8 ms·

We haven't failed him. While the old "may not agree with what you say but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" trope gets used here, it doesn't mean y

We haven't failed him. While the old "may not agree with what you say but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" trope gets used here, it doesn't mean you need to protect people from the consequences of their speech. Brendan Eich can donate to whatever causes he wishes, and rightfully so, but there is rightly no protection from the public opinion based consequences arising from those donations. Equally, justifications such as "meritocracy" imply that being a CEO is a very narrow thing - it isn't, it's a position of authority and leadership, and if you can't (near universally) inspire confidence in the people you're intended to lead, that is a problem with your ability to function as CEO.

matthewmacleod 13y ago
Thank you for stating this in a polite and straightforward manner – that is also my take on this issue. I struggle with the opposition to this move when the reaction against Eich's position is de facto evidence that he would not have been able to perform in the role.
- ralfd 13y ago
  But the (feared) reaction against gays in the military was taken as argument for denying them entry. It is a bit of a circular argument.
sspiff 13y ago
I agree that people shouldn't be protected from the consequences of what they say or do, and I don't agree with Eich's point of view. However, I feel like the reaction to his becoming CEO and trying to get him to step down were unjustified. I believe that someone shouldn't be judged on his political or religious affiliation when being considered for a new job or a new role. I have political convictions which are perpendicular to some of my colleagues ideas, and guess what, we get along just fine at work. I fail to see how his opinion on same-sex marriage (or his sponsorship of conservative politicians in general) would be a problem for guiding Mozilla forward. As long as he doesn't use Mozilla as a tool for his personal agenda.
- oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
  Some opinions are very difficult to separate from behaviour. When you hold the view that someone is less entitled because of their sexual orientation, it is probably difficult to prevent that from affecting your relationships with some members of your workforce, however well-intentioned you may be, however hard you might strive. What about if Eich had donated money to an organisation trying to stop black people getting married? Would you still think him entitled to be the CEO of a commercial organisation, without dissent?
  - sspiff 13y ago
    I feel like your comparison of sexual orientation to ethnicity is a bit of a stretch. Marriage is something a lot of people have strong and (from my point of view) old-fashioned opinions on. The fact that he feel marriage is a bond between two members of a different gender does not necessarily mean he's going to actively discriminate members of the LGBT community in a professional environment. It's of course possible that he might, but several things make me feel like he should have been given a chance to prove himself: * He made a public statement clarifying his personal beliefs would not affect his work at Mozilla. * He is being accused of discriminating at Mozilla, while as far as we know, no such thing has happened (yet). * Given the amount of backlash he has suffered because of his 6 year old contribution to some campaign, I'm sure he's smart enough to handle matters in which he might be strongly biased by delegating them to someone else. I was outraged when his contribution came to light a few years ago, but I honestly feel like he's getting too harsh a treatment for what he did.
    - oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
      "I feel like your comparison of sexual orientation to ethnicity is a bit of a stretch." Why?
      - coldtea 13y ago
        Because, as he wrote just after that: "Marriage is something a lot of people have strong and (from my point of view) old-fashioned opinions on. The fact that he feel marriage is a bond between two members of a different gender does not necessarily mean he's going to actively discriminate members of the LGBT community in a professional environment."
fabman 13y ago
Well said, every time I heard someone use that excuse it comes to my mind what would it be if he put money on an association like the kkk?. Those people would say too "I'm sorry to judge you for being a fucking racist"?. Because right now they're saying "I'm sorry to judge you because you're a fucking homophobic".
- speeder 13y ago
  I am seeing this.being.thrown.aromasso much, not.only in US but here in Brazil.too,.that when someone try to.insult me.calling me homophobic, I will reply: "yes, with pride" Seriously, homophobia was supposed to mean "strong fear or.aversion to homosexuals" not "opinion that homosexuals dislike"
  - LukeB_UK 13y ago
    Correction, it's an irrational fear of homosexuals. You have absolutely no reason to fear them.
    - kjjw 13y ago
      Often an irrational fear leading to anger and hatred. Or is it the other way around?
    - popeshoe 13y ago
      and if you do, you might be interested to know there's experimental evidence of a correlation between homophobia in men and physical arousal to male homosexual stimuli. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8772014 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8772014
      - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
        And what? The implication is that you'd like to throw your lot in with the "those who don't consider homosexuality to be right are really closet homosexuals" deception. If such papers bear out (I've seen one such study but didn't read this one) then are we supposed to say "we should just follow our basic sexual stimuli to determine our ethics". Riding the bus often gives me an erection, I must be bus-sexual; my right to marry a bus must be enshrined in law ...
rjzzleep 13y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism i'm sure if he was anti-gay, all those gays working for him for 6 years as a cto would have noticed a little earlier, everyone was surprised when they heard about this in 2012. and it didn't stop people from using mozilla products then. if you don't think that the cto of a large tech research company has at least a little say in who gets hired, you need a reality check. let's not kid ourselves. someone wanted him out of the way, and we all played our role. congratulations for being the toys at hand of the powers that be. i'm really curious who the next cto/ceo of mozilla is going to be. IN FACT I'm worried on who it might be. here's a crosspost from recode: > I am in full support of gay marriage, I'm against prop 8. But I'm also utterly opposed to railroading people out of work because of personal opinions they hold. > Today the bullies won. Today tyranny gained a toehold. The next time some religious group throws out an employee or leader because he donated money to planned parenthood or gay rights group, remember this day for you laid the foundation.
- nodata 13y ago
  Crap. If he wanted to stay in that position he would have made the standard "Mistakes were made.. I've changed/learnt/grown.. " speech. He didn't, which didn't inspire confidence, so he was unfit to lead.
  - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
    Why does lying inspire confidence in you? You don't appear to account for that he can hold a view that opposes same-sex marriage and also want to continue doing his job. Why is that not allowed in USA?
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - kjjw 13y ago
      He didn't just hold a view. He actively attempted to detract happiness from the lives of others.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
coldtea 13y ago
>We haven't failed him. While the old "may not agree with what you say but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" trope gets used here, it doesn't mean you need to protect people from the consequences of their speech. Actually it means exactly that. The way you put it ("supporting your right to say it doesn't mean you shouldn't suffer the consequences of your speech") is totally absurd. "Your right to say it", means exactly the right to say it and NOT suffer consequences. If we accept "suffering consequences" as orthogonal to "having a right to say it", then we come to the absurd conclusion that even people in the most opressive regime, or those threatened by the Inquisition had "free speech". They said it, and then, they suffered the consequences (from getting fired to getting set on fire, depending on the period). Free speech means anybody can say anything, and people supporting his right to say anything, without any personal consequences (other than others potentially disagreeing with him and answering back to what he said). Anything else is not free speech.
- kjjw 13y ago
  Your thinking here is awkward, confused, conflated and simplistic.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    Thanks, I prefer it that way. At least I give specific arguments about it, not just throw some words like "awkward" and "confused" against a point of view I don't like.
- famblycat 13y ago
  >"Your right to say it", means exactly the right to say it and NOT suffer consequences. It depends what consequences we're talking about here. There's a difference between the consequence of being thrown in jail for something you said and people thinking less/differently of you because of something you said. I suspect OP was referring to the latter.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    Yes, but what happened is the former: there were specific requests for his losing his job, and in the end he had to resign for them. So, not just people "thinking less of him", but concrete consequences to his income (and hireability). Basically, for a person with fewer means and, say, a mortage, it would be equivalent of having him go homeless for what he said...
danielweber 13y ago
Legally, you are fully right that "free speech" doesn't mean you are free of social consequences of speech. Socially, while I disagree with Eich's political views, I really worry about starting a tit-for-tat here that leaves no one the winner. You might think your views are socially dominant. And in your time and place, maybe you are even right about it. But this will not always be the case. Back in the 60's my dad risked his job to go march with Martin Luther King when MLK was in Detroit. His boss didn't like MLK and would have canned my dad if he found out. If my dad had been fired, I really hope you wouldn't be so blase as to say "well, he's just reaping the consequences of his speech."
- saalweachter 13y ago
  I think it is possible to hold both views (it is acceptable to force Eich out; it was immoral to fire workers for being part of the civil rights movement, blacklist workers for being communists). And you don't even have to appeal to the "my side is always morally right" non-argument. I think the critical distinction is workers versus management. If an engineer were fired from his job for a donation he made to any organization -- the ACLU, the KKK, the Communist Party, Prop 8 -- then yes, we would have a problem. Low power individuals, they need to be protected. High power individuals, we need to be protected from them.
  - danielweber 13y ago
    I can see that distinction, although I'm not sure I buy it right now. I'll have to think about it for a while. Thanks.
Ygg2 13y ago
It still feels, like a character assassination. Lots of great men were fucking weird... Hell most of us are really fucking weird. Gratefully most people today don't emphasize. Mozzart had a fetish for shit, which he extensively exchanged with his cousin. Imagine someone squatting a big chunky shit on your shit each time you hear his music. Einstein was for lack of better world a whore. He had sex with bunch of his cousin from his maternal and paternal side. He slept with his cousin, her sister and early slept with cousin Elsa's daughter. Tesla had a fetish for pigeons, thought he could talk with aliens and was afraid of germs more than anything else. And he had OCD to top it all off.
- swampangel 13y ago
  Lots of us are really weird, but only a few of us are in charge of mid-to-large organizations. And of the examples that you gave, I don't think any of them worked to have their brand of weirdness enforced over other people as law. Eich claimed to support LGBT equality at Mozilla, but when given the opportunity, he refused to say anything like "I regret supporting a law that had negative consequences for our employees" or even "I would abstain from supporting a similar law in the future". This silence suggests he may advocate for equality at one level and against it at a higher level, which is hard to reconcile.
  - Ygg2 13y ago
    > I don't think any of them worked to have their brand of weirdness enforced over other people as law. Wait what about Jobs? Didn't he managed to spread his paranoia, attitude and general weirdness over Apple? And globaly? I mean being a bully CEO was pretty much his trademark. Eich's departure is a great blow for Mozilla. The whole thing reeks of character assassination.
marrs 13y ago
Very true, but I've not heard any news that he didn't have the support of his employees, or that he wasn't inspiring confidence in them. His position was made untenable by the actions of people outside of his charge. I would think that your point applies if Mozilla had discounted Eich for the role in the first place, but it appears that his views only became an issue for them after they started receiving negative attention. In any case, Mozilla have demonstrated quite clearly that they are not the champions of equal rights, free speech, or diversity that they claim to be. I wonder if this will be a problem for them in the long run. I think a lot of people still use their product over Chrome et al because of support for these views.
- zimpenfish 13y ago
  http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/28/after-supporting-prop-8-brendan-eich-comes-under-fire-from-mozilla-employees-upon-ceo-appointment/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/28/after-supporting-prop-8-bre...
gyardley 13y ago
Absolutely - you don't need to protect people from the consequences of their speech. So why are there no consequences for the sort of person who's not professional enough to keep a person's activities outside work separate from their work itself? Most hiring managers wouldn't hire a bully. Why do they continue to hire people who have a history of disruptive behavior, calling for the firing of others over things that happen outside of their workplace? The Eich situation will repeat itself again and again and again (and at lower levels, and perhaps next time over an unfashionable political opinion that you just happened to hold a year longer than the President of the United States) unless there's real consequences for being an unpleasant, uncivil busybody who goes around demanding people get sacked for their behavior outside of work. If we're really so incensed by the way Brendan Eich was treated, and we're not just being mouthy on the Internet, I ask you all - where are these consequences?

matthewmacleod 13y ago

Thank you for stating this in a polite and straightforward manner – that is also my take on this issue. I struggle with the opposition to this move when the reaction against Eich's position is de facto evidence that he would not have been able to perform in the role.

ralfd 13y ago
But the (feared) reaction against gays in the military was taken as argument for denying them entry. It is a bit of a circular argument.

sspiff 13y ago

I agree that people shouldn't be protected from the consequences of what they say or do, and I don't agree with Eich's point of view. However, I feel like the reaction to his becoming CEO and trying to get him to step down were unjustified. I believe that someone shouldn't be judged on his political or religious affiliation when being considered for a new job or a new role. I have political convictions which are perpendicular to some of my colleagues ideas, and guess what, we get along just fine at work. I fail to see how his opinion on same-sex marriage (or his sponsorship of conservative politicians in general) would be a problem for guiding Mozilla forward. As long as he doesn't use Mozilla as a tool for his personal agenda.

oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
Some opinions are very difficult to separate from behaviour. When you hold the view that someone is less entitled because of their sexual orientation, it is probably difficult to prevent that from affecting your relationships with some members of your workforce, however well-intentioned you may be, however hard you might strive. What about if Eich had donated money to an organisation trying to stop black people getting married? Would you still think him entitled to be the CEO of a commercial organisation, without dissent?
- sspiff 13y ago
  I feel like your comparison of sexual orientation to ethnicity is a bit of a stretch. Marriage is something a lot of people have strong and (from my point of view) old-fashioned opinions on. The fact that he feel marriage is a bond between two members of a different gender does not necessarily mean he's going to actively discriminate members of the LGBT community in a professional environment. It's of course possible that he might, but several things make me feel like he should have been given a chance to prove himself: * He made a public statement clarifying his personal beliefs would not affect his work at Mozilla. * He is being accused of discriminating at Mozilla, while as far as we know, no such thing has happened (yet). * Given the amount of backlash he has suffered because of his 6 year old contribution to some campaign, I'm sure he's smart enough to handle matters in which he might be strongly biased by delegating them to someone else. I was outraged when his contribution came to light a few years ago, but I honestly feel like he's getting too harsh a treatment for what he did.
  - oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
    "I feel like your comparison of sexual orientation to ethnicity is a bit of a stretch." Why?
    - coldtea 13y ago
      Because, as he wrote just after that: "Marriage is something a lot of people have strong and (from my point of view) old-fashioned opinions on. The fact that he feel marriage is a bond between two members of a different gender does not necessarily mean he's going to actively discriminate members of the LGBT community in a professional environment."

fabman 13y ago

Well said, every time I heard someone use that excuse it comes to my mind what would it be if he put money on an association like the kkk?. Those people would say too "I'm sorry to judge you for being a fucking racist"?. Because right now they're saying "I'm sorry to judge you because you're a fucking homophobic".

speeder 13y ago
I am seeing this.being.thrown.aromasso much, not.only in US but here in Brazil.too,.that when someone try to.insult me.calling me homophobic, I will reply: "yes, with pride" Seriously, homophobia was supposed to mean "strong fear or.aversion to homosexuals" not "opinion that homosexuals dislike"
- LukeB_UK 13y ago
  Correction, it's an irrational fear of homosexuals. You have absolutely no reason to fear them.
  - kjjw 13y ago
    Often an irrational fear leading to anger and hatred. Or is it the other way around?
  - popeshoe 13y ago
    and if you do, you might be interested to know there's experimental evidence of a correlation between homophobia in men and physical arousal to male homosexual stimuli. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8772014 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8772014
    - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
      And what? The implication is that you'd like to throw your lot in with the "those who don't consider homosexuality to be right are really closet homosexuals" deception. If such papers bear out (I've seen one such study but didn't read this one) then are we supposed to say "we should just follow our basic sexual stimuli to determine our ethics". Riding the bus often gives me an erection, I must be bus-sexual; my right to marry a bus must be enshrined in law ...

rjzzleep 13y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism i'm sure if he was anti-gay, all those gays working for him for 6 years as a cto would have noticed a little earlier, everyone was surprised when they heard about this in 2012. and it didn't stop people from using mozilla products then. if you don't think that the cto of a large tech research company has at least a little say in who gets hired, you need a reality check. let's not kid ourselves. someone wanted him out of the way, and we all played our role. congratulations for being the toys at hand of the powers that be. i'm really curious who the next cto/ceo of mozilla is going to be. IN FACT I'm worried on who it might be. here's a crosspost from recode: > I am in full support of gay marriage, I'm against prop 8. But I'm also utterly opposed to railroading people out of work because of personal opinions they hold. > Today the bullies won. Today tyranny gained a toehold. The next time some religious group throws out an employee or leader because he donated money to planned parenthood or gay rights group, remember this day for you laid the foundation.

nodata 13y ago
Crap. If he wanted to stay in that position he would have made the standard "Mistakes were made.. I've changed/learnt/grown.. " speech. He didn't, which didn't inspire confidence, so he was unfit to lead.
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago
  Why does lying inspire confidence in you? You don't appear to account for that he can hold a view that opposes same-sex marriage and also want to continue doing his job. Why is that not allowed in USA?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - kjjw 13y ago
    He didn't just hold a view. He actively attempted to detract happiness from the lives of others.

deleted 13y ago

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deleted 13y ago
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coldtea 13y ago

>We haven't failed him. While the old "may not agree with what you say but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" trope gets used here, it doesn't mean you need to protect people from the consequences of their speech. Actually it means exactly that. The way you put it ("supporting your right to say it doesn't mean you shouldn't suffer the consequences of your speech") is totally absurd. "Your right to say it", means exactly the right to say it and NOT suffer consequences. If we accept "suffering consequences" as orthogonal to "having a right to say it", then we come to the absurd conclusion that even people in the most opressive regime, or those threatened by the Inquisition had "free speech". They said it, and then, they suffered the consequences (from getting fired to getting set on fire, depending on the period). Free speech means anybody can say anything, and people supporting his right to say anything, without any personal consequences (other than others potentially disagreeing with him and answering back to what he said). Anything else is not free speech.

kjjw 13y ago
Your thinking here is awkward, confused, conflated and simplistic.
- coldtea 13y ago
  Thanks, I prefer it that way. At least I give specific arguments about it, not just throw some words like "awkward" and "confused" against a point of view I don't like.
famblycat 13y ago
>"Your right to say it", means exactly the right to say it and NOT suffer consequences. It depends what consequences we're talking about here. There's a difference between the consequence of being thrown in jail for something you said and people thinking less/differently of you because of something you said. I suspect OP was referring to the latter.
- coldtea 13y ago
  Yes, but what happened is the former: there were specific requests for his losing his job, and in the end he had to resign for them. So, not just people "thinking less of him", but concrete consequences to his income (and hireability). Basically, for a person with fewer means and, say, a mortage, it would be equivalent of having him go homeless for what he said...

danielweber 13y ago

Legally, you are fully right that "free speech" doesn't mean you are free of social consequences of speech. Socially, while I disagree with Eich's political views, I really worry about starting a tit-for-tat here that leaves no one the winner. You might think your views are socially dominant. And in your time and place, maybe you are even right about it. But this will not always be the case. Back in the 60's my dad risked his job to go march with Martin Luther King when MLK was in Detroit. His boss didn't like MLK and would have canned my dad if he found out. If my dad had been fired, I really hope you wouldn't be so blase as to say "well, he's just reaping the consequences of his speech."

saalweachter 13y ago
I think it is possible to hold both views (it is acceptable to force Eich out; it was immoral to fire workers for being part of the civil rights movement, blacklist workers for being communists). And you don't even have to appeal to the "my side is always morally right" non-argument. I think the critical distinction is workers versus management. If an engineer were fired from his job for a donation he made to any organization -- the ACLU, the KKK, the Communist Party, Prop 8 -- then yes, we would have a problem. Low power individuals, they need to be protected. High power individuals, we need to be protected from them.
- danielweber 13y ago
  I can see that distinction, although I'm not sure I buy it right now. I'll have to think about it for a while. Thanks.

Ygg2 13y ago

It still feels, like a character assassination. Lots of great men were fucking weird... Hell most of us are really fucking weird. Gratefully most people today don't emphasize. Mozzart had a fetish for shit, which he extensively exchanged with his cousin. Imagine someone squatting a big chunky shit on your shit each time you hear his music. Einstein was for lack of better world a whore. He had sex with bunch of his cousin from his maternal and paternal side. He slept with his cousin, her sister and early slept with cousin Elsa's daughter. Tesla had a fetish for pigeons, thought he could talk with aliens and was afraid of germs more than anything else. And he had OCD to top it all off.

swampangel 13y ago
Lots of us are really weird, but only a few of us are in charge of mid-to-large organizations. And of the examples that you gave, I don't think any of them worked to have their brand of weirdness enforced over other people as law. Eich claimed to support LGBT equality at Mozilla, but when given the opportunity, he refused to say anything like "I regret supporting a law that had negative consequences for our employees" or even "I would abstain from supporting a similar law in the future". This silence suggests he may advocate for equality at one level and against it at a higher level, which is hard to reconcile.
- Ygg2 13y ago
  > I don't think any of them worked to have their brand of weirdness enforced over other people as law. Wait what about Jobs? Didn't he managed to spread his paranoia, attitude and general weirdness over Apple? And globaly? I mean being a bully CEO was pretty much his trademark. Eich's departure is a great blow for Mozilla. The whole thing reeks of character assassination.

marrs 13y ago

Very true, but I've not heard any news that he didn't have the support of his employees, or that he wasn't inspiring confidence in them. His position was made untenable by the actions of people outside of his charge. I would think that your point applies if Mozilla had discounted Eich for the role in the first place, but it appears that his views only became an issue for them after they started receiving negative attention. In any case, Mozilla have demonstrated quite clearly that they are not the champions of equal rights, free speech, or diversity that they claim to be. I wonder if this will be a problem for them in the long run. I think a lot of people still use their product over Chrome et al because of support for these views.

zimpenfish 13y ago
http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/28/after-supporting-prop-8-brendan-eich-comes-under-fire-from-mozilla-employees-upon-ceo-appointment/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/28/after-supporting-prop-8-bre...

gyardley 13y ago

Absolutely - you don't need to protect people from the consequences of their speech. So why are there no consequences for the sort of person who's not professional enough to keep a person's activities outside work separate from their work itself? Most hiring managers wouldn't hire a bully. Why do they continue to hire people who have a history of disruptive behavior, calling for the firing of others over things that happen outside of their workplace? The Eich situation will repeat itself again and again and again (and at lower levels, and perhaps next time over an unfashionable political opinion that you just happened to hold a year longer than the President of the United States) unless there's real consequences for being an unpleasant, uncivil busybody who goes around demanding people get sacked for their behavior outside of work. If we're really so incensed by the way Brendan Eich was treated, and we're not just being mouthy on the Internet, I ask you all - where are these consequences?