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Comment by daeken | Hacker News Reader

> You don't know Brendan, I don't know Brendan, nobody in previous threads comparing him to fucking racists or the Nazis knows Brendan.

I know Brendan. I met him on a number of occasions while working at Mozilla and interacted with him on many more. I think the comparison to racism is completely valid. I don't think he's a bad guy (he was always quite cordial with me) but his actions caused harm to a large number of people; I don't think that's okay.

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What actions did he take besides donating $1,000 to Prop 8?

What other actions does he need to take? Passing prop 8 harmed people.

I didn't mean to imply otherwise: the phrasing of but his actions caused harm to a large number of people led me to believe there was something else that occurred of which I was unaware.

It's his inactions that have also caused problems. Refusing to change his beliefs. Refusing to justify his unchanged beliefs. Refusing to explain why he did what he did and what outcomes he intended. Refusing to respond to anyone's valid criticisms and questions. Refusing to apologize, but instead issuing a cynical, verbally acrobatic non-apology apology, that backflips and dances around the burning issues. Refusing to step down after he's caused damage to the Mozilla project.

He created Javascript

How is it valid? Have you talked to him personally about his beliefs? He's offered to share them with anyone he meets in person.

Fortunately for us, we have the opportunity to form our opinion of him by the actions he takes rather than the words he uses.

Again: Believing that marriage can only be between a man and a woman, because marriage has a religious connotation to them, is not bigotry.

It's a stupid fucking belief, and it leads to seperate but equal bullshit, but it's not homophobic on its own.

Except all marriages are civil marriages - and the government has to treat all equally. that is all. Your church, temple, or mosque can be as exclusionary and ignorant as they want to be. that's fine, and protected free speech. But the government shouldn't give rights to some and not all (inheritance, consent, tax breaks etc).

Well, no, that's the point.

There are civil unions, and there are marriages - and if it was simply about "rights" and "benefits", then people wouldn't give a c*ap which group they were in.

However, even though they have civil unions (in many countries/states), they also want to redefined marriage.

I'm not saying that's wrong or right - that's an argument I won't go into here.

However, to try to pretend that this is anything but redefining something is pretty deceptive.

Maybe they'll win, and we will redefine marriage. Who knows.

You keep saying this throughout the thread. You are misinformed. Marriage and civil unions are legally different things with different rights, responsibilities, and scope.

They are legally the same in Connecticut and other states. Not all, but in some. But it's not equal in the "institutional" sense so we should just redefine marriage in states instead of building civil unions with the same framework as marriages and have two seperate but equal legal frameworks.

Fortunately, momentum is building for marriage equality here in Georgia. Maybe this state isn't so bad after all. The editor of the local small town paper even came out in support.

Marriage and civil unions embody the same legal rights in the US (at least, in the states that they were created so far), at issue is some people beliefs that marriage as in institution should not be changed. And I don't agree with that, "seperate but equal" is personally unacceptable to me.

I'm just trying to explain what his (assumed) beliefs are, and pointing out that his donation and beliefs shouldn't automatically label him as "anti-gay."

Says who? This is such a weird statement. These people are treating gays unequally, why do they get a pass if they are choosing to follow homophobic dogma?

If a religion said black people were cursed and had no souls, there wouldn't be so much hemming and hawing over whether or not they were racist. (Articles about the Mormon church all mention its "racist past".)

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