You continue to evade the fact that, yes, you contributed money to a campaign to remove the right of marriage and to dissolve the marriages of thousands of Californians. You contributed to a campaign that demonized gay people as a threat to children.
A green HN account, whee! Just for others looking on who don't share your animus and weak grasp of the truth:
No marriage was dissolved by Prop 8 -- _ex post facto_ law is unconstitutional. Domestic Partnership remained the option for anyone seeking the positive rights enumerated by law.
No campaign to which I donated demonized gay people as a threat to children. You perhaps heard an echo (possibly from M. Signorile) of the first version of a revised Slate piece by Mark Joseph Stern:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/04/04/brendan_eich_supported_prop_8_which_was_worse_than_you_remember.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/04/04/brendan_eich_s...
This piece had to be updated with a correction at the bottom:
"Update, April 23, 2014: This post has been updated to clarify that the organization to which Brendan Eich donated money produced only the first of these ads. The other three were produced by other organizations within the same pro-Prop 8 coalition."
Of course, many people did not read the update. Some still insist that the original was right, facts be damned.
I just watched all of those videos (including the three I did not fund), and none of them demonized gays as a threat to children. Nope -- parental rights to education of their grade-school-age children does not equal demonizing gays as threats. Let's have a stand-up argument about education rights if that's what you meant, not a cheap lie to preempt debate by painting opponents as demonizers.
Repeating easily-refuted falsehoods to defame me from green HN accounts simply isn't going to work. But a green HN account is itself continuing "to evade" a straight-up, real-name-to-real-name debate. Do better, or do something else.
What animus?
You contributed to Prop 8 when it was a campaign issue. Nothing in Prop 8 protected the thousands marriages that existed at the time of the vote. The plain language of Prop 8 would have rendered those marriages meaningless. That a court found those marriages undissolvable does not exonerate your side from trying to dissolve them.
Domestic Partnerships were not, at the time of Prop 8, identical to marriage.
I'm sorry I accused you of donating a campaign that demonized gay people. I was unaware of the clarification. You only donated to a campaign to strip fellow citizens of a legal status. Your allies did the demonizing.
Whether you saw or did not see ads demonizing gay people as a threat to children, ads like that certainly were aired.
I am hardly evading discussing this. I have no idea what you mean by "HN". My name is Bob Nelson (not terribly helpful in a nation with thousands of Bob Nelsons, but what can I say, I'm a common man).
Domestic partnerships were, per wikipedia (cited above), equivalent to conjugal marriage at state law level, which was the only level at issue. DOMA prevailed at federal level; I'm on record as against it, and it finally got overturned on good grounds.
HN is hacker news, this site. Anyway, glad to have a real name. Also thanks for acknowledging that I didn't demonize.
To be frank, until this little exchange, I thought you were unfairly treated in the storm surrounding your contribution. I thought social media was mostly to blame and that a lot of folks treated you badly, mostly for their own publicity purposes. Were it not for the effect of internet hype, you'd probably still have your job, and the gay people who worked for you would just have to suck it up.
Even after exposure to your personal beliefs and the sad little arguments you make against gay people, I still think you were mistreated and that social media is to blame, but I now also know you really are anti-gay. That wouldn't, of course, make you an anomaly in this country, especially in the ranks of CEOs (who skew conservative). It does put into perspective the support you received from some gay people at Mozilla. They had your back more than you had theirs.
I'm not anti-gay, as those Mozille people I worked with who had my back (and I had theirs as manager and leader) know.
Your insistence that being against redefining marriage makes me "anti-gay" would make a lot of self-described gay people "anti-gay". I've heard this, of course: they're "self-hating" -- a disgusting, lazy, cheap shot -- also used against folks like Phil Weiss who are Jewish and critical of Israel. You are making an ad-hominem argument.
Anathematizing may work inside your circle, but for people not fully on-side already, it blatantly dodges the unavoidable arguments about essential differences.
Usually people do it to feel good and display status to peers. If you're serious about wanting to argue (no need; we both have other things to do, I'm sure), then drop the "sad little" non-argument comments labeling me with a slur-term for which you have no evidence other than a circular argument: that I'm against redefining marriage because I'm anti-gay, and I'm anti-gay because I'm against redefining marriage.
One last thing. You wrote:
"Were it not for the effect of internet hype, you'd probably still have your job, and the gay people who worked for you would just have to suck it up."
Suck what up? That, after Prop 8 was nullified (not enforced, but let's not look closely), and now after _Obergefell_, when I am indeed among the losing dissenters, people I might have worked with longer at Mozilla would have to suck up that I in fact dissent -- and yet without my treating anyone badly?
So it's all about thought control, in the end?
Disagreeing on redefining marriage looks like a metaphysical argument.
I just think its offensive to those who want equal rights not separate rights. No one is redefining marriage. There was never a definition coded into law to begin with and for good reason.
Sure, there was a conjugal (male-female) definition coded into law, at least in California (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_22_(2000)#Statutory_framework); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_22_(200... also in many other states. The traditional definition was in some cases implicit, and we don't need to dig up the Emperor Heliogabalus (made famous in G&S's "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General" patter song) or other exceptions to try to prove the counterfactual "never defined in law [as conjugal]."
Anyway, just thinking something is offensive doesn't account for the misleading comment to which I was replying. Fine if you want to digress, but please note well that I'm not in fact defending "separate but equal." I think Conjugal Marriage is superior to, not equal to, other definitions. (Feel free to be offended by this, not by s-b-e.)
See http://discussingmarriage.org/ http://discussingmarriage.org/ if you want more on the arguments for the traditional definition.
I've learned that people have this addiction of being "good" (progressive they call it) to the point that they don't see themselves becoming assholes. They even become blind to other social issues.
There is a Harvey Dent quote about it.
"Fuck bigoted free speech, Raif Badawi and Charlie Hedbo had themselves to blame" from several well known "anti-racist", "feminist" progressives in Sweden.
As in everything else, Sweden is light years ahead in that area. Not always good to be ahead in everything, but at least people wake up to the lunacy faster. Swedish Democrats (Conservative) just became the third largest party because of "progressive" nut jobs occupying State TV and most news outlets.
The thing with society, culture, and communities is that things are always a matter of perception. Sometimes that perception can become distorted.
For example in Ferguson where I live, the perception was Mike Brown had his back turned to the police officer, had his hands in the air, and said "Don't shoot!" and was shot in the back about a dozen times, execution style. We had about a dozen eyewitnesses that claimed that happened. When the forensic evidence came into play, Mike Brown was not shot in the back, didn't have his hands in the air, was running towards the police officer and the killing shot was on top of his head so he hung his head down as he ran. Faced with this scientific evidence those eyewitnesses had to recant their testimony. But our community still has the perception that he had his back turned, hands in the air and said "Don't shoot".
They released the names of people who donated to a charity to pass Prop 8. Your name was on the list, as well as the CEO of OkCupid who put up a message when someone used Firefox on their website. http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/04/okcupid-ceo-donate-anti-gay-firefox http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/04/okcupid-ceo-donate-a...
Notice how it is described as Anti-Gay, anyone who donated to that charity was found to be Anti-Gay. That is the community perception to anyone who donated money to a charity to defeat that law. That they are an Anti-Gay bigot. None of these people are given a chance to explain their position that donated to that charity, none were given a chance to apologize, it was a public perception that they are all automatically Anti-Gay bigots.
It is the same when a politician votes down a law in congress. Maybe they voted it down to get a better law passed later on. Maybe they didn't like the wording that would allow loopholes and voted it down so the next time that wording could be changed. But politics plays the gotcha game where if anyone votes down a law, they must be against what that law represents.
Now one has to watch what they post to social networks and the public Internet. There is no expectation of privacy as donations to charities are made public, email can be hacked, websites can be hacked, phone calls are recorded. All it takes is one comment taken out of context to ruin a career.
Most of the people who campaigned to have you removed didn't even know what Firefox did. I remember watching some shows on Cable TV about it and the host didn't know what Firefox was, but they knew you were against Prop 8 so they wanted you gone. Had no idea of your history, what tech you invented, how you helped co-found Mozilla and spin it off of AOL. How Microsoft had all but put Netscape out of business, so AOL bought it out. People are not aware that Netscape had started a revolution in the Web browser history and that you put code together to make the first JavaScript language. Your critics don't know your full history so they marginalize you.
I am not sure what you are doing these days, how you earn money, but you had to resign because the public perception was against you. It is a matter of public relations, and these days the public very rarely forgives and forgets.
I believe that Brendan did not properly communicate his personal beliefs on the matter. I think people who believe in christian values are afraid of stating those views publicly because in the US there is a bad history of christian fundamentalists (ie Moral Majority) who fanatically attack people who do not ascribe to christian moral values. Despite a high percentage of people in the US who profess to be christians, the US has one of the highest divorce rates in the world. A lot of people see the christian concept of family unit as basically flawed, we live in a culture where divorce and single parents are the norm. There is also the issue of separation of church and state when dealing with family values. So I think a lot of people who are in position of authority are afraid of publicly stating their personal christian beliefs because christian values seem to be so out of touch with what is actually going on. Indeed it is not morally right nor is it lawful to force religious beliefs on someone. But we still have a right to have moral beliefs that we use to help form our decisions. In my view Brendan appeared to back down from openly stating what his personal beliefs are on the matter and to fall back on the idea that he supports anti-discrimination laws (that include discrimination on the basis of sexual preference). I think its possible to have moral convictions based on religion and vote in ways that support those convictions. This is not discrimination, there is no 'ultimate moral code' that transcends all laws or religious beliefs. In the end all laws and moral codes must come from somewhere. These laws must be fair and not tied to any religion or moral code but must be voted on democratically. Brendan backed down from explaining why he holds such beliefs. This sort of makes him a coward and someone who is afraid to speak on what he personally believes to be true because of fear he will be seen as intolerant.
I just want to clarify in my post that I dont believe in a fight or confrontation of christians vs gays or any other group of people. I dont want to give the impression that Im calling Brendan to fight a holy war. My main point is we need to maintain our freedom of speech and freedom of thought, we should be free to say what our values are. Im not accusing Brendan of being afraid and using the word coward is probably overly dramatic. But Im saying we dont appreciate our freedoms until we lose them and I dont think there was healthy or free dialog in how things played out during this controversy. More and more discrimination issues are being brought forward in Silicon Valley and we are going to have deal more and more with people who have strong moral differences to our own. Brendan Eich just happens to be thrown in the spotlight for exersizing his right to vote on something others disagree with. So like it or not this incident will have a president on how issues like this are handled in the future.
One by one:
I would argue you're not the public face of the company until you are the CEO, or a PR officer. While your primary job is involved with engineering or architecture, you have a technical role, but as CEO your role shifts to become primarily political and managerial. These roles do of course all blend together at smaller companies, but the spotlight appears certainly the moment you assume the mantle of CEO. You are right I don't know the history by heart (certainly not as well as you do) but I think there's an argument to be made that in most companies there is significantly less concern about the politics/personal beliefs of non-CEO employees than the appointed public face.
While I certainly agree the donation doesn't fit the legal definition, I'd say it falls under a very sane definition of hate speech, at least in the context under which the proposition existed at the time and the movement it represented. Prop 8 was an initiative designed as a symbolic gesture by anti-gay (read: hate) activists to codify in law the explicit removal ("re-removal", in the words of the judge who ruled on it) of rights from a marginalized group of people. Vocal support for it is hate speech. Monetary support is similar but more extreme. I don't think this characterization is far off though I will admit it is unnecessarily incendiary because of the unintended conflation with the legal term. So I will give you this; it is a speech action, and it is hateful, but I shouldn't have characterized it as hate speech.
And for many "take your rights away" exactly characterizes this initiative. Though in California domestic partnerships exist which give the same rights as a marriage, it's codifying in law that a gay relationship is 'less than' a straight relationship. Removing the actual rights associated with the partnership happens to be politically untenable in California, though it isn't in many other states and so they have done exactly this; prop 8 was a symbolic gesture to many that said "We can't take your rights away much as we'd like to, but remember there are still a whole lot of anti-gay people in California".
And since writing my original post I learned more about the history of the incident, read your blog post on inclusiveness in response to the incident which I found very passionate and compelling and changed my mind; I am still vehemently opposed to prop 8 or any measure like it and I still think it's a hateful and ugly thing to support, and that the public face of a company that supports inclusiveness has no business issuing public statements in favor of it, but I agree you were victimized by a crusade, the boycott was out of line and inappropriate, and have no problem with the appointment.
So many news stories pass us by and all we retain from them are snippets of blogspam or clickbait articles or comments on social media and we all get our own impressions of how things occurred, often times they are horribly distorted one-sided glimpses we have into the histories of actual events. I think in general people in this age, myself especially included, are too quick to condemn in situations they don't fully understand so I apologize and I appreciate all the work you've done for Mozilla, and freedom and openness on the internet.