5 ms·

OkCupid's CEO Donated to an Anti-Gay Campaign Once, Too

65 points by ghosh 13y ago

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
clhodapp 13y ago
Given that Americans live under a (generally) two-party system, which forces us to make a lot of "lesser of two evils" type choices, I don't think it's fair to hold anyone to all of the beliefs of political candidates that they support. Edit: Also, we may not know about all of the political actions of those candidates, rather offering support based on their stances on a the few issues we currently think are most important.
mbillie1 13y ago
It's not terribly shocking to learn that OkCupid's obvious publicity stunt against Brendan Eich was merely a publicity stunt.
proksoup 13y ago
Totally exactly the same thing. Candidate whom is anti-gay === targeted anti-gay legislation
- judk 13y ago
  Candidate was broadly anti gay. Prop 8 was a single specific marriage question. So no, not the same. Candidate was worse.
  - matthewmacleod 13y ago
    Does not follow. It's Utah, so his opponent could have been much worse…
akiselev 13y ago
TLDR (from article): "OkCupid's co-founder and CEO Sam Yagan once donated to an anti-gay candidate. (Yagan is also CEO of Match.com.) Specifically, Yagan donated $500 to Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah) in 2004, reports Uncrunched. During his time as congressman from 1997 to 2009, Cannon voted for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, against a ban on sexual-orientation based job discrimination, and for prohibition of gay adoptions." So donating to a campaign for a constitutional ammendment prohibiting gay marriage is the same as donating to a politician with a broad array of other policies? Anti-republicanism aside, how is this even remotely the same thing?
- epaga 13y ago
  It's remotely the same thing because it's about him supporting politics that many sharply disagree with. It shows the hypocrisy of grabbing pitchforks and torches and pushing out a brilliant mind just because you disagree with his views on marriage which are the same as 51% of all of California. My proposal: put down the pitchforks, pick up the coffee cups and talk and reason instead of pressure and bully.
  - matthewmacleod 13y ago
    This is a weak argument. Eich's actions directly attempted to cause harm to a number of people in Mozilla and in the wider community he would have been a visible and important figure in. That's why this was different – a key requirement of Eich's position was to provide a leadership figure for the corporation and also the organisation as a whole, and it's really hard to get behind someone who's actively seeking to strip your rights or those of your friends and family. That's a large group of people to piss off and fail to apologise to.
  - akiselev 13y ago
    > It's remotely the same thing because it's about him supporting politics that many sharply disagree with. You're talking about a nation with a blanket two party system, the world's largest economy, and an extreme tendency to involve itself with global affairs. I have an extreme aversion to voting for Republicans just due to the socially conservative views, but when the democratic candidates vocally support total global surveillance there's just no other choice. Supporting a candidate does not mean you support their every vote and as in all things with life, you just have to make compromises.
    - joelrunyon 13y ago
      > Supporting a candidate does not mean you support their every vote and as in all things with life, you just have to make compromises. Funny how this works for candidates that you vote for but not for CEOS of products you use.
joelrunyon 13y ago
This outlines the absurdity of what happens when you have to take down leaders just because their entire world view doesn't outline with yours. Is it hypocritical of Yagan? Sure. Does it mean he's unqualified to do his job? Probably not. This post from Arrington's original article is on point > 5. Is it absurd to judge Yagan as a person based on a single donation, years ago, to a politician well known for waging war on gays? Yup. But that is precisely what Yagan and OkCupid did to Eich...How can a man orchestrate and support a boycott of Mozilla over Eich and yet donate to a hateful politician like Chris Cannon? How do you square that?
- Natsu 13y ago
  There are much better reasons not to use OKCupid than this silly fiasco. I'll let the post by OKCupid that they later removed explain: http://static.izs.me/why-you-should-never-pay-for-online-dating.html http://static.izs.me/why-you-should-never-pay-for-online-dat...
  - joelrunyon 13y ago
    If you think this is about just OKCupid, you're mistaken. It's about what happens when you start applying micro-judgments arbitrarily that have no discernible relation to their qualifications that that have measured impacts on their livelihoods.
    - nb4hnp 13y ago
      I will never bother myself to worry about the livelihood of someone who was at once the CEO of a large company. Judge him or don't judge him for what he did, but I think his "livelihood" will likely survive this ordeal.
joelrunyon 13y ago
Here's the original post unearthing this from Uncrunched - http://uncrunched.com/2014/04/06/the-hypocrisy-of-sam-yagan-okcupid http://uncrunched.com/2014/04/06/the-hypocrisy-of-sam-yagan-...
jamesaguilar 13y ago
Correction: he donated to an anti-gay candidate. Also, people care more about your current position than what you believed half a decade ago. Obviously OkCupid's CEO has come around on this position (if indeed he ever was anti-gay). Or he is putting on the public appearance of having come around, which for activism's purpose is sufficient. If Eich had come out in support of gay people during this fiasco (for example, saying something as simple as, "I was wrong, I'm sorry, if I had it to do again, I would not donate to that campaign"), I'm willing to bet that the calls to remove him would have dropped in volume by a substantial margin. This isn't apples to apples, and it's not even apples to oranges. It's apples to pick up trucks.
- zorpner 13y ago
  Seriously. Eich not only failed to apologize in any meaningful manner (which I get is being spun by people as Integrity, Bro), but seemed to fail to even realize that the viewpoint he endorsed was so widely reviled by Mozilla's supporters. The public is more than willing to forgive and understand if people are willing to explain their point of view, but he wouldn't even stoop to that.
  - zaidf 13y ago
    Absolutely nothing good could come out of him trying to explain his views or his donation. It is good that he hasn't apologized out of pressure. He should only apologize if/when he actually has a change of heart on his position; not because an Internet mob holds him at gun point.
    - matthewmacleod 13y ago
      I completely agree. The fact that he hasn't had a change of heart renders him unsuitable, in my opinion.
    - zorpner 13y ago
      Whether or not you agree with it, this is the exact opposite of how an actually appropriate CEO appointee would behave.
lern_too_spel 13y ago
He donated to an anti-gay candidate, not to a campaign specifically against gays. This is akin to saying somebody an Iraq war supporter for paying US taxes. Still, Cannon sounds like a reprehensible person, and I would be interested to hear Yagan's reason for helping to re-elect him.
- epaga 13y ago
  No - the point is not "Let's hear Yagan's reason for donating" - the point is: why are we making political opinions an issue for tech CEOs? Do we really want a world where where CEOs' personal political donations (from years past!) are sifted through to find the latest faux pas so we can pressure them to answer for themselves?
  - matthewmacleod 13y ago
    Not "political opinions," but "active participation in political movements." And do you think tech is somehow exempt from this? It's hardly uncommon for CEOs to be subject to pressure because of their political views; doubly so in situations like this where they perform a significant non-commercial role. So I'm actually pretty happy that CEOs are subject to public scrutiny.
  - lern_too_spel 13y ago
    It's interesting that you use the euphemism "political opinion" for oppression. The reason this was an issue for Mozilla was not because people have strongly held views on carbon permits vs. carbon taxes but because Eich went out of his way to help take rights away from an already oppressed group. This is truly disgusting behavior that many people (not just gays) rightfully wanted to distance themselves from. The fact that Mozilla draws most of its contributors from progressive engineers put the organization on the brink of an existential crisis, which is more than Eich could overcome with any of his technical plans as CEO, no matter how well thought out those technical plans might be. He had to fix that situation by admitting he was wrong. He didn't, making him an unsuitable CEO.
- zaidf 13y ago
  US taxes are required by law. Donating to reprehensible politicians isn't.
tunesmith 13y ago
For progressive libertarians, hasn't Chris Cannon has been on the wrong side of many social issues, and on the right side of many privacy and internet issues?
- Camillo 13y ago
  Like Brendan Eich, you mean?
spikels 13y ago
"There's a sucker born every minute" You have just been pwnd by Barry Diller and Sam Yagan.
realpolitik 13y ago
The point is not whether the act of supporting an anti gay marriage ballot measure is equivalent to voting for an anti-gay candidate - it isn't. Rather, if Eich's small silent contribution to Prop 8 was such an unspeakable transgression that Yagan felt compelled to freaking mobilize a mass corporate boycott, then how in good conscience could he ever have elected a man with much more explicitly hateful views to represent him in Congress?
- fleitz 13y ago
  Actually two candidates against gay marriage, he also gave to Obama. So what we should be saying is that Yagan only supports candidates who oppose gay marriage. Seriously though, why not take a swing at eharmony's CEO? That guy makes Eich look like a bear.
  - joelrunyon 13y ago
    Because he didn't come out & have an opinion on this debate?
matthewmacleod 13y ago
This is a disingenuous headline - Yagan donated to a candidate who was anti-gay (anti everything, really!) and NOT to a specific campaign designed to strip rights from people. There's a difference here. This was obviously a PR stunt, in the sense that OKCupid would not have participated if they thought it would bring about negative reactions. But let's be realistic - at least 50% of anybody who's ever donated to a politician's campaign in the US has "donated to an anti gay campaign once", if that's the qualifier. And it's much harder to point a finger and say "you are demonstrably opposed to gay rights" when Yagan's company is making a public statement in support thereof - however hypocritical you perceive that to be.
fleitz 13y ago
The whole thing is so stupid to begin with, many of the people complaining about Eich are avid Obama supporters, someone who in 2008 was also campaigning against gay marriage, citing the exact same bigoted faith. Everyone has a great hair splitting reason for why Eich is a horrible motherfucker for donating $1000 to prop 8, while Obama and Yagan are national heros for doing something ever so slightly different.
- lern_too_spel 13y ago
  Obama didn't campaign against gay marriage. In fact, he stated his opposition to Proposition 8. http://m.sfgate.com/news/article/Obama-opposes-proposed-ban-on-gay-marriage-3278328.php http://m.sfgate.com/news/article/Obama-opposes-proposed-ban-... His opponent was a supporter of Proposition 8, making Obama clearly the lesser evil on that issue. http://www.usnews.com/news/campaign-2008/articles/2008/06/27/mccain-supports-efforts-to-ban-gay-marriage http://www.usnews.com/news/campaign-2008/articles/2008/06/27...
__alexs 13y ago
Despite the differences in what happened this is still very disappointing. I hope he handles the situation better than Eich did whatever his politics are.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
clockworkelf 13y ago
It's not "anti-gay" to be for traditional marriage. "Anti-gay" doesn't even mean anything.

65 points by ghosh 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Given that Americans live under a (generally) two-party system, which forces us to make a lot of "lesser of two evils" type choices, I don't think it's fair to hold anyone to all of the beliefs of political candidates that they support. Edit: Also, we may not know about all of the political actions of those candidates, rather offering support based on their stances on a the few issues we currently think are most important.

mbillie1 13y ago

It's not terribly shocking to learn that OkCupid's obvious publicity stunt against Brendan Eich was merely a publicity stunt.

proksoup 13y ago

Totally exactly the same thing. Candidate whom is anti-gay === targeted anti-gay legislation

judk 13y ago
Candidate was broadly anti gay. Prop 8 was a single specific marriage question. So no, not the same. Candidate was worse.
- matthewmacleod 13y ago
  Does not follow. It's Utah, so his opponent could have been much worse…

akiselev 13y ago

TLDR (from article): "OkCupid's co-founder and CEO Sam Yagan once donated to an anti-gay candidate. (Yagan is also CEO of Match.com.) Specifically, Yagan donated $500 to Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah) in 2004, reports Uncrunched. During his time as congressman from 1997 to 2009, Cannon voted for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, against a ban on sexual-orientation based job discrimination, and for prohibition of gay adoptions." So donating to a campaign for a constitutional ammendment prohibiting gay marriage is the same as donating to a politician with a broad array of other policies? Anti-republicanism aside, how is this even remotely the same thing?

epaga 13y ago
It's remotely the same thing because it's about him supporting politics that many sharply disagree with. It shows the hypocrisy of grabbing pitchforks and torches and pushing out a brilliant mind just because you disagree with his views on marriage which are the same as 51% of all of California. My proposal: put down the pitchforks, pick up the coffee cups and talk and reason instead of pressure and bully.
- matthewmacleod 13y ago
  This is a weak argument. Eich's actions directly attempted to cause harm to a number of people in Mozilla and in the wider community he would have been a visible and important figure in. That's why this was different – a key requirement of Eich's position was to provide a leadership figure for the corporation and also the organisation as a whole, and it's really hard to get behind someone who's actively seeking to strip your rights or those of your friends and family. That's a large group of people to piss off and fail to apologise to.
- akiselev 13y ago
  > It's remotely the same thing because it's about him supporting politics that many sharply disagree with. You're talking about a nation with a blanket two party system, the world's largest economy, and an extreme tendency to involve itself with global affairs. I have an extreme aversion to voting for Republicans just due to the socially conservative views, but when the democratic candidates vocally support total global surveillance there's just no other choice. Supporting a candidate does not mean you support their every vote and as in all things with life, you just have to make compromises.
  - joelrunyon 13y ago
    > Supporting a candidate does not mean you support their every vote and as in all things with life, you just have to make compromises. Funny how this works for candidates that you vote for but not for CEOS of products you use.

joelrunyon 13y ago

This outlines the absurdity of what happens when you have to take down leaders just because their entire world view doesn't outline with yours. Is it hypocritical of Yagan? Sure. Does it mean he's unqualified to do his job? Probably not. This post from Arrington's original article is on point > 5. Is it absurd to judge Yagan as a person based on a single donation, years ago, to a politician well known for waging war on gays? Yup. But that is precisely what Yagan and OkCupid did to Eich...How can a man orchestrate and support a boycott of Mozilla over Eich and yet donate to a hateful politician like Chris Cannon? How do you square that?

Natsu 13y ago
There are much better reasons not to use OKCupid than this silly fiasco. I'll let the post by OKCupid that they later removed explain: http://static.izs.me/why-you-should-never-pay-for-online-dating.html http://static.izs.me/why-you-should-never-pay-for-online-dat...
- joelrunyon 13y ago
  If you think this is about just OKCupid, you're mistaken. It's about what happens when you start applying micro-judgments arbitrarily that have no discernible relation to their qualifications that that have measured impacts on their livelihoods.
  - nb4hnp 13y ago
    I will never bother myself to worry about the livelihood of someone who was at once the CEO of a large company. Judge him or don't judge him for what he did, but I think his "livelihood" will likely survive this ordeal.

joelrunyon 13y ago

Here's the original post unearthing this from Uncrunched - http://uncrunched.com/2014/04/06/the-hypocrisy-of-sam-yagan-okcupid http://uncrunched.com/2014/04/06/the-hypocrisy-of-sam-yagan-...

jamesaguilar 13y ago

Correction: he donated to an anti-gay candidate. Also, people care more about your current position than what you believed half a decade ago. Obviously OkCupid's CEO has come around on this position (if indeed he ever was anti-gay). Or he is putting on the public appearance of having come around, which for activism's purpose is sufficient. If Eich had come out in support of gay people during this fiasco (for example, saying something as simple as, "I was wrong, I'm sorry, if I had it to do again, I would not donate to that campaign"), I'm willing to bet that the calls to remove him would have dropped in volume by a substantial margin. This isn't apples to apples, and it's not even apples to oranges. It's apples to pick up trucks.

zorpner 13y ago
Seriously. Eich not only failed to apologize in any meaningful manner (which I get is being spun by people as Integrity, Bro), but seemed to fail to even realize that the viewpoint he endorsed was so widely reviled by Mozilla's supporters. The public is more than willing to forgive and understand if people are willing to explain their point of view, but he wouldn't even stoop to that.
- zaidf 13y ago
  Absolutely nothing good could come out of him trying to explain his views or his donation. It is good that he hasn't apologized out of pressure. He should only apologize if/when he actually has a change of heart on his position; not because an Internet mob holds him at gun point.
  - matthewmacleod 13y ago
    I completely agree. The fact that he hasn't had a change of heart renders him unsuitable, in my opinion.
  - zorpner 13y ago
    Whether or not you agree with it, this is the exact opposite of how an actually appropriate CEO appointee would behave.

lern_too_spel 13y ago

He donated to an anti-gay candidate, not to a campaign specifically against gays. This is akin to saying somebody an Iraq war supporter for paying US taxes. Still, Cannon sounds like a reprehensible person, and I would be interested to hear Yagan's reason for helping to re-elect him.

epaga 13y ago
No - the point is not "Let's hear Yagan's reason for donating" - the point is: why are we making political opinions an issue for tech CEOs? Do we really want a world where where CEOs' personal political donations (from years past!) are sifted through to find the latest faux pas so we can pressure them to answer for themselves?
- matthewmacleod 13y ago
  Not "political opinions," but "active participation in political movements." And do you think tech is somehow exempt from this? It's hardly uncommon for CEOs to be subject to pressure because of their political views; doubly so in situations like this where they perform a significant non-commercial role. So I'm actually pretty happy that CEOs are subject to public scrutiny.
- lern_too_spel 13y ago
  It's interesting that you use the euphemism "political opinion" for oppression. The reason this was an issue for Mozilla was not because people have strongly held views on carbon permits vs. carbon taxes but because Eich went out of his way to help take rights away from an already oppressed group. This is truly disgusting behavior that many people (not just gays) rightfully wanted to distance themselves from. The fact that Mozilla draws most of its contributors from progressive engineers put the organization on the brink of an existential crisis, which is more than Eich could overcome with any of his technical plans as CEO, no matter how well thought out those technical plans might be. He had to fix that situation by admitting he was wrong. He didn't, making him an unsuitable CEO.
zaidf 13y ago
US taxes are required by law. Donating to reprehensible politicians isn't.

tunesmith 13y ago

For progressive libertarians, hasn't Chris Cannon has been on the wrong side of many social issues, and on the right side of many privacy and internet issues?

Camillo 13y ago
Like Brendan Eich, you mean?

spikels 13y ago

"There's a sucker born every minute" You have just been pwnd by Barry Diller and Sam Yagan.

realpolitik 13y ago

The point is not whether the act of supporting an anti gay marriage ballot measure is equivalent to voting for an anti-gay candidate - it isn't. Rather, if Eich's small silent contribution to Prop 8 was such an unspeakable transgression that Yagan felt compelled to freaking mobilize a mass corporate boycott, then how in good conscience could he ever have elected a man with much more explicitly hateful views to represent him in Congress?

fleitz 13y ago
Actually two candidates against gay marriage, he also gave to Obama. So what we should be saying is that Yagan only supports candidates who oppose gay marriage. Seriously though, why not take a swing at eharmony's CEO? That guy makes Eich look like a bear.
- joelrunyon 13y ago
  Because he didn't come out & have an opinion on this debate?

matthewmacleod 13y ago

This is a disingenuous headline - Yagan donated to a candidate who was anti-gay (anti everything, really!) and NOT to a specific campaign designed to strip rights from people. There's a difference here. This was obviously a PR stunt, in the sense that OKCupid would not have participated if they thought it would bring about negative reactions. But let's be realistic - at least 50% of anybody who's ever donated to a politician's campaign in the US has "donated to an anti gay campaign once", if that's the qualifier. And it's much harder to point a finger and say "you are demonstrably opposed to gay rights" when Yagan's company is making a public statement in support thereof - however hypocritical you perceive that to be.

fleitz 13y ago

The whole thing is so stupid to begin with, many of the people complaining about Eich are avid Obama supporters, someone who in 2008 was also campaigning against gay marriage, citing the exact same bigoted faith. Everyone has a great hair splitting reason for why Eich is a horrible motherfucker for donating $1000 to prop 8, while Obama and Yagan are national heros for doing something ever so slightly different.

lern_too_spel 13y ago
Obama didn't campaign against gay marriage. In fact, he stated his opposition to Proposition 8. http://m.sfgate.com/news/article/Obama-opposes-proposed-ban-on-gay-marriage-3278328.php http://m.sfgate.com/news/article/Obama-opposes-proposed-ban-... His opponent was a supporter of Proposition 8, making Obama clearly the lesser evil on that issue. http://www.usnews.com/news/campaign-2008/articles/2008/06/27/mccain-supports-efforts-to-ban-gay-marriage http://www.usnews.com/news/campaign-2008/articles/2008/06/27...

__alexs 13y ago

Despite the differences in what happened this is still very disappointing. I hope he handles the situation better than Eich did whatever his politics are.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

clockworkelf 13y ago

It's not "anti-gay" to be for traditional marriage. "Anti-gay" doesn't even mean anything.