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I generally agree with you but I think the problem here is that being against gay marriage is more than just a "political view." Being for low taxes is a polit

I generally agree with you but I think the problem here is that being against gay marriage is more than just a "political view." Being for low taxes is a political view. Being for smaller government is a political view. Believing a certain group of people don't deserve to live their lives like other simply because of who they love is not a political view. It reads as extremely hateful and that makes people uncomfortable. I would be uncomfortable if the head of the company I worked for felt that way.

Amillennialist 13y ago
"Believing a certain group of people don't deserve to live their lives like other simply because of who they love is not a political view. It reads as extremely hateful and that makes people uncomfortable." Sin is not "love." And lust does not create a Constitutional right. Refusing to legitimize an unnatural and perverse act by calling it "marriage" is not bigotry; refusing to redefine one of society's fundamental institutions is not "hateful" (but demonizing those who defend it is). No one I know wants to deny anyone their license to play house with the consenting adult(s) of their choosing. Not all adults have the right to marry. Would you abolish all barriers to it? Would you redefine the word into absurdity? What about sodomy makes it sacrosanct to you? It's a behavior; as such, it is subject to moral judgment. Where do you draw the line? Incest? Polygyny? Zoophilia? Pedophilia? A young adult male and his browser? Why can't they all get married? What gives you the right to deny them their equality? Who are you to forbid their happiness? Why are you such a hater? You don't have any problem making moral judgments against those whose morality you despise. That makes you "extremely hateful," doesn't it? This isn't about equal rights. (How absurd.) This isn't about "letting people live like others." This is about using the force of government -- and now, the marketplace -- to coerce the endorsement of that which is immoral and unnatural. This is about demonizing those whose positions you dislike. And that doesn't even depend on religious doctrine -- though Christ's endorsement of one man, one woman, for life with the glorious possibility of children should be enough. Nowhere in Nature does any species engage in exclusively-homosexual relationships. Even the Darwinist knows that exclusively-homosexual relationships mean the end of the species. And it's a violation of design; even a simple man knows that the relevant organs are made for ... other purposes. And you won't let Eich "live his life like others." Fascist. Hypocrite.
gfodor 13y ago
I support legalizing gay marriage. But two things, first, supporting prop 8 does not mean you "believe a certain group of people don't deserve to live their lives like others." It means you don't believe that the government should recognize same sex marriages as marriages. There are a large gradient of views here, and on one extreme are the bigots who hate homosexuals and on the other there are people who simply have hangups about the word "marriage" vs "civil unions." As far as I know Brendan has never articulated his opinions on the matter, they have just been extrapolated from a $1,000 donation. Second, support of prop 8 would have been a mainstream viewpoint less than 10 years ago. In many parts of the country, support of prop 8 is a mainstream viewpoint. People who have different upbringings in different geographic areas are of course going to be biased towards certain views, and it's a bit unfair to chastise them for not completely realigning their viewpoints overnight for something that has probably been the fastest and most productive civil rights movement, maybe ever. People love to talk about tolerance except when tolerance means they have to deal with people who were raised with fundamentally different views, or people who may even have the same views they did a decade ago but failed to "evolve." This could have been an opportunity to attempt bring someone, a powerful CEO, to the side of being informed and support gay rights but instead it was a witch hunt and an embarrassment.
- tripzilch 13y ago
  > people who simply have hangups about the word "marriage" vs "civil unions." oh well, that's okay then. ?! you do realize these people only have "hangups" about "marriage" vs "civil unions" when it concerns gay couples, right? see on the one end of the spectrum you got bigots who hate minority X, and other other end you got these people who simply have hangups about treating them equal. > As far as I know Brendan has never articulated his opinions on the matter, they have just been extrapolated from a $1,000 donation. The most charitable opinion on the matter I can extrapolate from donation $1000 would be if he believed that this money would somehow be used to abolish "marriage" in favour of "civil union" in general, for same-sex, gay or corporate couples all alike. Which would be such a dumb assumption that stepping down as CEO seems again very reasonable. > In many parts of the country, support of prop 8 is a mainstream viewpoint. In many parts of the world, hunting down and lynching gays is a mainstream viewpoint. Also in those very same parts of your country, there's many other rather questionable mainstream viewpoints being held. > People who have different upbringings in different geographic areas are of course going to be biased towards certain views, and it's a bit unfair to chastise them for not completely realigning their viewpoints overnight for something that has probably been the fastest and most productive civil rights movement, maybe ever. It's not been "overnight", it's been years (maybe decades even). Now you can argue it's not fair to chastise large groups of people over geographic areas for realigning their viewpoints over many years. I could also argue that it is fair, but that's not even the issue here. An individual can be expected to realign their viewpoint much quicker and can therefore be held to a much higher standard. And when this person is the CEO of Mozilla, I don't think it's unfair at all to hold them to that standard either. Whoever gets to make that call. > This could have been an opportunity to attempt bring someone, a powerful CEO, to the side of being informed and support gay rights but instead it was a witch hunt and an embarrassment. It's not a real witch hunt until we test the hypothesis that bigoted CEOs do not actually catch fire if you burn them at the stake, because they will be saved by The LORD for their unquestioning dedication to the sanctity of marriage. This is a widely held belief in many parts of the world and I guess the only real solution is that everybody just have at it and we'll see who gets out alive in the end (a traditional method of conflict-resolution that is also practised pretty much everywhere in the world).
andrewpi 13y ago
So Barack Obama, the President of the US, was against gay marriage in 2008; I'm confused as to why he gets a pass here, but the head of Mozilla doesn't?
- Aloisius 13y ago
  He evolved. Brendan did not.
  - samelawrence 13y ago
    I think it's easy to also say he lied. Probably before, and his support of gay marriage is his true heart... which is nice, so he's got that going for him. But, he probably lied.
- waterfowl 13y ago
  So were a majority of voters in California in 2008. I think anyone hiring in California would be an ~evil homophobe~ if they didn't screen their applicants on their prop 8 vote these days. But really I have no idea why Obama(or javascript) gets a pass. The thing that is so frustrating to me as someone who lives in a liberal hivemindy area(DC) and works in a hivemindy field(tech) is that "opposing marriage equality"(which is super biased phrasing) is NOT a fringe or rare opinion in a vast majority of the country. People need to quit equating this to being a Nazi or a 60s era segregationist or all kinds of things which are so incredibly different.
- mkr-hn 13y ago
  He didn't get a pass. A lot of people made a huge issue out of it from the day he announced to the day he changed his views. He also didn't stand in the way of the advancing equality movement while he mulled it over. Brendan Eich did, to the tune of $1000.
  - 6cxs2hd6 13y ago
    Actually, with respect to civil rights, acts of omission matter >= acts of commission. Therefore the POTUS withholding support is a far, far greater impact than some dude contributing $1000. Yet I imagine a super-majority of the people pitchforking Eich also voted for Obama. Whatever justifications they had -- "lesser of two evils", "he's right about most other things" -- should apply to both people. But of course they don't, because some people apparently need a monthly Paula Deen or Kony or #CancelColbert controversy to serve as their moral compass. By the way, I fully support marriage equality. But it feels wrong that I even need to state that like it's some sort of Pledge of Allegiance litmus test.
Spooky23 13y ago
It's also a religious view for many. For someone who belongs to a religious community, publicly renouncing canon has serious impacts on you and your family's social standing. Many people are able to balance their personal beliefs against their professional obligations. Is a defense attorney who defends a rapist at trial assumed to not be capable of working with women? People should be judged by actions, not thought. If he was mistreating gay employees, that's a totally different matter.
- eropple 13y ago
  But he is being judged by his actions, because his actions suck. His actions like donating a grand to these jerks, like donating money to other jerks like Pat "our promiscuous homosexuals appear literally Hell-bent on Satanism and suicide" Buchanan. He has a history of badness and it's catching up to him. Though, honestly, the Pat Buchanan donation bothers me even more than the Prop 8 one; donating money to Pat Buchanan should not only be reason to not represent Mozilla but possibly be thrown off of planet Earth entirely. And if somebody has a problem differentiating between civil and religious marriage, that's their problem. A few people's failures in civics classes should not be a rationale for injustice or a pass for people who wish to encourage further injustice.
  - Spooky23 13y ago
    Says you. I would rather work with and disagree with someone who has the integrity to stand by what they believe. I work in a group with folks of Indian decent from different religious backgrounds (Islamic, Hindu, Catholic), an Orthodox Jew, a bunch of Irish catholic types (including myself), and a person from Nigeria. We are literally from many corners of the earth, with different backgrounds, traditions, etc. If we delved into politics, we'd probably find a lot of contested ground. Part of democracy and free society is that we need to get past those differences. If you believe that gay marriage is against your moral code, you have a right to vote your conscience. Likewise, if you campaign for LGBT rights, you have that same right, and I would make the same argument 20 years ago for people similarly mistreated for taking that stand. I'm Catholic, and contribute regularly to a church congregation. I'm also a public officer in a secular government, whose policies are often not consistent with the church. Should I be booted out of my job (or contemplate "spending more time with my family") because I provide financial support to a religious organization whose doctrine re: things like birth control or LGBT issues are out of step with many in our society? Where do you draw the line? Once you decide that it's not OK to think different, you end up on a steep slope.
crassus 13y ago
Depending on your point of view, legal abortion is either part of a fundamental right for a woman to control her own body or an unprecedented holocaust. Should you have to pick the "right" choice in order to be employed in the tech industry?
- ConceptJunkie 13y ago
  Eventually, you will, it seems.
baddox 13y ago
> I generally agree with you but I think the problem here is that being against gay marriage is more than just a "political view." Not necessarily. It's quite possible to support gay partners' legal right to live together, file taxes together, set up wills and visitation rights, adopt children, etc., but still oppose changing the legally-defined notion of marriage.
- Borogove 13y ago
  You'll forgive me if I find expanding the definition of "marriage" in state and federal law to be a more reasonable approach than having to fight separate battles for each of the 1000+ legal rights and obligations which currently accrue to married couples.
  - baddox 13y ago
    No forgiveness necessary. I think that's a valid strategy.
  - victorhooi 13y ago
    Do you really think that's what this is about? Sorry, but I call fake. In many countries, you have the concept of de-facto relationships - you don't even need to be married, let alone have a civil union, and you have the same rights. So it's not like the courts couldn't do it - and in many cases have. However, this entire debate is purely one of ideology and semantics. It was never about "privileges" (whether tax, medical, or whatever), but about two different people trying to define what marriage meant. For some groups, marriage has ties to family and raising children - and human society has sort of flowed along those lines for thousands of years. Another groups says times are a changing, and we need to redefine marriage to also include homosexual relationships, which while nothing to do with families (as we know them) or creating children, are still marriages.
    - Borogove 13y ago
      The idea that homosexual relationships "have nothing to do with families" is simply laughable.
DangerousPie 13y ago
I have heard people mention this distinction before, but it seems a bit arbitrary to me. You and I may agree that this is a universal right that is "not up for discussion", but we can't deny the fact that there is a sizable portion of people that would disagree with us. Many of them believe as strongly that we are wrong as we believe that they are wrong. In my eyes, this shows that there are certainly different viewpoints on the matter and makes it as political as anything else.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  The difference for me is that we all have to work to live. Racists, sexists, and homophobes running workplaces have a direct effect on the standard of living and the effort it takes to preserve it for groups of people who are already besieged and disadvantaged. In the US, that's why the federal government steps in and requires at least the appearance of fairness. If they hadn't, my family would still be sharecroppers.
  - cek994 13y ago
    There is absolutely nothing in Eich's record which would indicate what you're saying is true. If he had actually had a "direct effect on the standard of living" of any employee, that should have been resolved through an internal review process of his actual behavior, not a public lynching of a man based on a political issue (that was, let's not forget, endorsed by a majority of California voters).
- whyenot 13y ago
  > In my eyes, this shows that there are certainly different viewpoints on the matter and makes it as political as anything else. We had the right to marry in California. Proposition 8 took away that right. We gained the same freedom everyone else has and then the proposition Brendan Eich supported took that right away. Of course politics are involved, but you have to understand how hurtful that turn of events was to many in the gay community.
- baddox 13y ago
  If you think it's "not up for discussion," I think there is a serious problem with your view. And yes, I think my previous sentence is up for discussion.
themgt 13y ago
Right. How many people would be in here saying this is a free-speech issue if he had donated money to support a law against marriages between people of different races? It is absolutely about human rights, and I applaud the community for drawing a red line on this.
- defen 13y ago
  People keep bringing up interracial marriage, but really it's a red herring. Interracial marriage does not involve a fundamental change to the way marriage works. Furthermore, in practice it is not enforceable, since you would have to know someone's entire ancestry to know whether they were eligible to marry another person. Anyway, to answer your question: If I found out that my CEO had donated to an anti-interracial-marriage campaign, but had never discriminated against or otherwise treated people in such relationships differently, I wouldn't particularly care.
  - mnordhoff 13y ago
    "Furthermore, in practice it is not enforceable, since you would have to know someone's entire ancestry to know whether they were eligible to marry another person." Not true! Knowing someone's entire ancestry since the beginning of H. s. sapiens may be impossible, but less-rigorous standards of discrimination are practical to implement. Nazi Germany defined how Jewish someone was based on their number of Jewish grandparents. This means checking genealogical and religious records back two generations. I've heard that some positions, like the SS, required proving your ancestry back to 1750. I don't know how many people were certified, or how extensive the research was -- could someone walk into an office with a few badly-copied baptismal records and get their "I can marry a German" card stamped? did it require checking government databases? -- but it must have been a large number. The existence of terms such as quadroon and even octoroon show that people of centuries past seriously considered and even legalized notions of how 'black' people were, but I have no idea how well-implemented they were in practice. (I imagine there was a lot more "yeah, you look white enough" and a lot less "please come back tomorrow after I've telegraphed the Census office".) My brain kind of needs a shower now. Edit: My knowledge of these subjects is limited to about 90 minutes of reading Wikipedia, by the way. I was vague enough that I don't think anything I stated is actually wrong. Incidentally, apparently Nazi Germany had a scandalous number of women who suddenly admitted under oath that their children were the product of an extramarital affair with a conveniently non-Jewish and dead family friend. How well this worked may have depended on how well-connected you were. The senior Luftwaffe officer Erhard Milch is a prominent example. Edit again: If your point was "in practice it is not enforceable", mine was that it was enforceable enough that a lot of people put a lot of effort into trying, even if they didn't pull it off perfectly.
DatBear 13y ago
I keep hearing people saying that gay marriage is more than just a political view, but so is every other political view. Don't support welfare? You're against poor people. Support welfare? You're against the working man. You're pro-choice? You're against babies. You're pro-life? You're against women. Pretty much every political stance can be viewed in the same fashion as people are viewing Eich's. The thing is, Eich has been at the company for 15 years; if he wanted to discriminate against gay people in the workplace, it could have been done already - he's a co-founder, don't you think he had some input towards the policies in place? And if it has been done already, I haven't heard of it, but I would fully support trying to get him to step down. The thing is, it probably hasn't been done, which would mean he has done nothing wrong in my opinion.
- Xcelerate 13y ago
  Well put. The problem is that on almost every issue, people think their own personal view is "above" the issue somehow (see dopamean's comment at the top of this page for an example). Atheists claim they shouldn't even have to debate religious people because it's so "obvious". Pro-choice people claim they shouldn't even have to debate pro-life people because women's rights are "so obvious". Same thing with gay marriage. This is simply a horrible and almost completely ineffective way to argue your point. You can't pull the "so obvious" cop-out on any issue that has a clearly decisive split within a country.
- camus2 13y ago
  Don't support welfare? You're against poor people. Support welfare? You're against the working man. You're pro-choice? You're against babies. You're pro-life? You're against women your black or white stance is a logical fallacy.
  - Amillennialist 13y ago
    (How funny.) He's pointing out the fallacies of the usurpers who make such "arguments." Thanks for making his point.
  - DatBear 13y ago
pcvarmint 13y ago
The problem is that the state has granted privileges to married people. If the state treated everyone equally without regard to marital status, then gays and straights could marry privately and it wouldn't become an issue. It's an issue because married gays want the same marriage privileges as straight couples. We need to separate marriage and state. Except for enforcing contracts that the married parties sign themselves, the state should not get involved and grant special privileges to those who are married, such as tax deductions. I'm for consensual gay marriage. I'm against state-approved or state-disapproved marriage, whether it bans consensual relationships or rewards or punishes marriage with privileges. Even consensual polygamy should be none of the state's business.
- serge2k 13y ago
  Shared health benefits? Child custody rights? etc...
- cookiecaper 13y ago
  I am against gay marriage and in favor of polygyny. I do not believe that we should get the state out of marriage. Marriage is nothing without effective legal protections and backing. Your position is the literal fulfillment of all those people who said that gay marriage would destroy real marriage. That is precisely what you are claiming should happen -- marriage should stop being a real thing, and if you feel like saying you're married, then go ahead and do it. I just wanted to point this out since many people say it's ridiculous that gay marriage would destroy straight marriage. You are explicitly endorsing said destruction.
  - adamwong246 13y ago
    The notion that the state should lord over the private consenting adults is bizarre and unsettling. One would think that, as a proponent of polygyny, you would realize just how unfair your position is. Personally, I can't imagine anything scarier than the government controlling love, sex and reproduction. As a fellow citizen, I have no objections to your romantic choices or with whom you can form a legal contract. Why do you persist in objecting to mine? I support your rights because they are my rights as well. If your camp could reciprocate, maybe we can legalize polygamy, not just polygyny, so that we might all live in a maximum of happiness and freedom.
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gcb0 13y ago
If you like to extrapolate... Paying more taxes and a larger government is more apt to distribute wellfare properly. Most child deaths are in poor families. So voting for less taxes and a smaller gov is directly killing babies.
ebfe 13y ago
Low taxes?! You want to cut funding for the social programs that are the only thing giving LGBT folks a shot at surviving in this oppressive, heteronormative world?!? That's not a political belief, that's saying that people should starve in the streets simply because of who they love. Any CEO who supports lower taxes is clearly hateful, and needs to resign.
hippoman 13y ago
Except if who they love is a child, or a relative, or an animal, or not their spouse, or a member of another race, or an abused wife, or ... I'm 90% agreeing with you, but most people who claim to agree with you are actually only including a very narrow set of people and still want to treat other groups worse just because of who they love. It should really be based on whether they do harm to others or not. Anything else is simply prejudice.
mercurial 13y ago
Look at it this way. If at the time of the invasion of Iraq, people suddenly noticed Eich had donated to an anti-war cause, or maybe mentioned in private that he thought 9/11 was a consequence of US foreign policy, how many red-blooded, freedom-fries eating Americans would have asked for his head because he held an unpopular opinion?
- timtas 13y ago
  You seem to intend this as a rhetorical question, but I think it's an excellent literal question. Did this happen? Perhaps you will cite some cases.
  - mercurial 13y ago
    I'm not aware of any case, but it's possible. You may have examples during the Vietnam war or the Red Scare. The basic issue is the same, though: is it OK to let the Vox Populi evict a CEO for holding currently unpopular views?
dredmorbius 13y ago
Being for low taxes is a political view. Being for smaller government is a political view. This is marching well out into controversial territory, but I don't see any clean division between "political" and "ethical" grounds. If you look at the founder of modern economic thought (called for a time "political economy", BTW), his other book is The Theory of Moral Sentiments, an explicitly moral work. Much of Wealth of Nations concerns "ought" rather more than "is" (though Smith focuses on both). As von Clausewitz observed that war is the continuation of politics by other means, politics is the continuation of war by other means. More recently you'll find voices such as John Perkins (Confessions of an Economic Hit Man) and Smedly Butler (of Business Plot[1] fame) who'd come to realize that as a marine general he was "a racketeer for capitalism": In 1935, Butler wrote a book titled War Is a Racket, where he described and criticized the workings of the United States in its foreign actions and wars, such as those he was a part of, including the American corporations and other imperialist motivations behind them. After retiring from service, he became a popular activist, speaking at meetings organized by veterans, pacifists and church groups in the 1930s. (Wikipedia [2]) Given that taxation and government decisions have social implications, and those, based on the distribution of resources implied, have moral elements, all of the areas you posit are in fact value-laden questions: what is fair, what is appropriate, how should power be allocated, how should wealth be allocated? The same holds true for technology as well Michael and Joyce Huesemann[3] argue, among other things, that all technologies have implicit value-laden judgements, and that adoption of those technologies includes adopting the values of those technologies. They might be of cars (personal transportation autonomy, pedestrian minimalization, land-use planning, air pollution), television (individual isolation, advertising, mass media), or web browsers (cheap information dissemination, subversion of censorship, voicing of dissident or minority views, cats, free access to pornography, pop-up ads). Moral and other viewpoints aren't so easily divorced. ________________________________ Notes: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler 3. http://redd.it/21pc8c http://redd.it/21pc8c https://archive.org/details/scm-33066-michaelhuesemanntechno-fixwhyt https://archive.org/details/scm-33066-michaelhuesemanntechno... http://newtechnologyandsociety.org/ http://newtechnologyandsociety.org/
- acjohnson55 13y ago

Amillennialist 13y ago

"Believing a certain group of people don't deserve to live their lives like other simply because of who they love is not a political view. It reads as extremely hateful and that makes people uncomfortable." Sin is not "love." And lust does not create a Constitutional right. Refusing to legitimize an unnatural and perverse act by calling it "marriage" is not bigotry; refusing to redefine one of society's fundamental institutions is not "hateful" (but demonizing those who defend it is). No one I know wants to deny anyone their license to play house with the consenting adult(s) of their choosing. Not all adults have the right to marry. Would you abolish all barriers to it? Would you redefine the word into absurdity? What about sodomy makes it sacrosanct to you? It's a behavior; as such, it is subject to moral judgment. Where do you draw the line? Incest? Polygyny? Zoophilia? Pedophilia? A young adult male and his browser? Why can't they all get married? What gives you the right to deny them their equality? Who are you to forbid their happiness? Why are you such a hater? You don't have any problem making moral judgments against those whose morality you despise. That makes you "extremely hateful," doesn't it? This isn't about equal rights. (How absurd.) This isn't about "letting people live like others." This is about using the force of government -- and now, the marketplace -- to coerce the endorsement of that which is immoral and unnatural. This is about demonizing those whose positions you dislike. And that doesn't even depend on religious doctrine -- though Christ's endorsement of one man, one woman, for life with the glorious possibility of children should be enough. Nowhere in Nature does any species engage in exclusively-homosexual relationships. Even the Darwinist knows that exclusively-homosexual relationships mean the end of the species. And it's a violation of design; even a simple man knows that the relevant organs are made for ... other purposes. And you won't let Eich "live his life like others." Fascist. Hypocrite.

gfodor 13y ago

I support legalizing gay marriage. But two things, first, supporting prop 8 does not mean you "believe a certain group of people don't deserve to live their lives like others." It means you don't believe that the government should recognize same sex marriages as marriages. There are a large gradient of views here, and on one extreme are the bigots who hate homosexuals and on the other there are people who simply have hangups about the word "marriage" vs "civil unions." As far as I know Brendan has never articulated his opinions on the matter, they have just been extrapolated from a $1,000 donation. Second, support of prop 8 would have been a mainstream viewpoint less than 10 years ago. In many parts of the country, support of prop 8 is a mainstream viewpoint. People who have different upbringings in different geographic areas are of course going to be biased towards certain views, and it's a bit unfair to chastise them for not completely realigning their viewpoints overnight for something that has probably been the fastest and most productive civil rights movement, maybe ever. People love to talk about tolerance except when tolerance means they have to deal with people who were raised with fundamentally different views, or people who may even have the same views they did a decade ago but failed to "evolve." This could have been an opportunity to attempt bring someone, a powerful CEO, to the side of being informed and support gay rights but instead it was a witch hunt and an embarrassment.

tripzilch 13y ago
> people who simply have hangups about the word "marriage" vs "civil unions." oh well, that's okay then. ?! you do realize these people only have "hangups" about "marriage" vs "civil unions" when it concerns gay couples, right? see on the one end of the spectrum you got bigots who hate minority X, and other other end you got these people who simply have hangups about treating them equal. > As far as I know Brendan has never articulated his opinions on the matter, they have just been extrapolated from a $1,000 donation. The most charitable opinion on the matter I can extrapolate from donation $1000 would be if he believed that this money would somehow be used to abolish "marriage" in favour of "civil union" in general, for same-sex, gay or corporate couples all alike. Which would be such a dumb assumption that stepping down as CEO seems again very reasonable. > In many parts of the country, support of prop 8 is a mainstream viewpoint. In many parts of the world, hunting down and lynching gays is a mainstream viewpoint. Also in those very same parts of your country, there's many other rather questionable mainstream viewpoints being held. > People who have different upbringings in different geographic areas are of course going to be biased towards certain views, and it's a bit unfair to chastise them for not completely realigning their viewpoints overnight for something that has probably been the fastest and most productive civil rights movement, maybe ever. It's not been "overnight", it's been years (maybe decades even). Now you can argue it's not fair to chastise large groups of people over geographic areas for realigning their viewpoints over many years. I could also argue that it is fair, but that's not even the issue here. An individual can be expected to realign their viewpoint much quicker and can therefore be held to a much higher standard. And when this person is the CEO of Mozilla, I don't think it's unfair at all to hold them to that standard either. Whoever gets to make that call. > This could have been an opportunity to attempt bring someone, a powerful CEO, to the side of being informed and support gay rights but instead it was a witch hunt and an embarrassment. It's not a real witch hunt until we test the hypothesis that bigoted CEOs do not actually catch fire if you burn them at the stake, because they will be saved by The LORD for their unquestioning dedication to the sanctity of marriage. This is a widely held belief in many parts of the world and I guess the only real solution is that everybody just have at it and we'll see who gets out alive in the end (a traditional method of conflict-resolution that is also practised pretty much everywhere in the world).

andrewpi 13y ago

So Barack Obama, the President of the US, was against gay marriage in 2008; I'm confused as to why he gets a pass here, but the head of Mozilla doesn't?

Aloisius 13y ago
He evolved. Brendan did not.
- samelawrence 13y ago
  I think it's easy to also say he lied. Probably before, and his support of gay marriage is his true heart... which is nice, so he's got that going for him. But, he probably lied.
waterfowl 13y ago
So were a majority of voters in California in 2008. I think anyone hiring in California would be an ~evil homophobe~ if they didn't screen their applicants on their prop 8 vote these days. But really I have no idea why Obama(or javascript) gets a pass. The thing that is so frustrating to me as someone who lives in a liberal hivemindy area(DC) and works in a hivemindy field(tech) is that "opposing marriage equality"(which is super biased phrasing) is NOT a fringe or rare opinion in a vast majority of the country. People need to quit equating this to being a Nazi or a 60s era segregationist or all kinds of things which are so incredibly different.
mkr-hn 13y ago
He didn't get a pass. A lot of people made a huge issue out of it from the day he announced to the day he changed his views. He also didn't stand in the way of the advancing equality movement while he mulled it over. Brendan Eich did, to the tune of $1000.
- 6cxs2hd6 13y ago
  Actually, with respect to civil rights, acts of omission matter >= acts of commission. Therefore the POTUS withholding support is a far, far greater impact than some dude contributing $1000. Yet I imagine a super-majority of the people pitchforking Eich also voted for Obama. Whatever justifications they had -- "lesser of two evils", "he's right about most other things" -- should apply to both people. But of course they don't, because some people apparently need a monthly Paula Deen or Kony or #CancelColbert controversy to serve as their moral compass. By the way, I fully support marriage equality. But it feels wrong that I even need to state that like it's some sort of Pledge of Allegiance litmus test.

Spooky23 13y ago

It's also a religious view for many. For someone who belongs to a religious community, publicly renouncing canon has serious impacts on you and your family's social standing. Many people are able to balance their personal beliefs against their professional obligations. Is a defense attorney who defends a rapist at trial assumed to not be capable of working with women? People should be judged by actions, not thought. If he was mistreating gay employees, that's a totally different matter.

eropple 13y ago
But he is being judged by his actions, because his actions suck. His actions like donating a grand to these jerks, like donating money to other jerks like Pat "our promiscuous homosexuals appear literally Hell-bent on Satanism and suicide" Buchanan. He has a history of badness and it's catching up to him. Though, honestly, the Pat Buchanan donation bothers me even more than the Prop 8 one; donating money to Pat Buchanan should not only be reason to not represent Mozilla but possibly be thrown off of planet Earth entirely. And if somebody has a problem differentiating between civil and religious marriage, that's their problem. A few people's failures in civics classes should not be a rationale for injustice or a pass for people who wish to encourage further injustice.
- Spooky23 13y ago
  Says you. I would rather work with and disagree with someone who has the integrity to stand by what they believe. I work in a group with folks of Indian decent from different religious backgrounds (Islamic, Hindu, Catholic), an Orthodox Jew, a bunch of Irish catholic types (including myself), and a person from Nigeria. We are literally from many corners of the earth, with different backgrounds, traditions, etc. If we delved into politics, we'd probably find a lot of contested ground. Part of democracy and free society is that we need to get past those differences. If you believe that gay marriage is against your moral code, you have a right to vote your conscience. Likewise, if you campaign for LGBT rights, you have that same right, and I would make the same argument 20 years ago for people similarly mistreated for taking that stand. I'm Catholic, and contribute regularly to a church congregation. I'm also a public officer in a secular government, whose policies are often not consistent with the church. Should I be booted out of my job (or contemplate "spending more time with my family") because I provide financial support to a religious organization whose doctrine re: things like birth control or LGBT issues are out of step with many in our society? Where do you draw the line? Once you decide that it's not OK to think different, you end up on a steep slope.

crassus 13y ago

Depending on your point of view, legal abortion is either part of a fundamental right for a woman to control her own body or an unprecedented holocaust. Should you have to pick the "right" choice in order to be employed in the tech industry?

ConceptJunkie 13y ago
Eventually, you will, it seems.

baddox 13y ago

> I generally agree with you but I think the problem here is that being against gay marriage is more than just a "political view." Not necessarily. It's quite possible to support gay partners' legal right to live together, file taxes together, set up wills and visitation rights, adopt children, etc., but still oppose changing the legally-defined notion of marriage.

Borogove 13y ago
You'll forgive me if I find expanding the definition of "marriage" in state and federal law to be a more reasonable approach than having to fight separate battles for each of the 1000+ legal rights and obligations which currently accrue to married couples.
- baddox 13y ago
  No forgiveness necessary. I think that's a valid strategy.
- victorhooi 13y ago
  Do you really think that's what this is about? Sorry, but I call fake. In many countries, you have the concept of de-facto relationships - you don't even need to be married, let alone have a civil union, and you have the same rights. So it's not like the courts couldn't do it - and in many cases have. However, this entire debate is purely one of ideology and semantics. It was never about "privileges" (whether tax, medical, or whatever), but about two different people trying to define what marriage meant. For some groups, marriage has ties to family and raising children - and human society has sort of flowed along those lines for thousands of years. Another groups says times are a changing, and we need to redefine marriage to also include homosexual relationships, which while nothing to do with families (as we know them) or creating children, are still marriages.
  - Borogove 13y ago
    The idea that homosexual relationships "have nothing to do with families" is simply laughable.

DangerousPie 13y ago

I have heard people mention this distinction before, but it seems a bit arbitrary to me. You and I may agree that this is a universal right that is "not up for discussion", but we can't deny the fact that there is a sizable portion of people that would disagree with us. Many of them believe as strongly that we are wrong as we believe that they are wrong. In my eyes, this shows that there are certainly different viewpoints on the matter and makes it as political as anything else.

pessimizer 13y ago
The difference for me is that we all have to work to live. Racists, sexists, and homophobes running workplaces have a direct effect on the standard of living and the effort it takes to preserve it for groups of people who are already besieged and disadvantaged. In the US, that's why the federal government steps in and requires at least the appearance of fairness. If they hadn't, my family would still be sharecroppers.
- cek994 13y ago
  There is absolutely nothing in Eich's record which would indicate what you're saying is true. If he had actually had a "direct effect on the standard of living" of any employee, that should have been resolved through an internal review process of his actual behavior, not a public lynching of a man based on a political issue (that was, let's not forget, endorsed by a majority of California voters).
whyenot 13y ago
> In my eyes, this shows that there are certainly different viewpoints on the matter and makes it as political as anything else. We had the right to marry in California. Proposition 8 took away that right. We gained the same freedom everyone else has and then the proposition Brendan Eich supported took that right away. Of course politics are involved, but you have to understand how hurtful that turn of events was to many in the gay community.
baddox 13y ago
If you think it's "not up for discussion," I think there is a serious problem with your view. And yes, I think my previous sentence is up for discussion.

themgt 13y ago

Right. How many people would be in here saying this is a free-speech issue if he had donated money to support a law against marriages between people of different races? It is absolutely about human rights, and I applaud the community for drawing a red line on this.

defen 13y ago
People keep bringing up interracial marriage, but really it's a red herring. Interracial marriage does not involve a fundamental change to the way marriage works. Furthermore, in practice it is not enforceable, since you would have to know someone's entire ancestry to know whether they were eligible to marry another person. Anyway, to answer your question: If I found out that my CEO had donated to an anti-interracial-marriage campaign, but had never discriminated against or otherwise treated people in such relationships differently, I wouldn't particularly care.
- mnordhoff 13y ago
  "Furthermore, in practice it is not enforceable, since you would have to know someone's entire ancestry to know whether they were eligible to marry another person." Not true! Knowing someone's entire ancestry since the beginning of H. s. sapiens may be impossible, but less-rigorous standards of discrimination are practical to implement. Nazi Germany defined how Jewish someone was based on their number of Jewish grandparents. This means checking genealogical and religious records back two generations. I've heard that some positions, like the SS, required proving your ancestry back to 1750. I don't know how many people were certified, or how extensive the research was -- could someone walk into an office with a few badly-copied baptismal records and get their "I can marry a German" card stamped? did it require checking government databases? -- but it must have been a large number. The existence of terms such as quadroon and even octoroon show that people of centuries past seriously considered and even legalized notions of how 'black' people were, but I have no idea how well-implemented they were in practice. (I imagine there was a lot more "yeah, you look white enough" and a lot less "please come back tomorrow after I've telegraphed the Census office".) My brain kind of needs a shower now. Edit: My knowledge of these subjects is limited to about 90 minutes of reading Wikipedia, by the way. I was vague enough that I don't think anything I stated is actually wrong. Incidentally, apparently Nazi Germany had a scandalous number of women who suddenly admitted under oath that their children were the product of an extramarital affair with a conveniently non-Jewish and dead family friend. How well this worked may have depended on how well-connected you were. The senior Luftwaffe officer Erhard Milch is a prominent example. Edit again: If your point was "in practice it is not enforceable", mine was that it was enforceable enough that a lot of people put a lot of effort into trying, even if they didn't pull it off perfectly.

DatBear 13y ago

I keep hearing people saying that gay marriage is more than just a political view, but so is every other political view. Don't support welfare? You're against poor people. Support welfare? You're against the working man. You're pro-choice? You're against babies. You're pro-life? You're against women. Pretty much every political stance can be viewed in the same fashion as people are viewing Eich's. The thing is, Eich has been at the company for 15 years; if he wanted to discriminate against gay people in the workplace, it could have been done already - he's a co-founder, don't you think he had some input towards the policies in place? And if it has been done already, I haven't heard of it, but I would fully support trying to get him to step down. The thing is, it probably hasn't been done, which would mean he has done nothing wrong in my opinion.

Xcelerate 13y ago
Well put. The problem is that on almost every issue, people think their own personal view is "above" the issue somehow (see dopamean's comment at the top of this page for an example). Atheists claim they shouldn't even have to debate religious people because it's so "obvious". Pro-choice people claim they shouldn't even have to debate pro-life people because women's rights are "so obvious". Same thing with gay marriage. This is simply a horrible and almost completely ineffective way to argue your point. You can't pull the "so obvious" cop-out on any issue that has a clearly decisive split within a country.
camus2 13y ago
Don't support welfare? You're against poor people. Support welfare? You're against the working man. You're pro-choice? You're against babies. You're pro-life? You're against women your black or white stance is a logical fallacy.
- Amillennialist 13y ago
  (How funny.) He's pointing out the fallacies of the usurpers who make such "arguments." Thanks for making his point.
- DatBear 13y ago

pcvarmint 13y ago

The problem is that the state has granted privileges to married people. If the state treated everyone equally without regard to marital status, then gays and straights could marry privately and it wouldn't become an issue. It's an issue because married gays want the same marriage privileges as straight couples. We need to separate marriage and state. Except for enforcing contracts that the married parties sign themselves, the state should not get involved and grant special privileges to those who are married, such as tax deductions. I'm for consensual gay marriage. I'm against state-approved or state-disapproved marriage, whether it bans consensual relationships or rewards or punishes marriage with privileges. Even consensual polygamy should be none of the state's business.

serge2k 13y ago
Shared health benefits? Child custody rights? etc...
cookiecaper 13y ago
I am against gay marriage and in favor of polygyny. I do not believe that we should get the state out of marriage. Marriage is nothing without effective legal protections and backing. Your position is the literal fulfillment of all those people who said that gay marriage would destroy real marriage. That is precisely what you are claiming should happen -- marriage should stop being a real thing, and if you feel like saying you're married, then go ahead and do it. I just wanted to point this out since many people say it's ridiculous that gay marriage would destroy straight marriage. You are explicitly endorsing said destruction.
- adamwong246 13y ago
  The notion that the state should lord over the private consenting adults is bizarre and unsettling. One would think that, as a proponent of polygyny, you would realize just how unfair your position is. Personally, I can't imagine anything scarier than the government controlling love, sex and reproduction. As a fellow citizen, I have no objections to your romantic choices or with whom you can form a legal contract. Why do you persist in objecting to mine? I support your rights because they are my rights as well. If your camp could reciprocate, maybe we can legalize polygamy, not just polygyny, so that we might all live in a maximum of happiness and freedom.

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gcb0 13y ago

If you like to extrapolate... Paying more taxes and a larger government is more apt to distribute wellfare properly. Most child deaths are in poor families. So voting for less taxes and a smaller gov is directly killing babies.

ebfe 13y ago

Low taxes?! You want to cut funding for the social programs that are the only thing giving LGBT folks a shot at surviving in this oppressive, heteronormative world?!? That's not a political belief, that's saying that people should starve in the streets simply because of who they love. Any CEO who supports lower taxes is clearly hateful, and needs to resign.

hippoman 13y ago

Except if who they love is a child, or a relative, or an animal, or not their spouse, or a member of another race, or an abused wife, or ... I'm 90% agreeing with you, but most people who claim to agree with you are actually only including a very narrow set of people and still want to treat other groups worse just because of who they love. It should really be based on whether they do harm to others or not. Anything else is simply prejudice.

mercurial 13y ago

Look at it this way. If at the time of the invasion of Iraq, people suddenly noticed Eich had donated to an anti-war cause, or maybe mentioned in private that he thought 9/11 was a consequence of US foreign policy, how many red-blooded, freedom-fries eating Americans would have asked for his head because he held an unpopular opinion?

timtas 13y ago
You seem to intend this as a rhetorical question, but I think it's an excellent literal question. Did this happen? Perhaps you will cite some cases.
- mercurial 13y ago
  I'm not aware of any case, but it's possible. You may have examples during the Vietnam war or the Red Scare. The basic issue is the same, though: is it OK to let the Vox Populi evict a CEO for holding currently unpopular views?

dredmorbius 13y ago

Being for low taxes is a political view. Being for smaller government is a political view. This is marching well out into controversial territory, but I don't see any clean division between "political" and "ethical" grounds. If you look at the founder of modern economic thought (called for a time "political economy", BTW), his other book is The Theory of Moral Sentiments, an explicitly moral work. Much of Wealth of Nations concerns "ought" rather more than "is" (though Smith focuses on both). As von Clausewitz observed that war is the continuation of politics by other means, politics is the continuation of war by other means. More recently you'll find voices such as John Perkins (Confessions of an Economic Hit Man) and Smedly Butler (of Business Plot[1] fame) who'd come to realize that as a marine general he was "a racketeer for capitalism": In 1935, Butler wrote a book titled War Is a Racket, where he described and criticized the workings of the United States in its foreign actions and wars, such as those he was a part of, including the American corporations and other imperialist motivations behind them. After retiring from service, he became a popular activist, speaking at meetings organized by veterans, pacifists and church groups in the 1930s. (Wikipedia [2]) Given that taxation and government decisions have social implications, and those, based on the distribution of resources implied, have moral elements, all of the areas you posit are in fact value-laden questions: what is fair, what is appropriate, how should power be allocated, how should wealth be allocated? The same holds true for technology as well Michael and Joyce Huesemann[3] argue, among other things, that all technologies have implicit value-laden judgements, and that adoption of those technologies includes adopting the values of those technologies. They might be of cars (personal transportation autonomy, pedestrian minimalization, land-use planning, air pollution), television (individual isolation, advertising, mass media), or web browsers (cheap information dissemination, subversion of censorship, voicing of dissident or minority views, cats, free access to pornography, pop-up ads). Moral and other viewpoints aren't so easily divorced. ________________________________ Notes: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler 3. http://redd.it/21pc8c http://redd.it/21pc8c https://archive.org/details/scm-33066-michaelhuesemanntechno-fixwhyt https://archive.org/details/scm-33066-michaelhuesemanntechno... http://newtechnologyandsociety.org/ http://newtechnologyandsociety.org/

acjohnson55 13y ago