Still can't believe Brendan Eich was hounded out of Mozilla.
Mozilla presumably has or would have gay employees. Meanwhile here is a guy running the company supporting a cause to limit a specific group of employee's rights to marry.
That's no small thing, it's not some generic labor dispute, it's a very specific action that is specifically targeting a group of employees legal rights regarding marriage.
I think there is a legit leadership problem there.
Specifically, he donated $1000 to Prop 8. If you're going by that standard....literally the majority of California is ideologically unfit to lead.
I do think a lot of people are in fact unqualified to lead.... being CEO is a very different job.
"Hey what if I financially supported a cause that would restrict the marriage rights of some of my employees, but not others?"
What do you think they'd say about his leadership there?
> If you think it is legitimate to have a promotion ceiling for donators to a particular political side, why not voters
I feel like the other post you're over generalizing to the point of irrelevance.
Donating and voting are the same, in that both are actions of people harboring views that are (supposedly) at odds with effective and fair leadership. Of course, donations make the inability known, whereas by only voting, the inability is real but unknown. I can't say for sure which people voted for Prop 8, but can say that most people are ideologically unqualified.
> I do think a lot of people are in fact unqualified to lead
Naturally only a small percentage of the population are qualified across the board to be CEO of Mozilla.
But that's not what's interesting. What's interesting is that most Californians have political views outside of the realm of acceptability for CEO circa 2014.
I've also never thought that the ballot box would one of the majority-disqualifying criteria.
But I've learned.
I'm not against gun control, but the argument here isn't a slippery slope one. This is very close to believing or not in gay rights.
I think the idea that even legally we look at things differently when they're targeting a specific group is pretty well established and the difference in your example lies there.
I doubt that is the standard you mean to propose.
If someone say, ardently supported removing virtually all rights to free speech, in your mind does that fit into Prop 8 unacceptability or gun control acceptability?
> If it was gun control specifically targeting people based on race, sexuality, etc then yes.
I think the "specifically targeting" aspect is an odd choice of standard.
You're saying if a CEO advocated for restricting gun rights for everyone, that would be acceptable.
If a CEO advocated for restricting free speech for everyone...would that too be acceptable?
The Constitution does not grant rights. It protects natural rights inherent to man.
The Constitution also limits the govt... not the people.
(Gun control isn't quite analogous here for a few reasons, one major one being that employers care a lot about who you marry, for insurance and family-leave reasons, and employers tend to care little about what guns you own. But if you can construct some situation where, I dunno, you interrogate employees about their guns or they want to open-carry at work, it's a little closer.)
Remember that nobody cared about Eich's views when he was CTO. He could have remained CTO for years, and the question of his suitability as chief executive wouldn't have arisen.
Employers don't care who you marry; they care if you marry. Although, those matters are related.
Similarly, employers doesn't care if you or others own a gun; they care if you are alive and healthy. And those matters are related. [Insert debate here about the direction of that relationship.]
Sure. And if you are married to someone of the same gender, you reach the situation where the question of if you are married has different answers to different people.
Or more precisely, your employer doesn't care if you are married, either; many states had processes for extending insurance benefits to either registered domestic partners or unregistered people that you just state an intention to live with long-term in a marriage-like way. Your employer cares that the social good promoted by insuring a family and not just the individual employee is a) actually being used when appropriate and b) not being used contrary to their wishes when not. If the employee's and employer's idea of social good and social ill are at odds, the employee should think twice about whether this employer is a good long-term (or even short-term) place for them.
The fact that this question arises with a significant number of Mozilla employees made Mozilla and Eich a poor match.
No one has a different answer to this question.
This isn't baptism. If one group could have one answer and another group could have a different answer, there would have no need for Prop 8, et al. The conflict arose because there is only one answer to which people have entered into a state-administered legal contract.
(I can't tell, are you disagreeing with my point or just picking at the words I'm using to make it?)
FYI, the validity of existing marriages was never really on the table.
> I can't tell, are you disagreeing with my point
I'm disagreeing with "gun control isn't quite analogous here for a few reasons".
What if a leader opposed gun rights, thus removing employees' ability to protect themselves? Or what if a leader supported gun rights, thus making employees' communities more violent?
What if a leader opposed abortion rights, thus imposing an inappropriate level of control on women and their bodies? What if a leader supported abortion rights, thus showing a fundamental disregard for human life?
What if a leader supported minimum wage, thus showing a poor grasp of economics? What if a leader opposed minimum wage, thus hurting his employees financially?
What if a leader wanted increased defense spending, thus recklessly endangering the well-being of the world? What if a leader wanted decreased defense spending, thus recklessly endangering the well-being of the world?
What if a leader has Communist sympathies?
Or let's bring it back to marriage: What if a leader supported rights to polygamist marriage? What if a leader opposed rights to polygamist marriage?
The usual response to this is "Well, OBVIOUSLY X is the right thing." Despite the fact that the country at large does not have anything resembling consensus on these issues. (Just as the supposed "obvious" answer to Prop 8 was evidently very non-obvious to most Californians in 2008.)
Statistically speaking, it is very likely that a CEO's political views are at odds with half of his employees.
I don't think it's noteworthy that a CEO doesn't vote the same way as some employees; I think it's notable that a CEO was fired for it. How many companies have done that?
> billions of people who are ill-suited to be CEO of Mozilla.
Specifically (and this is really important -- you can't leave this out) because of their political affiliation.
If you're a CEO you're naturally raising leadership questions if you're donating money targeting the marriage rights of some employees.
Eich did not donate to Prop 8 because he hated his gay employees or whatever. He donated because of his beliefs on marriage. Marriage holds a important place in our society, and for good reason---we're animals that reproduce and live in families, not atomized immortal legal entities. If you believe there is something special about the relationship between a man and a woman specifically---and this doesn't seem like a very outlandish idea---then marking that relationship out, giving it a unique name, seems appropriate. It was not about "limiting the marriage rights of his employees" so much as giving a definition of what the term "marriage rights" even means.
This conversation requires a lot of trust and empathy on both sides and is very likely to go wrong, which is why Eich didn't go rubbing his employees' noses in it. Once someone views something as their right, it becomes a very sensitive thing to suggest that, uh, maybe it's not. And remember that this isn't about "You can't tell me who to love" (could anyone stop you?) but "you can't deny X legal status to my relationship."
Yeesh. I still don't want to touch this with a ten-foot pole.
Beliefs about homosexual marriage, adoption, marriage of minors, shared property, divorces/annulments, parental rights, polygamist marriage, etc.