7 ms·

I would have considered him a worse person if he'd done that. I disagree with his opinions on marriage, but he has the right to have those opinions, and to prov

by akerl_ 13y ago

I would have considered him a worse person if he'd done that. I disagree with his opinions on marriage, but he has the right to have those opinions, and to provide support for causes he believes in. I'm not shocked the he is stepping down, or that others in the organization appear to have applied substantial pressure on him to do so, but it makes me sad. Their statements about supporting freedom of speech are hollow: the community has pressured him to step down because he expressed an opinion not held by the majority.

blisterpeanuts 13y ago
Ironically, though, his opinion was supported by the majority in that California election: 7 million to 6.4 million in favor of Prop 8. I guess if they consider any other candidates for CEO from California, they'll have to ask them how they voted.
- mkr-hn 13y ago
  How can it be a right if it's subject to a majority vote?
  - baddox 13y ago
    What's the other option? One person, or a small elite group, deciding the list of "rights"?
  - icebraining 13y ago
    All rights are subject to majority vote. Or subject to the majority, anyway.
    - matthewn 13y ago
      No, rights are manifestly NOT subject to a vote. That is why they are called rights.
      - icebraining 13y ago
        Reality disagrees.
        matthewn 13y ago
        No, it doesn't: Californians passed a proposition that violated people's rights. The courts, playing their proper role in our system, said, "Nope, you can't do that." That's what happened; that's reality.
        icebraining 13y ago
        The courts played the role that the majority allowed them to play, just like they did for the hundreds of years during which even same-sex sexual activity was illegal, let alone gay marriage. Like a diet that sometimes prevents people from eating what they crave, the system is nothing more than a mechanism of self-control for the majority.
      - akerl_ 13y ago
        That is the case in an ideal world, where we receive some blessed words inscribed upon our souls and also a way to read them. Since we don't live in that ideal world, our only option is to designate some body to decide what are rights and what are not. Whether that body is a king or a judge or a council of judges or a legislative body or the full populace (or some combination of the above) is an important and worthwhile discussion, but in the end we do need to designate some entity to decide what the rights are.
        mkr-hn 13y ago
        Fortunately, that entity sits above California's voters.
        akerl_ 13y ago
        Except the population votes for the people who pick the members of that entity. We've added a few hops, and hopefully increased the average intelligence of the people who get to decide on rights, but they still end up there based on the population's vote.
- thinkpad20 13y ago
  The majority that voted. Those in favor were more likely to go out and vote than those opposed. Many of the opinion polls showed that more people were opposed, but clearly not enough of them actually went to the ballot. Either way, I'm confident that the same measure today would have a snowball's chance in hell of passage.
  - blisterpeanuts 13y ago
    That's the way democracy works, though. If about 320,000 more conservative voters had turned out to vote in several swing states in 2012, we'd have a different President in the White House. That doesn't mean Romney should have won, though. It's the people who turn out to vote who get to decide. If you don't care enough to vote, tough beans!
    - yohui 13y ago
      > That's the way democracy works, though. > It's the people who turn out to vote who get to decide. If you don't care enough to vote, tough beans! Democracies with more complete voter participation don't seem generally worse off for it.
      - akerl_ 13y ago
        I don't think anyone is disagreeing with that. The point being made is that the people who come to vote are the ones who make the decisions. If people are being prevented from casting their votes, that is a serious problem, but if people choose not to exercise their right to vote then whatever vote they would have cast doesn't count towards the outcome. Saying that a vote would have gone differently if more people on the losing side voted is obvious. It's also not constructive, except in the context of wishing more people would participate in the political process in the future. Amusingly (or perhaps not), the fervor against Brendan Eich is based in large part around his participation in that process.
        yohui 13y ago
        I agree that in practice elections are won by those who manage to cast their ballots, but I disagree with the notion that this is not a defect but rather how democracy ought to work. I'm all for the option to not vote, but I want it to be a choice. I think the current setup provides the wrong incentives: it encourages politicians to care about how they can rouse up enough to come to the polls or demoralize enough to keep away, in addition to or at the expense of reaching out to all constituents. We can change this either through cultural or legal means, but the legal way is faster and not demonstrably harmful. Greater participation is far from a panacea, of course. It may even introduce its own particular ills (e.g. takes longer to change the status quo). But I hardly think it would make no difference at all. That's why I pointed to other democracies with better voting records, to show that overall democracy isn't harmed by more voting. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout#International_differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout#International_di...
- SimHacker 13y ago
  So you're saying it was wrong for the Supreme Court to strike down bans on mixed race marriages because at the time an overwhelming majority of Americans were against it? Why do you think human rights should be put up for a vote? Are you against mixed race marriage because it was so unpopular at the time the "activist court" struck it down?
- stiles 13y ago
  Please remember that part of the reason many voted in favor of Prop 8 was because of the amount of money raised in donations allowed a massive ad campaign that was full of lies and deceit.
- scintill76 13y ago
  > I guess if they consider any other candidates for CEO from California, they'll have to ask them how they voted. Interesting. The difference between which box you check, and giving money to influence other people to check a certain box. The privacy of the former is a nearly-sacred privilege, while the latter is not allowed to be private. And I do tend to agree with campaign finance disclosure, but the double-standard is interesting. To be consistent, will we have to make all voting records public? Would there be outrage if there were political questionnaires for employment/promotion like this? If proof of lying was found, would there be more outrage over the lie; or over violating privacy to find out about the lie?
bashinator 13y ago
There's a difference between expressing an opinion, and actively working to establish legal and social policy.
- akerl_ 13y ago
  Is there? I don't think we want to take the stance, as a society, that it's ok to have unpopular opinions as long as you don't advocate for your opinions.
  - lern_too_spel 13y ago
    Why not? I don't care if my neighbor believes aliens built the pyramids and some deity created all animals in their present form in six days. I do care if they pressure the school board to teach those things to my children. In the same way, I don't care if somebody believes that different races shouldn't intermarry because of dilution of racial purity or that people of the same sex shouldn't marry because of Adam and Steve. I do care if they try to put that into law.
    - akerl_ 13y ago
      This is the same logic that was used to justify policies like Don't Ask, Don't Tell. We are not perfect beings; we make mistakes, we believe things that end up being false, and we do things that we (or the rest of society) will regret later. As such, advocating that opinions other than the current prevailing set should be suppressed is a dangerous game to play. I know that like most of the people advocating it are doing so out of a desire to see the world become a better place. But since we've been wrong before about what "a better place" looks like, we should exercise utmost caution in telling others to be silent about their own views.
      - lern_too_spel 13y ago
        Really? You think there's a chance we're wrong about the pyramids and allowing racial mixing? Clearly, we aren't. Clearly, the people who push the opposing policies are harming society. Just like with evolution, there is no debate among thinking people about this.
SimHacker 13y ago
Society has the right to protect itself from intolerant bigots like Brendan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance Michael Walzer asks "Should we tolerate the intolerant?". He notes that most minority religious groups who are the beneficiaries of tolerance are themselves intolerant, at least in some respects. In a tolerant regime, such people may learn to tolerate, or at least to behave "as if they possessed this virtue". Philosopher Karl Popper asserted, in The Open Society and Its Enemies Vol. 1, that we are warranted in refusing to tolerate intolerance. Philosopher John Rawls concludes in A Theory of Justice that a just society must tolerate the intolerant, for otherwise, the society would then itself be intolerant, and thus unjust. However, Rawls also insists, like Popper, that society has a reasonable right of self-preservation that supersedes the principle of tolerance: "While an intolerant sect does not itself have title to complain of intolerance, its freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger."
cglee 13y ago
Not sure why people always bring up "freedom of speech" in these types of scenarios. You can say what you want without going to jail; that's freedom of speech. It doesn't mean you won't feel social consequences.
- Aloha 13y ago
  I'm an openly gay male, I came out at 15. Why should there be social or employment consequences - in my mind this is just as bad as when employers fire employees for being gay.
  - homulilly 13y ago
    Being gay and being a bigot are not comparable, that's insane.
    - themoonbus 13y ago
      Being a bigot is a lifestyle choice, and I don't support it (this is just a joke)
    - fleitz 13y ago
      I think what he's getting at is that you shouldn't suffer work consequences for opinions that you hold outside of work. Alternatively, maybe we can decide on a set of American values and we can investigate and blackball people who hold unamerican views.
      - homulilly 13y ago
        Things like this are about ethics, not "American Values" or any cultural norms. It used to be the cultural norm to be a white supremacist but that position as never actually been ethical. Additionally, in this specific case it's worth noting that the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary the Mozilla Corporation are largely political organizations and someone who holds such obviously bigoted views is pretty clearly unqualified to lead an organization who's goals are freedom and openness.
dasil003 13y ago
> the community has pressured him to step down because he expressed an opinion not held by the majority. That's not true. The fact that the majority believe the idea was necessary for the pressure to be applied, but it is not why the pressure was applied. The pressure was applied because his views trample on others' rights, and equal rights is philosophically closely tied with the entire mission of an organization like Mozilla. There are many other things which the majority believe, but which most people would acknowledge an individual's right to disagree with. This issue is different because Eich's personal opinion negatively materially affects another class of people without any justification.
- crassus 13y ago
  You can turn any political belief into "someone's rights". There are people who believe abortion is a woman's right, and others that believe legal abortion is an unprecedented holocaust. I believe we should be able to work together and respect each other while we work that out. This is enforcing an ideological litmus test on the industry, policing people's internal beliefs. It is terrifying.
  - homulilly 13y ago
    Personally, I feel the opposite. I think it's terrifying that so many in the tech industry apparently feel that ethics are irrelevant.
  - dasil003 13y ago
    Sure, the world is not black and white, you can always twist things around and mince words to support any viewpoint. But you picked a bad example, because the argument with abortion is that the unborn baby has rights too. The only way you can say gay marriage violates someone's rights is to say that people have the right to not be offended, or the right to hate people who are different from them. For all the contortions that people will make on this issue, it's fundamentally about fear and hate and nothing more. Abortion is a much more nuanced issue.
- Gormo 13y ago
  > his views trample on others' rights No; I don't agree with Eich's views, but merely having those views does not implicate anyone else's rights in any way at all. Rights are violated by actions, not merely by expressing distasteful opinions.
ameen 13y ago
Freedom of speech is to be exercised only for populist opinions. If we continue to travel down this path, we'd all have the same opinions, as anyone who dares to hold an different opinion than the majority would be ostracized from the society.
- thinkpad20 13y ago
  No one is abridging Eich's freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is the right to express yourself, not the right to have no one judge you for it.
  - crassus 13y ago
    This is how East Germany worked. You weren't usually harmed for holding non-communist beliefs, but you were blacklisted so that you would never work again.
    - lordCarbonFiber 13y ago
      It's also important to remember that freedom of speech is only protected from the government (which is why your East Germany example is nonsensical). The first admendment says you can stand on a public street corner and yell "God hates Fags" however, if you do so on my property I will remove you. Mozilla is not a governmental body and (so long as it doesn't violate the protected classes as codified by law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class) can hire and fire people to project whatever image they see fit.
    - DerKommissar 13y ago
      Correct me if I'm wrong, but blacklisting was done by the government. It wasn't just some business owners that decides they weren't going to hire non-communists. Big difference.
- homulilly 13y ago
  Ironically, what you're saying is that the right to free speech for the people who dissented shouldn't be respected.

by akerl_ 13y ago

blisterpeanuts 13y ago

Ironically, though, his opinion was supported by the majority in that California election: 7 million to 6.4 million in favor of Prop 8. I guess if they consider any other candidates for CEO from California, they'll have to ask them how they voted.

mkr-hn 13y ago
How can it be a right if it's subject to a majority vote?
- baddox 13y ago
  What's the other option? One person, or a small elite group, deciding the list of "rights"?
- icebraining 13y ago
  All rights are subject to majority vote. Or subject to the majority, anyway.
  - matthewn 13y ago
    No, rights are manifestly NOT subject to a vote. That is why they are called rights.
    - icebraining 13y ago
      Reality disagrees.
      - matthewn 13y ago
        No, it doesn't: Californians passed a proposition that violated people's rights. The courts, playing their proper role in our system, said, "Nope, you can't do that." That's what happened; that's reality.
        icebraining 13y ago
        The courts played the role that the majority allowed them to play, just like they did for the hundreds of years during which even same-sex sexual activity was illegal, let alone gay marriage. Like a diet that sometimes prevents people from eating what they crave, the system is nothing more than a mechanism of self-control for the majority.
    - akerl_ 13y ago
      That is the case in an ideal world, where we receive some blessed words inscribed upon our souls and also a way to read them. Since we don't live in that ideal world, our only option is to designate some body to decide what are rights and what are not. Whether that body is a king or a judge or a council of judges or a legislative body or the full populace (or some combination of the above) is an important and worthwhile discussion, but in the end we do need to designate some entity to decide what the rights are.
      - mkr-hn 13y ago
        Fortunately, that entity sits above California's voters.
        akerl_ 13y ago
        Except the population votes for the people who pick the members of that entity. We've added a few hops, and hopefully increased the average intelligence of the people who get to decide on rights, but they still end up there based on the population's vote.
thinkpad20 13y ago
The majority that voted. Those in favor were more likely to go out and vote than those opposed. Many of the opinion polls showed that more people were opposed, but clearly not enough of them actually went to the ballot. Either way, I'm confident that the same measure today would have a snowball's chance in hell of passage.
- blisterpeanuts 13y ago
  That's the way democracy works, though. If about 320,000 more conservative voters had turned out to vote in several swing states in 2012, we'd have a different President in the White House. That doesn't mean Romney should have won, though. It's the people who turn out to vote who get to decide. If you don't care enough to vote, tough beans!
  - yohui 13y ago
    > That's the way democracy works, though. > It's the people who turn out to vote who get to decide. If you don't care enough to vote, tough beans! Democracies with more complete voter participation don't seem generally worse off for it.
    - akerl_ 13y ago
      I don't think anyone is disagreeing with that. The point being made is that the people who come to vote are the ones who make the decisions. If people are being prevented from casting their votes, that is a serious problem, but if people choose not to exercise their right to vote then whatever vote they would have cast doesn't count towards the outcome. Saying that a vote would have gone differently if more people on the losing side voted is obvious. It's also not constructive, except in the context of wishing more people would participate in the political process in the future. Amusingly (or perhaps not), the fervor against Brendan Eich is based in large part around his participation in that process.
      - yohui 13y ago
        I agree that in practice elections are won by those who manage to cast their ballots, but I disagree with the notion that this is not a defect but rather how democracy ought to work. I'm all for the option to not vote, but I want it to be a choice. I think the current setup provides the wrong incentives: it encourages politicians to care about how they can rouse up enough to come to the polls or demoralize enough to keep away, in addition to or at the expense of reaching out to all constituents. We can change this either through cultural or legal means, but the legal way is faster and not demonstrably harmful. Greater participation is far from a panacea, of course. It may even introduce its own particular ills (e.g. takes longer to change the status quo). But I hardly think it would make no difference at all. That's why I pointed to other democracies with better voting records, to show that overall democracy isn't harmed by more voting. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout#International_differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout#International_di...
SimHacker 13y ago
So you're saying it was wrong for the Supreme Court to strike down bans on mixed race marriages because at the time an overwhelming majority of Americans were against it? Why do you think human rights should be put up for a vote? Are you against mixed race marriage because it was so unpopular at the time the "activist court" struck it down?
stiles 13y ago
Please remember that part of the reason many voted in favor of Prop 8 was because of the amount of money raised in donations allowed a massive ad campaign that was full of lies and deceit.
scintill76 13y ago
> I guess if they consider any other candidates for CEO from California, they'll have to ask them how they voted. Interesting. The difference between which box you check, and giving money to influence other people to check a certain box. The privacy of the former is a nearly-sacred privilege, while the latter is not allowed to be private. And I do tend to agree with campaign finance disclosure, but the double-standard is interesting. To be consistent, will we have to make all voting records public? Would there be outrage if there were political questionnaires for employment/promotion like this? If proof of lying was found, would there be more outrage over the lie; or over violating privacy to find out about the lie?

bashinator 13y ago

There's a difference between expressing an opinion, and actively working to establish legal and social policy.

akerl_ 13y ago
Is there? I don't think we want to take the stance, as a society, that it's ok to have unpopular opinions as long as you don't advocate for your opinions.
- lern_too_spel 13y ago
  Why not? I don't care if my neighbor believes aliens built the pyramids and some deity created all animals in their present form in six days. I do care if they pressure the school board to teach those things to my children. In the same way, I don't care if somebody believes that different races shouldn't intermarry because of dilution of racial purity or that people of the same sex shouldn't marry because of Adam and Steve. I do care if they try to put that into law.
  - akerl_ 13y ago
    This is the same logic that was used to justify policies like Don't Ask, Don't Tell. We are not perfect beings; we make mistakes, we believe things that end up being false, and we do things that we (or the rest of society) will regret later. As such, advocating that opinions other than the current prevailing set should be suppressed is a dangerous game to play. I know that like most of the people advocating it are doing so out of a desire to see the world become a better place. But since we've been wrong before about what "a better place" looks like, we should exercise utmost caution in telling others to be silent about their own views.
    - lern_too_spel 13y ago
      Really? You think there's a chance we're wrong about the pyramids and allowing racial mixing? Clearly, we aren't. Clearly, the people who push the opposing policies are harming society. Just like with evolution, there is no debate among thinking people about this.

SimHacker 13y ago

Society has the right to protect itself from intolerant bigots like Brendan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance Michael Walzer asks "Should we tolerate the intolerant?". He notes that most minority religious groups who are the beneficiaries of tolerance are themselves intolerant, at least in some respects. In a tolerant regime, such people may learn to tolerate, or at least to behave "as if they possessed this virtue". Philosopher Karl Popper asserted, in The Open Society and Its Enemies Vol. 1, that we are warranted in refusing to tolerate intolerance. Philosopher John Rawls concludes in A Theory of Justice that a just society must tolerate the intolerant, for otherwise, the society would then itself be intolerant, and thus unjust. However, Rawls also insists, like Popper, that society has a reasonable right of self-preservation that supersedes the principle of tolerance: "While an intolerant sect does not itself have title to complain of intolerance, its freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger."

cglee 13y ago

Not sure why people always bring up "freedom of speech" in these types of scenarios. You can say what you want without going to jail; that's freedom of speech. It doesn't mean you won't feel social consequences.

Aloha 13y ago
I'm an openly gay male, I came out at 15. Why should there be social or employment consequences - in my mind this is just as bad as when employers fire employees for being gay.
- homulilly 13y ago
  Being gay and being a bigot are not comparable, that's insane.
  - themoonbus 13y ago
    Being a bigot is a lifestyle choice, and I don't support it (this is just a joke)
  - fleitz 13y ago
    I think what he's getting at is that you shouldn't suffer work consequences for opinions that you hold outside of work. Alternatively, maybe we can decide on a set of American values and we can investigate and blackball people who hold unamerican views.
    - homulilly 13y ago
      Things like this are about ethics, not "American Values" or any cultural norms. It used to be the cultural norm to be a white supremacist but that position as never actually been ethical. Additionally, in this specific case it's worth noting that the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary the Mozilla Corporation are largely political organizations and someone who holds such obviously bigoted views is pretty clearly unqualified to lead an organization who's goals are freedom and openness.

dasil003 13y ago

> the community has pressured him to step down because he expressed an opinion not held by the majority. That's not true. The fact that the majority believe the idea was necessary for the pressure to be applied, but it is not why the pressure was applied. The pressure was applied because his views trample on others' rights, and equal rights is philosophically closely tied with the entire mission of an organization like Mozilla. There are many other things which the majority believe, but which most people would acknowledge an individual's right to disagree with. This issue is different because Eich's personal opinion negatively materially affects another class of people without any justification.

crassus 13y ago
You can turn any political belief into "someone's rights". There are people who believe abortion is a woman's right, and others that believe legal abortion is an unprecedented holocaust. I believe we should be able to work together and respect each other while we work that out. This is enforcing an ideological litmus test on the industry, policing people's internal beliefs. It is terrifying.
- homulilly 13y ago
  Personally, I feel the opposite. I think it's terrifying that so many in the tech industry apparently feel that ethics are irrelevant.
- dasil003 13y ago
  Sure, the world is not black and white, you can always twist things around and mince words to support any viewpoint. But you picked a bad example, because the argument with abortion is that the unborn baby has rights too. The only way you can say gay marriage violates someone's rights is to say that people have the right to not be offended, or the right to hate people who are different from them. For all the contortions that people will make on this issue, it's fundamentally about fear and hate and nothing more. Abortion is a much more nuanced issue.
Gormo 13y ago
> his views trample on others' rights No; I don't agree with Eich's views, but merely having those views does not implicate anyone else's rights in any way at all. Rights are violated by actions, not merely by expressing distasteful opinions.

ameen 13y ago

Freedom of speech is to be exercised only for populist opinions. If we continue to travel down this path, we'd all have the same opinions, as anyone who dares to hold an different opinion than the majority would be ostracized from the society.

thinkpad20 13y ago
No one is abridging Eich's freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is the right to express yourself, not the right to have no one judge you for it.
- crassus 13y ago
  This is how East Germany worked. You weren't usually harmed for holding non-communist beliefs, but you were blacklisted so that you would never work again.
  - lordCarbonFiber 13y ago
    It's also important to remember that freedom of speech is only protected from the government (which is why your East Germany example is nonsensical). The first admendment says you can stand on a public street corner and yell "God hates Fags" however, if you do so on my property I will remove you. Mozilla is not a governmental body and (so long as it doesn't violate the protected classes as codified by law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class) can hire and fire people to project whatever image they see fit.
  - DerKommissar 13y ago
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but blacklisting was done by the government. It wasn't just some business owners that decides they weren't going to hire non-communists. Big difference.
homulilly 13y ago
Ironically, what you're saying is that the right to free speech for the people who dissented shouldn't be respected.