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Comment by hcatlin | Hacker News Reader

As a programmer living in California whose foreign-same-sex-marriage is not recognized by the state... I'm halfway to setting up a Mozilla boycott. It's not Mozilla itself that gave the money, of course... its just their most visible (and well paid) employee.

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You're entitled to boycott any company for any reason, however I would encourage you to reconsider your position. This is what you are asking of Mozilla:

1) To have a political position on this issue. 2) To enforce that political position on all of its employees.

#1 is somewhat reasonable (that is, it's a bit abnormal for a company to have a specific political position not related to their business but not completely unheard of), but #2 is very impractical and I would argue damaging.

I understand where you're coming from with point 2. It can be very damaging for a company. Firing people because they're a Democrat or a Republican (or forcing all your employees to vote for Romney or Santorum) is going to get you in trouble, and quickly.

However, I believe the split here comes whether this is a "political issue" or a "human rights issue". In my opinion, it's human rights. And I believe any company should ensure that its employees are not fighting against equality. I guess this also ties into equality for its employees. I assume there are LGBT employees of Mozilla, and I think they must feel pretty uncomfortable right now.

Unfortunately (again, in my opinion, etc.), it's treated as a political standpoint, something that big parties can argue about. But it isn't - it's about whether LGBT individuals have the same rights as straight people.

(Obviously, this instance can be taken solely as a political issue - donating to a political campaign. However, I think the underlying human rights issue is still there. This is an assumption. Mr Eich could have donated for purely political reasons... but I find that difficult to comprehend.)

He could have donated for religious reasons. Prop. 8 was supported by the Catholic Church, the Mormons, orthodox Jews, and many evangelical churches.

Brendan Eich is not the only one working at Mozilla who is making the LGBT and non-troglodite employees and volunteers feel uncomfortable.

Brendan refuses to address the issue and share his side of the story. But at least Brendan's colleague Gervase Markham at Mozilla had the guts to publicly publish and attempt to explain his hateful bigoted beliefs about gay marriage, and not censor the comments that people left on his blog, even if he ignored all the valid arguments that he had no answer to (which was most of them).

http://blog.gerv.net/2012/03/coalition-for-marriage-petition...

I'm very disappointed to discover that Eich holds such beliefs, and it definitely makes me look at Mozilla a bit differently. However, note that total donations from all Mozilla employees do favor the opposition[1]. A small consolation, perhaps. I hope that Eich comes out and addresses this directly--when you're the founder and public face of a large and respected company, your association with the company means you must be held to different standards than the typical private citizen.

[1] http://projects.latimes.com/prop8/results/?position=both&...

That doesn't mean they "endorse" it.

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