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Comment by DerpDerpDerp | Hacker News Reader

Do you support employees being fired for supporting gay marriage then?

I don't see any difference in the two positions (both are using their paychecks to advanced a political cause), except that you personally agree with one position and not the other.

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The difference is that only one of those positions in a boss is threatening. Take interracial marriage as a parallel. If you are in a mixed-race marriage and your boss has tried to prevent interracial marriage, you could reasonably feel threatened. Whereas if your boss supports equality, you won't worry whether you are in a same-race or mixed-race marriage.

If my boss paid money to a political cause against mix-marriages, but inside of work took no action to discriminate against people who were in mixed marriages, I'd think he was an asshat, and express such opinion, but not tie it to work any more than he was.

Of course, I don't need to feel threatened by people disagreeing with life choices I've made just because they don't like them, nor do I need to retaliate against people having different views. I can act like a professional at work while expressing my dissent in the marketplace of ideas.

I don't think Mozilla employees are wrong to say he's wrong on Twitter - I think they're wrong to link it to workplace politics sans any demonstration of him doing so.

Do you often tell your boss he's an asshat? If so, you should read the people commenting here that the Mozilla employees speaking out may be making career-limiting moves.

Regardless, it sounds like you haven't experienced significant workplace discrimination. Some people are prone to see discriminatory behavior as threatening because they have been threatened or harmed.

No one, as far as I'm aware, has pointed out examples of him behaving in a discriminatory manner - just that he holds a different view than them and engages in the political process.

I certainly agree that workplace discrimination is a problem, I just don't think that one necessitates the other, as people are claiming here.

> Do you often tell your boss he's an asshat? If so, you should read the people commenting here that the Mozilla employees speaking out may be making career-limiting moves.

I'd expect that the career limiting move is largely that they're linking their speaking out to how things should be at Mozilla, rather than distancing their speaking out from workplace politics.

But for the record, yes, I've told superiors, up to the CTO (while I was working in IT) that they're wrong on a number of social issues. I've also literally used the word "asshat" to describe people who hold opinions contrary to mine on those same issues on social media.

I just don't go out of my way to link it in to workplace politics, and haven't worked for people petty enough to punish their subordinates for having differing opinions.

If the Mozilla CEO is doing that, I'd be happy to see evidence of it. If the Mozilla CEO is discriminating at work because people are gay or support gay marriage, I'd like to see evidence of that. So far, all I see is people intentionally linking their dissent to workplace politics and people trying to punish him for having a view they don't like.

Feel free to cite evidence to prove me wrong.

I'm pretty sure that helping to remove a civil right from a group of people can be taken as discriminatory.

I agree that nobody has come forward with proof that he has done something wrong at Mozilla. Which is why he's still at Mozilla.

But I don't think "hasn't been caught being an egregious bigot at work" is the only bar a CEO of a major nonprofit needs to clear. And whether or not he stays on as CEO, I think it's entirely reasonable for some Mozilla employees to decide that they're better off elsewhere.

> I'm pretty sure that helping to remove a civil right from a group of people can be taken as discriminatory.

Sure, he holds views that some people should be discriminated against, and contributes to political causes advocating that. Lots of people hold those kind of views, and lots of people hold other objectionable views. My objection is to punishing him at work for that, and that alone.

I'm fine with Mozilla employees deciding that they're better off somewhere else, because they don't like their boss for any reason. That's their decision about who they associate with.

I think it's more of a problem when they decide he should be somewhere else because they don't like his opinions, or his political actions. I think that's discriminatory, and a large problem in a free society.

Gosh golly, what's it coming to when right straight white people can't discriminate against unpopular minority groups without facing consequences! It's as you say: minority groups should just quit if their boss might be discriminatory. That will surely end the problem of discrimination.

Threatened how?

Threatened with the sort of discrimination that minority groups often experience from people who have an irrational bias against them.

Sorry, when did those threats happen?

I said "reasonably feel threatened". You don't have to have someone directly threaten you to reasonably feel threatened.

OK, so what was the reasonable cause to feel threatened?

That your boss has helped strip you of your civil rights.

I wish I could give this post 10 upvotes. There is a reason that the US has employment laws [Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Section 703(a)(1) & (2)] related to discrimination -- and its to stop precisely these sorts of questions from ever being questions in the first place.

Where did all of this moral relativism come from?

What Eich believes goes against basic human rights. This isn't some argument about tax rates.

Which basic human right does his belief go against, exactly?

In all sincerity, if you had to write down a list of human rights, ordered by most-to-least basic, where would it fall on the list? Which rights would be more basic? Which less?

So marriage is a basic human right?

So the right to marry whomever you choose is universal, for everybody, no exceptions?

So why doesn't the campaign for "marriage equality" fight for the right of a brother and sister to get married, or a mother and her son?

I think free speech is a basic human right, too, but I wouldn't demand my CEO be fired if he gave a million dollars to try to get a Constitutional amendment passed to overturn Citizens United.

I'm sure there exists a political cause that if your CEO was funding it, would cause you to demand their resignation or make you leave the company.

Say they are funding a campaign calling for speech restrictions of a group of which you are a member, for instance. You presumably have a line somewhere.

You're positive about that? They could fund a campaign calling for speech restrictions for a group I'm a member of, and I'll probably feel peeved about it (or even stronger feelings), but so long as it doesn't affect the workplace, and the CEO is still doing their job, I wouldn't call for their resignation.

That's pretty lucky for them then, because you won't legally be able to after their bill goes through about speech in the workplace.

edit - that's a pretty unfair hypothetical, and it would be directly affecting your work then, but I still suspect you have a line, if only to avoid things ever getting a little bit too Kafka.

I suppose it's lucky for them, but I don't see removing them as CEO as an action helpful to the cause. It probably won't weaken their beliefs, and might even strengthen them. They might even want to retaliate against the group they see as booting them out.

I just don't think that stripping them of their lands and titles really helps anybody. Arguably they won't have a source of income, except that they probably would receive a fairly nice severance package, and could still look for more work elsewhere.

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I really like your last line of "things ever getting a little bit too Kafka".

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