The thing with society, culture, and communities is that things are always a matter of perception. Sometimes that perception can become distorted. For example

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.