. If you want to further the cause of gay rights, figure out the reasons people disagree with you, and try to convince them otherwise. Try to teach and explain; stay away from confrontation, condemnation and personal attacks. If someone else (on either side) becomes indignant, keep calm and encourage them to do likewise. For example, in a little bit I'll give you a list of questions I've had about gay rights that no one's ever answered to my satisfaction. Based on past experience, I should give you a few warnings about my questions first. You will probably think these questions are highly inflammatory, but I don't intend them to be trolling or snarking; rather they're things I'm honestly confused about. You should try to remain calm and think logically while reading my questions. This is apparently very hard for most pro-gay-rights people, for reasons I don't really understand. Opponents of gay rights say these questions have no good answers. Instead of providing good answers, proponents of gay rights call anyone who asks these questions very bad names like "hateful," "offensive," "bigot," or "dinosaur," and don't actually answer the questions. I don't know the answers to these questions because neither side ever actually answers them. The only thing I have to go on is the behavior of the two groups. Based on the above typical interaction of the two sides of the debate, I have to say the opponents of gay rights win: The pro-gay-rights side's only answer to skeptical questions is calling names. I'd probably change my mind if the pro-gay-rights side offered good answers and the anti-gay-rights side were the ones who weren't able to offer a coherent response. Here are the questions: What are the reasons you believe what you do? What is the evidence that homosexuality is an in-born quality as opposed to a choice? How strong is it? What about concerns that gay people are promiscuous, spreading AIDS and other STD's? Is a gay household an unhealthy environment for children? To what extent is homosexuality associated with crimes like rape and pedophilia? Why is homosexuality traditionally considered morally wrong (e.g. Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible), a symbol of decline (e.g. the late Roman Empire), and even outlawed? If the millenia-old traditional viewpoint was wrong, why did it last so long? Were the anti-gay-rights people always wrong, or has technology changed the picture (e.g. maybe STD's are now less serious due to inventions like condoms and antibiotics)? And one last question, which doesn't really change how I lean on the question of how I feel about gay rights: Why do so many pro-gay-rights people try to advance their agenda by calling names and boycotting organizations, instead of simply patiently explaining their side of the story?
Houshalter 13y ago
Do you think that these actions are actually furthering the cause of gay rights? It seems to me it's just an emotional reaction to want to "punish" the "hated enemy" [1]. And people on the other side will have the opposite reaction and further their bias against marriage equality supporters. [1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/

sentenza 13y ago

Wait. The guy is also the inventor of Javascript. Shouldn't everybody be boycotting that? I mean it has a lot more to do with him than Firefox does. After all, he's the CEO of Mozilla Corporation (not the Foundation), which is only indirectly connected to Firefox, but he _invented_ Javascript! What am I missing here?

oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
The fact that it's realistically possible to boycott (i.e. not use) Firefox, but boycotting Javascript is - essentially - impossible. Sure, you can disable it in your browser, but that's nowhere near an outright boycott. (BTW, this is just one difference, one that I haven't seen anyone else pointing out, whilst other, just as good - if not better - differences have been identified in this very post)
- sentenza 13y ago
  Ok I see that it is quite unrealistic to go community-wide with a Javascript boycott (and I was talking about developers, not users). It's just that singling out Firefox to me seems so arbitrary. Now the target is Firefox, the last big independent browser, even though it was _Mozilla Corporation_ (not the foundation) that made the wrong choice. Mozilla Corporation is IMO the place were pressure should be applied. I realize now that this is probably what annoyed me most about how this affair developed. I am quite attached to Firefox and was rather surprised that it became a target in a scandal that revolves around a stupid move by Mozilla Corporation.
sentenza 13y ago
So I'm downvoted to hell, but what about my question? It's easy to do a boycott that doesn't hurt you. Everybody can live without Firefox. So why not get serious about this and show people that you are willing to make an actual sacrifice as a stand against his position? Maybe that would be inconvenient?
- Mithaldu 13y ago
  >> What am I missing here? > So I'm downvoted to hell, but what about my question? The question does not deserve an answer, but you are obviously not going to realize and will remain enraged, which would be counter-productive. Firstly you are missing that there is choice about browsers; but no choice whatsoever in a scripting language in browsers. They are asking their users to make a choice, one that will not hurt their users. By removing all use of JS they would actively hurt their users. Secondly you are missing that even as CEO of Mozilla he does not remain in control of JS, even if he created it.
agildehaus 13y ago
Hey, I would totally be in for a boycott of Javascript. Let's do this.
- Aldo_MX 13y ago
  Pick a Time Machine, and go back to 1995, I wish you the best of luck.
kennywinker 13y ago
The point of a boycott is to pressure some company or person to change. Boycotting Javascript is too abstract to be valuable. Javascript can't fire him, to cite the obvious example.
matt_heimer 13y ago
JavaScript is something he produced, think of it as a work of art. The language itself doesn't portray his personal beliefs on topics other than language design. Putting him in charge of people who lifestyle he is not accepting of is different. It will influence the choices he makes in dealing with people and in how the organization behaves. If the language had something like logging levels which were labeled by derogatory terms for a subset of people that'd be another issue but it doesn't. Imagine if Ted Bundy had created a cure for cancer. Would you want to boycott it? Would you put him in charge of people? Now admittedly Bundy might be a bigger danger to a specific subset of people than Eich but Eich is still a danger in some way to a subset of people. Boycotting FireFox isn't about the product, it is about sending a message to the organization that puts him in a position of power over people.
- Fakeyfakerson 13y ago
  So you're saying you'd boycott Nazi Germany, but you wouldn't boycott an art gallery that displayed Hitler's paintings?
webwright 13y ago
A boycott is meant to inconvenience the target of the boycott. If your goal is to nudge the Mozilla Corp into action, Firefox downloads is really the way to do it, as that's pretty much their sole source of revenue. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation
DavidWoof 13y ago
You seem sincere, so here's an honest answer. What you're missing is the nature of the job of CEO, especially in Silicon Valley. It's not a job where you bury your head down and get the work done, a huge part of the job is being the public face of the company. The Mozilla Corp. has decided that their public face should be someone who is opposed to equal rights for gays. That's completely different than having a racist working as a programmer or in the mail room or even as CTO. Boycotting javascript would be silly. Nobody is trying to say that everything Eich has touched now has cooties and we should stay away from it. However, it's perfectly reasonable to ask what kind of company Mozilla wants to be when they decide they want Eich as their public representative.
- marshray 13y ago
  I wonder how many people making this "public face of the company" argument could name the current CEO of Netflix.
  - gojomo 13y ago
    Or, before the recent controversy, name any of the prior Mozilla CEOs. (It hasn't seemed to be an organization reliant on big-personality/high-profile CEOs.)
frozenport 13y ago
Have you ever tried to program in JavaScript? It doesn't have classes but the syntax looks similar: this is actually a pointer to that. null == false // false !null // true He should be exiled for inventing JS. </joke?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

stefantalpalaru 13y ago

This is not about gay rights. This is about the married couple privileges being extended to gay couples. Comparing this to the right of all humans to be treated like humans regardless of their skin color is downright outrageous. Before you accuse me of something, I'm against any interference in the institution of marriage by states or churches. I'm also against tax/property/inheritance/pension/insurance privileges for married couples.

adwf 13y ago
It is about gay rights. It's about human rights in general. By giving some people less rights because of their skin color, you are treating them as sub-human. Somehow not deserving of the same human rights us Straight/White/Males are entitled to. By giving some people less rights because of their gender, you are treating them as sub-human. Somehow not deserving of the same human rights us Straight/White/Males are entitled to. By giving some people less rights because of their sexuality, you are treating them as sub-human. Somehow not deserving of the same human rights us Straight/White/Males are entitled to. It's really all the same very basic case of denying some people the rights and freedoms that the majority of us take for granted. There is no such thing as Straight/White/Male privilege. There is just Gay/Black/Female disadvantage. The rights I have, I take for granted - They are the norm. When certain segments of society are denied the exact same rights as I have, they are disadvantaged.

tinalumfoil 13y ago

There's a pretty big difference between being forced into labor for the rest of your life and being separated from your family so that you can work for a large plantation owner who isn't afraid to whip, kill, torture or humiliate you and not being able to get a certificate saying you are legally obligated to someone. What I'm excited for is the day when being anti-soda is no longer socially acceptable. There's already a movement against it and slavery was once socially acceptable so it has to happen, right?

koof 13y ago
There is a lot more to the rights gained from marriage than just "legal obligation".
bratsche 13y ago
The previous poster was talking about racism, not slavery. Slavery was not a thing in this country 50 years ago. You're making a much bigger leap than you think the previous poster did.

intslack 13y ago

More likely his (assumed) belief that marriage can only be between a man and a woman stems from ignorance and his religion instead of bigotry or hate. And while that doesn't negate the harm that his donation caused: please stop comparing him to racists. You don't know Brendan, I don't know Brendan, nobody in previous threads comparing him to fucking racists or the Nazis knows Brendan. It's disgusting, please stop. >Should we be respectful for these often-arbitrary beliefs or should we try to make people/companies with these beliefs uncomfortable (but in kind/respectful way)? Honest question. You should take the moral high ground and send him a personal communication detailing how his donation has caused harm. No one's asking you to respect his belief, though, but this is just majorly unfair to everyone else who has contributed to Mozilla.

milsorgen 13y ago
>You should take the moral high ground and send him a personal communication detailing how his donation has caused harm. I think there is far to much 'walking on eggshells' these days in regards to rights being infringed.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
na85 13y ago
>from ignorance and his religion instead of bigotry or hate I am not one of the fedora-tippers, and I have no problem with individual faith, but it's been my experience that organized religion (of any sort) tends to discourage critical thinking and encourage ignorance. A byproduct of this is prejudice which leads to the dark side. I don't believe you can quite so easily separate religion from discrimination.
- jebblue 13y ago
  Acts 8:26-40 Read it. I don't know how you conflate religion with racism. It is not the truth.

wwweston 13y ago

> Would you work for or buy products from a CEO who was an unapologetic racist just because his beliefs were a product of his family/community? Do you mean someone like William Shockley, perhaps? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley Also... for your question to be meaningful or relevant to the current discussion, I think you'd have to get more specific about what you mean by "unapologetic racist", and also weigh what other contributions they were bringing to the table as a CEO.

frozenport 13y ago
Note: nobody could tolerate Shockley and his story is not a success story. His sharp, unsympathetic and impractical opinions were mirrored directly in this management style. The style lacked pragmatic approaches to problem solving: While Shockley had received a Nobel Prize in Physics and was an experienced researcher and teacher, his managing of the group created harsh working conditions.He chose a strategy for circuit design that failed and created an intolerable working atmosphere. The group of PhD graduates hired demanded that Shockley be replaced. When their demands were rebuffed, they realized they had to leave. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight

kevinpet 13y ago

Thinking that marriage is by definition between a man and a woman is not the same as thinking there's anything wrong with being gay. You can't claim someone is oppressing someone's rights by participating in the public debate about what exactly those rights should be. I disagree with Eich, but I reserve my moral disapproval for those who seek to shame anyone holding an opinion different from that currently politically correct.

foolrush 13y ago
However, as is often overlooked, this isn't purely a debate about one's personal ethics and morals; marriage extends into the legal domain, and brings with it a plethora of complex legal ramifications. So, in fact, preventing marriage does impact an individual's rights. I would also point out that “politically correct” is about as dismissive a term as can be found today. Cultural attitudes may shift, and at some point a marginalized concept dismissed as “politically correct” becomes simply “correct.”
- victorhooi 13y ago
  Well, no, it doesn't. In many countries/states, civil unions are the norm for gay people, and have been for some time. However, the current debate from gay people seems to be that they want to re-use the "marriage" label, which has traditionally been for between a man and a woman. I'm not saying it's right simply because it's tradition - but trying to argue that it has been anything but between a man and a woman for thousands of years is just historical revisionism. So yes, you can try to argue that, we should redefine marriage to include between any two people who want it. However, to claim that they're somehow being "oppressed" because we don't simply let them win their argument is just silly. If this was really about them wanting benefits, then the civil union would achieve that.
  - gverri 13y ago
    Civil Unions don't grant the same benefits as Marriage does. So it's not the same thing. There's no etymology war, you can keep the word "marriage", just give everyone equal rights to marry and have their marriage recognized everywhere.

baddox 13y ago

You seem to imply that societal morals always "improve" (according to some definition) over time. But what if, 50 years from now, being racist is widely acceptable again? Does that suddenly make it "moral"?

tzs 13y ago

> 50 years ago, being a racist was acceptable to lots of people. Would you work for or buy products from a CEO who was an unapologetic racist just because his beliefs were a product of his family/community? It depends. If it were, say, 100 years ago, when racism was the norm, I probably wouldn't take the racial views of the CEO into account when deciding what to buy or where to work. When a small group shuns a business, it generally hurts the small group more than it hurts the business. Heck, it may even help the business if people who agree with the CEO start doing more business with the company in a show of support for his racist views. If it were today, where racism is much much much less acceptable than it was 100 years ago, I'd consider it. The people shunning the business for racism would very likely outnumber those who might increase spending to support it. When 95% of the population believes something, it is pretty silly to shun a business whose CEO believes that. When 5% believes something, then shunning might make more sense. The interesting question is where is the crossover point?

gojomo 13y ago

It's the urge-to-punish that I find objectionable, applied with increasing levels of indirection, and in spheres of life that should be consciously firewalled from religion/politics. Mozilla is clearly a very inclusive project and a pro-LGBT workplace, which also does a ton of good on other issues. So what's "kind/respectful" about boycotting all of Mozilla, because of a one-time outside-the-workplace political donation by one manager? The boycott tactic says: "bend to our preferences or we'll shun/nullify/punish you totally, not just in the zone of disagreement". That's the same kind of zero-tolerance orthodoxy-enforcement that drives censorship or war-making. Look at the "enemies" language OKCupid uses! I prefer instead the logic of coexistence, and cooperation on common interests, even during the deepest of disagreements. That's important, because in our reasonably-wealthy, mostly-free society, every remaining political disagreement involves difficult issues of identity, rights, and morals. I'm hypertolerant. I buy from, and do work for, and consume the rhetorical/cultural output of, people I vigorously disagree with all the time. But also, I don't really buy anything "from a CEO". I don't even know the names (much less the religions or political sympathies) of most CEOs heading firms that supply my daily needs. This goes equally for local businesses: at a restaurant operated by a Catholic family, my 1st question will be, "what are the specials?", not, "have you publicly renounced the Pope's regressive stances on social issues?" Many communities have already evolved to the point where gay rights are a given. In those places it's time to be gracious winners! As easy and fun as it may be to dig up the corpse of Proposition 8, and shoot it in the head again and again, there are plenty of live battles on similar issues elsewhere. I'd prefer California (and our industry) be a positive example of how, after gay marriage is recognized and normalized to become "no big deal", everyone can still get along. Not an example of how retributive anger, and the appetite for economically-punishing losing dissenters, never ends.

sockypuppy 13y ago

> what should we do right now? This is a long answer, so here's the TLDR: All sides of the debate need to tone down the name-calling, demonization, boycotts, and ostracism of opponents. Treat the other side of the debate like they're intelligent and well-meaning, but somehow picked up some misinformed, misguided, or mistaken assumptions and doesn't realize. Try to figure out how to change people's minds so they believe the right thing, instead of focusing on punishing people who believe the wrong thing. I'm the rare HN'er on the opposite side of this cultural divide, so I thought my perspective would be informative. A lot of people who read the previous sentence have probably already characterized me as either a poorly educated hick or a slavering, sadistic bigot. The truth is, that by dehumanizing your opponent and assuming bad faith, you guarantee that people who don't agree with you won't listen to what you have to say. This means you can't really change minds. If you want to further the cause of gay rights, figure out the reasons people disagree with you, and try to convince them otherwise. Try to teach and explain; stay away from confrontation, condemnation and personal attacks. If someone else (on either side) becomes indignant, keep calm and encourage them to do likewise. For example, in a little bit I'll give you a list of questions I've had about gay rights that no one's ever answered to my satisfaction. Based on past experience, I should give you a few warnings about my questions first. You will probably think these questions are highly inflammatory, but I don't intend them to be trolling or snarking; rather they're things I'm honestly confused about. You should try to remain calm and think logically while reading my questions. This is apparently very hard for most pro-gay-rights people, for reasons I don't really understand. Opponents of gay rights say these questions have no good answers. Instead of providing good answers, proponents of gay rights call anyone who asks these questions very bad names like "hateful," "offensive," "bigot," or "dinosaur," and don't actually answer the questions. I don't know the answers to these questions because neither side ever actually answers them. The only thing I have to go on is the behavior of the two groups. Based on the above typical interaction of the two sides of the debate, I have to say the opponents of gay rights win: The pro-gay-rights side's only answer to skeptical questions is calling names. I'd probably change my mind if the pro-gay-rights side offered good answers and the anti-gay-rights side were the ones who weren't able to offer a coherent response. Here are the questions: What are the reasons you believe what you do? What is the evidence that homosexuality is an in-born quality as opposed to a choice? How strong is it? What about concerns that gay people are promiscuous, spreading AIDS and other STD's? Is a gay household an unhealthy environment for children? To what extent is homosexuality associated with crimes like rape and pedophilia? Why is homosexuality traditionally considered morally wrong (e.g. Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible), a symbol of decline (e.g. the late Roman Empire), and even outlawed? If the millenia-old traditional viewpoint was wrong, why did it last so long? Were the anti-gay-rights people always wrong, or has technology changed the picture (e.g. maybe STD's are now less serious due to inventions like condoms and antibiotics)? And one last question, which doesn't really change how I lean on the question of how I feel about gay rights: Why do so many pro-gay-rights people try to advance their agenda by calling names and boycotting organizations, instead of simply patiently explaining their side of the story?

Houshalter 13y ago

Do you think that these actions are actually furthering the cause of gay rights? It seems to me it's just an emotional reaction to want to "punish" the "hated enemy" [1]. And people on the other side will have the opposite reaction and further their bias against marriage equality supporters. [1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/