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Comment by 75dvtwin | Hacker News Reader

> Amongst my real-life friendship groups this sort of "hate mob" type stuff just doesn't exist

You have great friendship groups. Do you remember, by any chance how this topic was handled in your discussions (I am genuinely curios)

"...

Brendan Eich is gone. The creator of JavaScript and co-founder of mozilla.org has quit as Mozilla’s CEO,

forced out by the uproar over a donation he made six years ago to a ballot measure against gay marriage.

There’s no record of Eich discriminating against gay employees—“I never saw any kind of behavior or attitude from him that was not in line with Mozilla’s values of inclusiveness,” says the company’s chairwoman,

..." [1]

[1](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/04/brendan-eich-qui... )

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We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20989962.

Honestly, I’m happy to live in a future where bankrolling the denial of other’s human rights is something that can cost you your job, even if you’re wealthy and powerful.

No one would have questioned him being forced to resign if he had financed an anti-miscegenation initiative. It’s just that hatred of LGBTQ people is still normalized to the extent that people think you should be “given a pass.”

Eich is Catholic, his faith does not believe in gay marriage. He donated to a charity that was against gay marriage on the ballots. Because of that he was forced to resign.

He donated to a charity that worked to take away my "god given" (I didn't choose to be born gay, I just was) rights. He absolutely should have been forced to resign and I'm glad he did. You're also a real asshole if you think that donating to an anti-gay charity is right.

>Honestly, I’m happy to live in a future where bankrolling the denial of other’s human rights is something that can cost you your job, even if you’re wealthy and powerful.

Sounds great when it's working for you. How about in reverse? Are you fine with CEOs firing employees that don't follow their preferred political affiliation/positions? Just to make it interesting let's say it's pro-deregulation, anti-union, anti-welfare, anti-minority rights, and pro guns.

Some people enjoy secularism even if it brings a hard edge to those who desire a religiously wholesome society.

Apparently people just got fired over at Kickstarter for wanting to going a union. Also I think you forget that the national guard have been called in and killed Union members in the Pennsylvania coal fields for unionizing. Also Reagan with his union busting. I had a boss who literally sent an email out to the entire company saying he was increasing our healthcare costs by cutting our benefits if Obama won and he did. The stuff you're taking about happens all the time.

So what you're saying is that people should loose their jobs because they say something you don't like.

Democracy is what gave homosexuals rights and it doesn't work unless everyone gets to express their opinion. Even people you think are wrong.

If workplaces functioned as democracies instead of dictatorships, I’d be more agreeable to the premise.

Never came up.

If you're after my personal opinion - I think that the whole debate about gay marriage gets muddled because there's basically this interplay between the state and religion.

So you end up in this weird place where - those who really believe in the religious aspects of marriage have to be against gay marriage because it's literally "against the rules", it doesn't compile.

But then in the real world, we have a state that confers benefits based on marriage - and even in places where civil partnerships are wholly equal in the law, you still have the weird 'status' style thing whereby they're sort of seen as being lesser.

To me it's almost completely a nomenclature thing. If we didn't have marriages or civil partnerships, and instead we asked whether two people (of arbitrary sex) should be allowed to cohabit and/or enter a contract with each other to share assets, I think it'd be way simpler.

I mean there'd still be the stalwart homophobes that just think it's capital-W Wrong or think that religiously they need to at least publically claim it as being wrong, but what I wrote up there I think is a big part of it.

> So you end up in this weird place where - those who really believe in the religious aspects of marriage have to be against gay marriage because it's literally "against the rules", it doesn't compile.

Huh? I think it's widely considered acceptable for a straight person to be against entering into a gay marriage themselves. Supporting government policy that prevents other people from doing so is a very different matter.

Marriage has, since time immemorial, always been a contractual relationship. What you described is exactly what marriage is, there's no need to come up with another word or term when a perfectly good one already exists.

In an ideal world, sure. But it's silly to pretend that a marriage is not also full of religious meaning and significance to many.

"since time immemorial"

irrelevant. not all contracts are sanctioned or defined by the state. the problem is that christians see the state as sanctioning their religious institution, and now, perverting it. the solution is to have the state get out of the business of sanctioning it.

>the solution is to have the state get out of the business of sanctioning it.

Legality is tied to morality and morality is tied to religion (in those who believe in religion). You cannot separate them out in a society with high regard for religion. Even if you remove religion you still have the cultural views on morality which become tied to the state's laws.

Legality has nothing to do with morality. What morality is there in saying that you cannot pass a vehicle in a tight lane? None. It's a safety concern. Morals only concern religion. Ethics concern right or wrong. Law concerns a group of defined social agreements between people within a defined region. While the basis of some of our laws has a history of Christian influence, our laws in and of themselves do not require morality. An atheist is no more likely to go on a murderous rampage than a Christian, ethically it would be wrong. That kind of timing is built into humanity as a whole because it's required for civilization and predates religion. You see it in animal species as well. Heck a dog sees the benefit in not murdering their master.

> What morality is there in saying that you cannot pass a vehicle in a tight lane?"

Any system of morality in which it's morally wrong to endanger the lives of other motorists is a system of morality in which a justification for traffic laws can be constructed.

(Also, I find your juxtaposition of atheism and morality very alien. I say that as an atheist with strong opinions on what is or is not moral.)

>Morals only concern religion.

Morality is much broader than religion. A non-religious culture would have a moral guideline based on it's view on what is wrong and right. Likewise a non-religious philosophies have systems of morality. Religion is one driver of a societies morality although there's some chicken and egg questions in there (ie: is religion merely parroting a cultures pre-existing moral views). Laws, as I see it, are mostly attempts to codify a societies morality so that it can be enforced centrally and systematically instead of piece meal and locally.

Yes, true. Still...

The weird thing for me is why people feel this need for the state to legitimate the institution. If your church, and your family, recognize your union as a marriage, that's great. You've made a public pledge to the people that matter in your life.

And if your church and your family doesn't recognize my union as legitimate marriage, perhaps because my previous divorce wasn't legitimated by an authority you recognize, or because its a gay marriage, or an inter-racial one, why should I care? My marriage isn't for you, just as yours isn't for me.

But when its the state, well... then get pretty tricky very fast.

Christians say marriage is a religious institution, holy from time immemorial. My own view is that marriage has been many things in different times and places, but were I to grant Christians the point, the implication should clearly be: the separation between church and state clearly demands that the state stop sticking it nose into religion.

The way I see it, the fight for gay marriage cannot be looked at without historical context. In many countries for a long time gay relationships were illegal. Punishable by jail or worse. Gay marriage is simply a step on a long road towards legalizing gay relationships. It doesn't matter what it would be called, historically gay people would not have been allowed to participate.

> There’s no record of Eich discriminating against gay employees—“I never saw any kind of behavior or attitude from him that was not in line with Mozilla’s values of inclusiveness,” says the company’s chairwoman.

Somewhat off-topic, but is donating to groups opposing the human rights of minority groups seriously considered "in line with Mozilla’s values of inclusiveness"?

Brendan Eich gave money to a cause that would have limited the rights of his employees. He actively chose to do that. If you're willing to publicly support a position you should not be surprised if it had ramifications. It doesn't matter if no one knew about whether or not he discriminated against employees, it's an appearance of impropriety and his actions outside of work led to a destabilisation of the company inside work. Same thing has happened numerous times to numerous people across any number of issues. It used to be that association with PoC could get you blacklisted. Then there was the Red scare. This has always been happening and most likely always will.

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