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Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

How could he support gay marriage without negatively impacting his ability to lead his devoutly conservative employees?

I’m in favor of equality in marriage and broadly the rights of individuals to live true to themselves and free from discrimination, but if a divisive topic is 50/50, it’s hard to see how supporting one side or the other wouldn’t alienate some portion of your employee base.

Obviously, never taking a stance on any issue is the most middle of the road, career-lengthening tactic to take, but that’s not exactly the world I want to live in either. I don’t have to (and do not) agree 100% with my CEO’s political views; that doesn’t impact his ability to lead nor my ability to execute.

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>How could he support gay marriage without negatively impacting his ability to lead his devoutly conservative employees?

There’s no point in making this argument. Mozilla is company headquartered in San Francisco - and AFAIK, has the most “out” LGBTQ employees I can remember of most tech companies.

Just like I wouldn’t be surprised if Mitt Romney got raked over hot coals for not supporting a RBG replacement, I’m also not surprised Eich got kicked out for not supporting gay marriage. It was incredibly deaf on his part.

> kicked out for not supporting

Interesting that we've gone from "kicked our for actively opposing" to "kicked out for not supporting" in the span of just a few comments.

Call it what you want, but I can't believe people are surprised Eich got crucified when he was the CTO of an organization that is as left as Mozilla.

He remained CTO for 2 years after his donations became widely known. People just weren't willing to trust him as CEO.

  I think this is a fallacy: either way you're making someone unhappy. It's fundamentally a flawed argument: giving rights to someone it's not taking them away from someone else.

  You're not making the "50%" of the people that are conservative unhappy. You are impacting a minority of those, the ones who can't live with the fact that somewhere there is a married same sex couple.

  On the other hand you're telling the other 50% that they do not deserve a right. All of them.

  So - that "some portion" it's not the same in size. 

  <rant>And if you ask me, which I admit: you didn't, the portion that believes that they should be able to deny other people a right they benefit from, can pack up an go. The inability of emphasizing with others would make them horrible software designers and developers.</rant>

> On the other hand you're telling the other 50% that they do not deserve a right. All of them.

This sounds compelling, but what happens when you apply it to other issues? What will you say to the "taxation is theft" camp when they demand the right to the fruits of their labor and don't want them to be used to wage unnecessary wars?

Or are you fine with capitalists firing anyone who advocates for taxes to continue to exist?

This is a deeply false equivalence.

In the workplace, employees have (broadly speaking) a _legal_ right to be free from discrimination on the basis of protected grounds. If your boss (or their boss, or their boss, etc.) makes it clear they don't support that: that's not a political statement, it's workplace discrimination / harassment.

That a stance against marriage equality happens to overlap with political fault lines is _entirely beside the point_.

>If your boss (or their boss, or their boss, etc.) makes it clear they don't support that: that's not a political statement, it's workplace discrimination / harassment.

I am going to speak plainly. I don't think people in the Valley really believe this argument. Political opinion is a protected class in California yet people feel free to create a hostile work environment for Trump supporters. It feels like there a set of right answers and you can say the right answers or shut up.

> I don’t have to (and do not) agree 100% with my CEO’s political views; that doesn’t impact his ability to lead nor my ability to execute.

If it was only views, I might agree with you. However, it wasn't just views. It was action. And it's easy to see how action can impact a CEOs ability to lead a team of people. Furthermore, we know for a fact in this case, it did literally affect his ability to lead and execute. This isn't a debate. It happened.

Simply put, he could not do his job effectively. So he stepped down. Others will say he was fired, but you can only think that if you think Eich lied.

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