Thinking About Mozilla
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This CEO doesn't hate gay people. He's not homophobic. He simply is against gay marriage, a view shared both culturally and legally by much of the USA.
Don't large organizations value diversity? Are only certain "diversities" allowed? Why the intolerance for those who have different opinions?
EDIT: I'm reading the thoughful replies. It seems that those against this CEO consider gay marriage a civil right's issue. But much of the USA doesn't agree, neither culturally nor legally.
Should all high-ranking employees in the USA be vetted for appropriate (leftwing?) political views before being hired? That doesn't seem right.
The simple facts here are:
1. Mozilla has appointed as a CEO someone who not only doesn't support same-sex marriage, but who has actively contributed to the campaign against it.
2. The CEO is the public face of Mozilla, and to some extent sets the agenda.
3. There are quite a number of developers and others in the community, some of whom work at Mozilla, who are either in or will consider a same-sex marriage at some point in the future.
4. These people are disappointed (reasonably so) that a person who is campaigning against their civil rights has been appointed to a relatively important and visible position.
5. These people, and other organisations and people within the community who support them, are making a clear public statement that this appointment is a problem for them.
That's the extent of it, and it's perfectly reasonable. I agree that there's no reason to hate or take this argument to extremes, but it's completely reasonable and fair to take a polite but firm public stance against this appointment.
Why is "active" support relevant. Surely it is his views that make so many uneasy.
> 2. The CEO is the public face of Mozilla, and to some extent sets the agenda.
This is true, but of what relevance? Mozilla is not an organisation with an agenda about marriage or LGBTQ rights.
> 3. There are quite a number of developers and others in the community, some of whom work at Mozilla, who are either in or will consider a same-sex marriage at some point in the future.
I expect there are also some Mormons and Muslims who may wish to practice polygamy, perhaps even some Jews who feel obliged to enter in to a levirate marriage despite already being married. I suspect that any alternative CEO would probably support monogamous marriages only. Presumably the board must enquire as to any candidate's opinion on this matter and woe betide any CEO anywhere who doesn't support polygamy. They too could be in for this kind of treatment.
> 4. These people are disappointed (reasonably so) that a person who is campaigning against their civil rights has been appointed to a relatively important and visible position.
Brendan Eich is not and never has campaigned against their civil rights. Furthermore, before this appointment Brendan Eich already held a "relatively important and visible position." Brendan Eich simply donated money towards a campaign that he supported for reasons we do not know. He was joined in his view by a MAJORITY of voters at that time.
They disagree with you: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/03/29/mozilla-supports-lg...
> Brendan Eich is not and never has campaigned against their civil rights.
Brendan Eich has given $1000 to remove access to marriage from same-sex couples. Marriage being a civil right (Loving v. Virginia) and money being speech (Buckley v. Valeo), yes he has campaigned against their civil rights.
> before this appointment Brendan Eich already held a "relatively important and visible position."
He was CTO, he didn't get to decide of Mozilla's overall.
> He was joined in his view by a MAJORITY of voters at that time.
And he was just as wrong[0] as they were, why does the majority being idiotic make things any different?
[0] since it was a majority voting for something which was later found unconstitutional
>They disagree with you:
Perhaps I was careless with terminology, perhaps you took an unusual interpretation of what I said (see below.) I will let each reader draw their own conclusion. What I meant was that Mozilla is not an organisation established with the specific aim of advancing LGBTQ rights, nor equal marriage rights for all.
>> Brendan Eich is not and never has campaigned against their civil rights.
>Brendan Eich has given $1000 to remove access to marriage from same-sex couples. Marriage being a civil right (Loving v. Virginia) and money being speech (Buckley v. Valeo), yes he has campaigned against their civil rights.
Well done, you quoted some cases and used them to redefine "campaign" far away from any natural and commonly accepted meaning of the word. If you want to argue semantics not substance we could around in circles all day except that I am not interested and won't bother.
>> He was joined in his view by a MAJORITY of voters at that time.
>And he was just as wrong[0] as they were, why does the majority being idiotic make things any different?
The people of California were voting for what they thought marriage should be, not whether gay marriage was constitutional. They were therefore not wrong.
Their action was also constitutionally wrong. When voters vote on propositions, they exercise legislative powers much as elected representatives do. As with elected legislators, they are required to adhere to the state and federal constitutions, even though, as with elected legislators, they are not individually punished by law for their unconstitutional acts.
Mozilla has appointed as a CEO someone who not only doesn't support personal freedom, but who has actively contributed to the communist campaign against it...There are quite a number of developers and others, some of whom work at Mozilla, who are either currently or will consider in the future exercising freedoms that would be forbidden under communism...
Perfectly reasonable to campaign against this guy and those like him? Perhaps the Silicon Valley Reporter could publish a black list of communists and their supporters?
(I don't actually have a strong opinion on this issue. I used to think it obvious, but I realized my views were confused and inconsistent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6819575 )
Or were you hoping that would be a problem for me?
Like people who are risk loving and prefer to take their chances rather than buy health insurance? People who enjoy mobility more than home ownership? People who enjoy sex with animals more than sex with people?
All regulations enshrine in law the inequality of a subset of persons - specifically, the subset of people who would (absent the law) engage in the prohibited action. If you want to argue that gays are a special subset who (unlike all the other subsets) deserve not to have regulations go against their preferences, do it. But the abstract principle you are appealing to probably proves far more than you want it to.
It's the other way around. It's gay marriage opponents who argue that heterosexuals couples are a special subset and deserve more rights than other couples.
It's the gay marriage proponents arguing that unlike medical devices or food preparation techniques, gay marriage is somehow beyond the purview of government to regulate. I'm asking about the principles underlying this strange exclusion.
I'm pretty sure that if you were to restrict gay marriage opponents to those that consider an issue of costs/benefits, the turnout in support of Prop.8 and similar legislative actions would be marginal. But feel free to show me wrong, my position is based mostly on personal observation and hearsay, not data.
By the way: http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/category/research/econ...
It's the gay marriage proponents arguing that unlike medical devices or food preparation techniques, gay marriage is somehow beyond the purview of government to regulate. I'm asking about the principles underlying this strange exclusion.
No, they don't. That wouldn't even make sense, since (civil) marriage is regulation. What they object to is regulations that apply differently to people of different genders. You may disagree on the (ridiculous, in my opinion) basis that "gay people can still marry other people, just not each other", but claiming that you don't understand the principle is little more than trolling.
The principle is the Supreme Court's 1967 decision that marriage is a fundamental right.
You don't get to state this as fact just because it helps your argument. I assume you're well aware people on the other side consider sexual orientation to be inherent, rather than a simple preference.
If it turns out that risk preference or mobility preference is also "inherent", would that make Obamacare or mortgage subsidies/know your customer laws a violation of civil rights?
As an aside: I don't think you're comparing homosexual relationships to bestiality, but you're getting close. I hope you understand why this could be offensive and non-productive in a conversation.
If you must know, I'm pro-gay marriage and against all civil marriage. And I have no position on the current issue.
What I meant is that I agree marriage is a preference, but only if there are no additional benefits or rights bestowed (by the government) upon those entering the marriage.
By the way, I know concern trolling is your schtick, but it just doesn't work out so well.
This CEO doesn't hate black people. He's not racist. He simply is against miscegenation.
Yeah, that doesn't work either.
> a view shared both culturally and legally by much of the USA.
Which isn't exactly relevant, the enlightenment of the majority is usually debatable and "much of the USA" isn't CEO of a company whose mission statement is "to promote openness, innovation & opportunity on the Web".
> It seems that those against this CEO consider gay marriage a civil right's issue.
How is it anything but a civil rights issue?
> But much of the USA doesn't agree, neither culturally nor legally.
I don't think so. They don't think the right should be provided, just as they did last time around, that didn't make civil rights issues "not civil rights".
> [T]he conversation about Eich’s appointment has been incredibly encouraging to me [...]
Let me see if I understand correctly: it's incredibly encouraging that a person is being skewered for something he did years ago and apologized for? Has he publicly opposed gay marriage in some other way since then? No? Okay...
As a side note...
> I don't think so. They don't think the right should be provided, just as they did last time around, that didn't make civil rights issues "not civil rights".
...let's not forget that around 90% of the language in the '64 Civil Rights Act was around repealing existing discriminatory laws, which is something most people were in favor of anyway.
Could you link to that? He has stated that his giving to prop 8 was not "evidence of animosity" and did not make him "hateful" or "a bigot"[0]. Not a surprising position for him to take regardless of its correctness: I don't know many people who'd call themselves hateful and bigoted even if that applied.
But to my knowledge, he has not at any point apologised for giving to Prop 8, quite the opposite.
> Has he publicly opposed gay marriage in some other way since then? No? Okay…
His donations to prop 8 were not public in the first place, the donation lists (of both sides) were leaked. I'm not sure how that's relevant though, he's not changed his mind since then.
> ...let's not forget that around 90% of the language in the '64 Civil Rights Act was around repealing existing discriminatory laws
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.
[0] https://brendaneich.com/2012/04/community-and-diversity/
This is incorrect. By law, donations in excess of $100 must be publicly listed. Proponents of prop 8 tried unsuccessfully to get courts to block operation of that law.
Sickening.
[1] http://readwrite.com/2014/03/28/brendan-eich-mozilla-ceo-pro...
http://readwrite.com/2014/03/28/brendan-eich-mozilla-ceo-pro...
I'm among the people who think the personal and professional spheres HAVE to remain separate, because uniting them puts minorities at considerable risk - the fundamentalists that run a good chunk of the country's businesses and government agencies would very much like to fire people for being queer or holding liberal views.
Regardless of this, the people upset with Eich and Mozilla have very good reasons to be upset. It's tough to balance the needs of both sides.
One extra wrinkle here is that Eich has an impeccable professional record - there are no reports, substantiated or otherwise, of him doing improper things in the workplace or discriminating against LGBT individuals of any kind. The only reason we know about his politics is because of the requirement to disclose campaign contributions.
If Eich had a bad track record, I think the issue would be settled already because everyone could agree that the track record justified booting him out on his rear.
This is a good read covering all the complexities behind this "simple" action (not opinion, by the way). http://tim.dreamwidth.org/1844711.html
As I said, I'm not comparing gay marriage to slavery here, but the idea that granting certain rights should be "forward-only" is bizarre to say the least.
And since prop 8 was struck down as unconstitutional, its enactment was quite clearly an illegal act.
This is disengenous. Special intersts--of all stripes--gain and lose privledges everyday though "a legal process". This whole discussion of "inclusion" is rediculous and vindictive. There is a reason people vote with blind ballots in elections.
Do you believe fundamental rights should be subjected to removal by majority vote?
And the existing jurisprudence on the Fourteenth Amendment removes any possibility of debate or ambiguity on this point.
Now, on the other hand, The First Amendment. Is actually a fundamental cornerstone of the Constitution. And it takes primacy here. The sort of vindictive bullying going on (especially in public like this) is inexcusable and dis-proportionate.
No. The concept of marriage in this context is a civil and legal one. It's used for politicking, but its core is a tripartite contract granting specific legal statuses before the state apparatus, and a number of civil statuses following from the legal one.
Now you may want to argue that this should not exist, but that point of view's not exactly relevant when the starting point is not somebody fighting to end civil marriage but fighting to remove access to civil marriage for a specific minority.
> Now, on the other hand, The First Amendment. Is actually a fundamental cornerstone of the Constitution. And it takes primacy here.
Except it does not actually apply:
* people don't object to him being bigoted and hateful they object to him being CEO of Mozilla as a bigoted and hateful person
* free speech is not freedom from judgement of your peers following said speech
* the first amendment does not apply to individuals, nobody's trying to involve the state here
And yeah there are plenty of ways to be a bully without breaking the law. But using HN as a megaphone to be a bully on some murky bit of special interest politics is in poor form.
Lastly, the first amendment (like the second) applies to legal persons. And someone casting a ballot or taking a good-faith position on the other side of a legitimate political question or debate, is not an excuse for dis-proportionate behaviour.
Let's not then.
> And yeah there are plenty of ways to be a bully without breaking the law.
Your point?
> to be a bully on some murky bit of special interest politics is in poor form.
It's poor form to defend one's opinion that being intent on curtailing people's civil rights and equality before the law makes one a bad fit for CEO of an organisation priding itself on openness, inclusiveness and opportunity? But it's OK to give money towards the curtailing of a minority's civil rights, that's not bullying or in poor form?
> is not an excuse for dis-proportionate behaviour.
Ah so criticising people for attempting to curtail other people's civil rights is "disproportionate behaviour" now. I live and learn.
And so I shall say this as simply as I can: the dignity and equality of all persons before the law is not an optional feature of a free and open society. It is a position which can neither be negotiated nor compromised nor subjected to being voted away. It is not an opinion or a fashion; it is a necessary precondition.
Proposition 8 was in its entirety about removing the existing right of certain persons to marry, and seeking to deny that right for the future. Both Proposition 8 and support for it are not compatible with support for a free society.
I think that him wishing to write off a class of people as of lesser standing is a bit disingenuous. Unfortunately, marriage has become a mix of religious, economic, and legal meanings. In my experience, it isn't so much hating another group so much as feeling like something sacred to them is being coopted and horribly distorted. Having something with the same economic and legal standings but not called marriage generally seems fine by them.
The problem, I think, stems from the fact that we have mixed a religious and legal concept into one. I do realize that some people who fight against gay marriage do it with much vitriol and disgust for gay people, but has Mr. Eich done anything more than donated to a political cause he supports? I'm all for gay marriage, but we unfortunately have a complicated issue that cannot simply be painted as "He hates gay people and wants to deny them their rights" - Why? We don't know his true beliefs as he hasn't shared them with us, and he hasn't demonstrated any further malice. Now unless he starts using the bully pulpit of his CEO position to espouse hatred or otherwise attempts to hurt another group through his position, we should really just let it drop.
Besides, he created Javascript. We have more important things to hate him for.
Ignoring the fact that this person took part in doing that in favor of wondering why they did so misses the point by a number of light-years.
I am very much in favor of gay marriage and I think that denying anyones right under any circumstance is absolutely wrong. However we cannot simply look at issues from an ivory tower and attempt to gain any meaningful resolution.
So you believe that fundamental rights should be subjected to majority vote? Or perhaps you believe that equality of all persons before the law is not actually a necessary component of a free society?
It is not at all difficult to look at this issue and gain a meaningful resolution. It is only uncomfortable* for some people to do so because of dissonance with other views they hold dear.
Not in the least. If you had read and comprehended my initial posting you would realize I propose something of a compromise. We divorce the legal and economic portions of marriage from marriage itself. Couples don't get a "Marriage License" - they get a contract that they sign that grants them the legal and economic protections, rights, etc. and no more. If they want to hold some ceremony or attach any sort of significance to the event, let them. That is up to them.
Among the people I've ever spoken with, having a divorced concept of religious marriage and a legal coupling of people seems to be enough. For those that still oppose it? Well fuck 'em.
To return to the original point at hand. It is entire speculation of Mr. Eich's intentions. We haven't seen him crusade against "the gays", just oppose "gay marriage" - We don't know what his intentions. No one except for him and perhaps those close to him know. I'm simply offering a reasonable theory as to why he may have offered support to Proposition 8 in response to the theory that he, fundamentally, wishes to strip people of their rights.
If Eich wanted to attack gay people and strip them of their rights, well then Proposition 8 was the right vehicle for that attack. However it might well be the case that Proposition 8 offered an imperfect chance for him to preserve what he felt was an attack on a religious belief of his. Call the attack on rights collateral damage at that point.
By drawing the entire issue into a summary of Prop 8 itself and attempting to only focus upon that you are implying that his motivation is an attack upon others' rights. I am simply putting forth a counter-theory to that claim. Call it playing devil's advocate if you will. I just see it as attempting to give everyone a fair shake in what otherwise looks like an attempt to characterize someone you do not know based on a single point of data.
That's a bit misleading. At the time Proposition 8 was filed, gay marriage was not legal in California.
Proposition 8 was an initiave constitutional amendment filed in response to court cases striking down Proposition 22, an initiative statute with the same language as Prop. 8. Its true that there will still appeals pending in those cases when it was filed (though they were finalized before they Prop 8 qualified for the ballot.)
[1] Prop 22 had been struck down by district courts, and then appellate courts overruled the district courts. The state Supreme Court agreed in December 2006 to consider the issue. Prop 8 was filed October 5, 2007. The Supreme Court did not rule until May 2008.
And the enactment of Proposition 8 resulted in the effective annulment of marriages which had already taken place, and that annulment was not an accidental side-effect of Proposition 8's language.
It was not at all clear where the courts were going when Proposition 8 was introduced. It was unclear pretty much up until the state supreme court made its 4 to 3 decision.
They way California got gay marriage is seriously fucked up. They got the right result (gay marriage allowed), but the process was terrible. It ultimately came down to a standing issue and a district court decision, and a serious subversion of the initiative process. Basically, after Proposition 8 passed, the State decided not to defend it in court, and higher courts ruled no one else had standing to defend it, so the challengers essentially won by default.
That was a bad thing. One of the main purposes of the initiative process is to allow the people to bypass the State. It makes the initiative process a joke if the State can effectively void an initiative by simply deciding not to defend it.
The right was is the way we did it here in Washington. The legislature passed it, the Governor signed it, and when opponents got it on the ballot, voters approved same-sex marriage 54%-46%.
True.
> That was a bad thing.
I disagree. A litigant who has lost should be able to decide not to appeal, including where that litigant is the State.
> One of the main purposes of the initiative process is to allow the people to bypass the State.
Incorrect. It exists to allow the people to exercise the legislative power of the State (which they have, via the State Constitution, expressly reserved so that they can do so), not to bypass the State.
> It makes the initiative process a joke if the State can effectively void an initiative by simply deciding not to defend it.
They did defend it, vigorously, at the trial level. They decided not to appeal that decision after they lost at the trial level. Which is a rather common thing for litigants to do: appeals are expensive.
But the Ninth Circuit, after a ruling by the California Supreme Court, allowed the proponents to carry the appeal anyway, and the Ninth Circuit struck Prop. 8 down on the merits anyway.
The Supreme Court rules that the Ninth Circuit erred in granting standing to the proponents, but Prop 8 lost on the merits, not standing both at the trial and appellate level.
> The right was is the way we did it here in Washington.
Sure, its always better for a state to provide equal protection of the law itself rather than to be forced to by the federal judiciary. But the wrong in the latter isn't in the federal judiciary acting, or in state officials accepting that action before the appeals have reached the Supreme Court level, but in the State -- whether through elected officials or the people at large -- failing to provide equal protection of the laws in the first place.
---
To illustrate my point in a slightly eccentric way, consider my own views on vegetarianism. I strongly believe that mass production of meat constitutes a very deep breach of rights of those animals. For me, this is a rights issue, and I hope it will be considered so in the future.
This opinion is currently also held only be few, and it also campaigns for rights of a certain group of beings that currently lack those rights. Still, it's likely that most of you here are supporting that this right is withheld from them. How would you feel if in the future, somebody called for your resignation just because you ate some meat and wore furs in 2014?
---
Please remember that I am not equating animal rights and human rights -- those are different problems, and both are very important to me. I am happy so many of people here are supporting same-sex unions, same as me.
But it is probable that much like in the 1850s, many of us privately support opinions that may turn into rights issues in the future. Should we be held accountable for that?
Your argument doesn't work at all for another, quite obvious, reason: If in, say, 2050, eating meat is widely seen as unacceptable, people who used to eat meat but now believed it to be wrong would be happy to say that.
Eich has refused to. At every turn he has instead avoided directly addressing the issue at all. He hasn't even so much as admitted it was wrong to try and enforce his religious beliefs in law. The only reason he would be unwilling to address the issue is if he still holds these beliefs, and will try to turn his religion into law again in the future.
It is also irrational to expect someone who wants to enforce their religion on an entire state of 37 million people with unconstitutional laws to not attempt to do so in a much more personal context like running a corporation -- where, it should be noted, both law and social custom hold individual rights to be significantly curtailed to begin with.
If you're a sensible adult who eats meat today, you have likely heard of the choice of being vegetarian and consciously rejected it. In other words, you won't apologize for it today (which is fine by me). Isn't it then hypocritical to only apologize and change your mind if and only if you're forced to by a majority opinion in the future?
I think people in general care about internal consistency and would not apologize for such an opinion -- unless they profoundly believed they were mistaken in the past.
In the same way, Brendan Eich (and most of us also) has been raised in a culture neutral or opposing the same-sex union. His opinion may be disliked by many of us, even considered immoral, but we should strive to educate him, debate him, not ostracize him, and definitely not oust him out of an unrelated profession.
In fact, if animal rights have so advanced by 2050 that eating meat is widely seen as wrong, I dearly hope I am criticized and ostracized if I refuse to change my mind. I'm already willing to entertain the thought that eating meat may be wrong. It seems unlikely that a majority (or even plurality) would reach that conclusion before I did.
Whether or not that comes to pass, though, we are talking here about removing existing rights from beings recognized even by bigots as people now, and doing so in contravention of constitutional provisions that have forbidden just that for nearly 150 years.
Edit: By the way, is your country one of the many in Europe that criminalizes holocaust denial? What would you say if Mozilla appointed a known Nazi sympathizer as CEO? Would you really think this reaction was "scary"? If not, why not?
There's also a strain of Cultural Revolution. If someone doesn't pass a litmus test, they need to make a public renunciation, or "go away". Even when the litmus test is a good cause, that process is fundamentally sick.
To be clear, I think Prop 8 was repugnant. I also think that a world where Microsoft, Google, and Apple don't have Mozilla to keep them honest, is deeply concerning. Anyone with a minority or unpopular opinion should support Mozilla's choice of anyone to lead them who isn't a convicted felon, if Mozilla thinks that individual can further the organization.
And no, you don't get to (1) tar and feather someone then (2) say "oh gee now they can't be an effective leader".
Edit: Rather than reply, someone gave me their silent disapprobation. Oh the shame.
One thing I'd like to add. Some major religions view animals as ordained by God for the use of mankind. I hope in the future that the rights of animals are acknowledged and enforced, but assuredly there will be people who will never apologize for eating meat, even when under public condemnation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_and_responsibilities_of...
I have the same issue against FSF redefining the meaning of "free" in software world and pretending that they have right to force their meaning of the word to everyone else. They don't.
And, btw, about that "registered union" that should replace "marriage" in legal documents ... just don't limit the number of people in there. Better yet, don't limit it only to people. Why wouldn't someone be allowed to "marry" or "register" a goat, if he likes so? And please, also drop age limits. Why wouldn't 13 year old girl have a right to "marry" another 45 years old woman, 52 years old man and their 4 years old horse? We should all have the same right, without any restrictions? Right?
Hence the problem (in my view).
Because "marriage" has important legal ramifications in the U.S., you are denying people rights if you deny them marriage.
I think you should be free to think about marriage _as a tradition_ as you want. But to enforce discrimination against people is a different thing.
It is a civil rights issue; it's not really possible to disagree with that, without redefining the concept of a civil right. Whether or not you support that right is a separate issue.
Should all high-ranking employees in the USA be vetted for appropriate (leftwing?) political views before being hired?
That's a disingenuous position which is not being advocated by anybody. Mozilla are free to hire him; in turn, the community is free to object loudly about his views.
Asking his resignation for something that has strictly nothing to do with the job he has been chosen for is not right. The fact that Mozilla's community is asking it doesn't change that. Members of this community base their opinion only on their own ethical and/or political point of view, which makes the general opinion completely biased. Asking his resignation because of his ethical/political views makes as much sense as asking it for religious reason: people get angry about it, and most of them can't even argue about it properly (I'm saying this for all sides). There is a board for a reason: to make rational decisions based on the work they think he'll be able to do. And it seems like they think than a donation made 6 years ago didn't alter his ability to do this job...
But if you really want to boycott him, you should not block Firefox browsers from visiting your site, as it's more the product of a community than a single man, but you should stop using on it the language he created (Javascript).
what I ABSOLUTELY don't get is this: why not just ask for a different word with the same legal status, instead of opening this box of pandora and forcing everyone into it?
call it wedlock, give it the same legal ramifications, voila, no pissing on everyone's feet, but no, it HAS to be called wedding/marriage.
whatever. some people just enjoy conflict. i know, because i do too.
> call it wedlock, give it the same legal ramifications,
> voila, no pissing on everyone's feet, but no, it HAS to
> be called wedding/marriage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_partnership_in_the_United...
The word at issue is the name of the legal status. By definition, a separate legal institution with a different name with similar (even identical) effects will be a different legal status.
And, as was the case with "separate but equal" racial policies in the US, the same groups that had "separate but equal" for same-sex partnerships as their fallback position also spent lots of time, effort, and money trying to prevent "equal" first. It was never really about the name at all, "separate but equal" was, as always, a means to assure that the "separate" part was codified in law in hopes that the effects could either be kept unequal, or that later political change would allow making the effects unequal again and that having separate institutions well established would streamline that.
This is a SERIOUS issue in Europe and Japan (What do you do to help your population have more children when they don't) In USA this isn't an issue YET but it is interesting to see France, Germany and Japan struggle with a huge drop in population in the near future.
Religious fundamentalism (from more than one religion) teaches that homosexuality is as wrong as, say, rape. But the latter hurts another, while the former does not. In my mind, that's where the line is drawn. I have my own personal beliefs. I am glad to live in a country that supports these beliefs. I do not try to use the legal system to force others to follow my beliefs.
All laws enforce the beliefs of the lawmakers on those who believe differently.
Much like homosexuality, consuming marijuana, drugs not approved by the FDA, failing to purchase health insurance, and paying below minimum wage all fall into the category of acts that don't hurt another. Do you oppose all such laws?
Could you elaborate on that?
I don't care either way what your answers are to the above questions, but understand that if you say no to either then you are joining the majority in imposing your belief on a minority. In the first case there can be no reasonable justification for such a belief except that you believe in "traditional marriage." Perhaps that is what Brendan Eich believes in too?
I realize that my point got a little lost in my example. I was just trying to provide context for Dolimiter to explain why there's a distinction between Eich telling homosexuals they can't marry (from the article's perspective, this is wrong) and people telling Eich that he shouldn't act on his beliefs in this way. They are not equal-and-opposite forms or repression.
Eich has a known track record as a staunch libertarian, so it is quite possible that he believes government's involvement in marriage should be entirely eliminated. Of course, if this is what he believes, funding Prop 8 is a pretty terrible way to go about it, so it's still not defensible. I just want to call out the logical error being perpetuated here: They are separate thoughts and viewpoints, even if one tends to be rooted in the other, and they have equivalent consequences.
It IS possible for them to be separate
The fact that you find his politics regressive and consider him to be a bad person doesn't excuse your poor logic.
It's always a shorter hop than people think from today's in-crowd to the gulags of the next group to come along.
Freedom of speech means that I can publicly criticise people for what they have said and done. Freedom of association means that I can choose whether or not to associate with people or organisations based on whether I feel they support me.
He has a freedom to say what he wants, believe what he wants, and donate to whatever campaigns he wants, according to SCOTUS. The Government cannot put him in prison for that.
Any company is free to choose to hire him, and any person is free to criticise that company and refuse to associate with them.
There are no freedoms being broken here, whatever you think. Which freedoms do you think we should not have? Alternatively, when do you think it is OK to exercise my freedom of speech?
Proposition 8 was not an expression of opinion; it was an organized campaign to remove and permanently deny to a subset of the population a right recognized as fundamental within the United States. There is no possible way to spin that as anything other than... well, that.
You are telling the victims of aggressive bigotry they're not allowed to criticize their attackers. In no universe does that make sense.
By the way, at last poll, 59% of Americans supported same-sex marriage. That percentage keeps going up with a fair bit of speed. Opposition is rapidly becoming anything but mainstream. Not that whether an opinion is mainstream or not has anything to do with whether it's morally or ethically right, nor does it have anything to do with whether people are subject to criticism and ostracism by the victims of their attempts to legally enforce their religious beliefs.
But how anyone could classify 59% of Americans as "left-wing" is utterly beyond me. I'd classify 59% of Americans as far-right.
Let's say the CEO of McDonald's gives money to a vegan campaign. The vegans would root for them, but the people that always supported/care for McDonald's would think that it is stupid and against what McDonald's is about.
The right for gays to marry doesnt make heterosexual marriage "less valuable". How can more rights can be bad unless you(or Eich) consider homosexuals as second class citizens?
Because that's what it is all about.
If you dont consider that homosexuals should have the same rights you enjoy then you are definetly homophobic.
That's a sly way of phrasing it, Dolimiter. Those crazy leftwingers are enforcing their minority morality on everyone! I'm a little sad you've taken it there, and in the top comment, because the original article was incredibly sensitive to the issue and by no means was calling for this. Nor do I think the commenters are. Mozilla is a special organization to a lot of people, for reasons intertwined with the idea of a free and open society, and that's one reason why this is a big deal.
You seem to take tolerance and diversity as a one-way street. Eich certainly have the right to openly promote and finance political causes, but then the people who are hurt by it or disagree with it just as well have the right to criticize him for it and call him a bad choice as CEO, which is what is happening here. Freedom of speech is not the right to say anything without people talking back.
Why the intolerance for those who have
different opinions?
It's scary to see how more and more opinions cannot be voiced safely in public.
Or is this satire? I genuinely can't tell.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session
Righteous anger is as American as apple pie. This is the same psychology you see behind witch hunts when Paul Graham said something non-orthodox about women in tech or encouraged foreign founders to work on accents.
Speaking of witch hunts, America was founded by Puritans and the apple hasn't fallen far from the tree.
Thus I could, in the future, theoretically become a Mozilla Corporation CEO.
But Mozilla has offices in many South-American countries as well as in Ireland and Poland. Those are _very_ Catholic countries, where homophopia is quite widespread, sometimes even the norm.
So should Mozilla also do something about that? Or is it sufficient that the lower-level homophobes within its structure will not pass the Gesinnungstest and thus cannot rise beyond a certain level?
Also, I hold extreme pro-gun-control views. Would that influence my (theoretical) chances of becoming Mozilla CEO in the future?
And hey, as long as we're talking Catholic... Belgium was the second country in the world to gain equality, and Spain and Portugal both have it, too. Mexico is almost there in practice -- same-sex marriages are recognized nationwide, though they can currently only be performed in certain jurisdictions.
[0] http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/1105/484662-same-sex-marriage/
[1] http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/poll-73-of-public-back-...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_Brazil
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_Argentina
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_Uruguay
Should have checked Wikipedia. Sigh.
It seems that, given this map [1], the acceptance of homosexuality is more correlated with wealth and general openness of society.
Ireland surprises me, though. Abortion is still illegal there for mainly religious reasons, right? So let's hope they fix that too.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_homosexuality_laws.s...
PS: While I was obviously quite off regarding my comment about Catholicism, the general problem still exists: Mozilla has offices in countries where the persecution of homosexuality is common.
I don't know, I just get the feeling that this has been blown out of proportion a bit, and it's starting to seem similar to the outrage against Google buses, in some ways.
It also means that any final decision on whether he remains as CEO needs not be a decision about faith or personal beliefs; it can be a rational, objective choice about whether he is equipped to represent the company based on how the public feels about him.
There's still a bit of tension there, in that it is ultimately one's personal beliefs entering the workplace, but it's at least better than your boss firing you because they found out you tithed to a fundamentalist church or because you're queer.
I'm always nervous when people say "we are just applying social pressure!" when applying social pressure has been used in the past to harm these same causes.
Heck, forget the past, it can be used, right now, in places that aren't California. I was on the losing side of my state's gay marriage ban. I could lump it if someone made a conscientious decision as an individual to not work with me, but it's another thing entirely if the people on the other side were to try to get me fired or boycott anyone who employs me.
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In my opinion, that requires an apology and public statement that such policies will not be promoted as part of his work with Mozilla. If that isn't forthcoming, it seems perfectly reasonably to perform "civil disobedience" as it were.
Proposition 8 removed an already-existing right of certain persons, denying them equality before the law. Proposition 8 was not merely an "opinion" -- it was the enshrining of inequality into the law.
It also was blatantly unconstitutional.
Not that my politics disagree with yours, but you are in effect just claiming that your side is obviously right a priori. More than half the country thinks you are wrong.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/support-for-same-sex-...
Realize that only 17 states have legalized gay marriage, and only three of those states have passed a popular vote (all three of which were in the past 18 months). I am skeptical that the median of this country is really as progressive as you think it is.
Edit: in the three states that passed a popular vote, none were as high as you are claiming the entire country is. Maryland: 52%, Maine: 53%, Washington 54%
It is widely known that the full population is more liberal than the voting population. Why do you think Republicans try to block voter registration and lower turnout?
[0] http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/politics/washington-po...
And the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and half-century-old widely-accepted jurisprudence on how it applies to marriage, says clearly that I'm right. It's a thoroughly settled question.
The only people hoping for something to align with their political views are those who hope the Fourteenth Amendment would suddenly stop applying for their causes.
How can you possibly claim it is a "thoroughly settled question" when gay marriage is only currently legal in 17 states?
He doesn't hate you, he just put his money where his mouth was at the time & was probably trying to get support for Mozilla in other avenues.
Nowhere has anyone said how he treats said people in the organization. Is he condescending? Is he a jerk? If not, move on with your life. Don't quit your job & wimp out because you don't understand that people can change.
I find it interesting how no one cared about it while Eich was a CTO all these years. Now suddenly he's homophobic and dangerous. He's about to oppress gay people.
It's like a witch-hunt. He made a donation 6 years ago therefore he's a gay hater and will ruin everything. Meanwhile, Mozilla is one of the most open companies I know. And I can not recall a single gay related issue.
As for Eich's view against gay marriage - it may not be popular or progressive, but it is a legitimate opinion to hold. And given his ethical track record in the company, I do not think he deserves the smear campaign that is currently unfolding against him.
As someone for gay marriage, I really don't understand why the whole world is rioting, demanding for the resignation of the CEO.
Every article begins stating how he doesn't support gay marriage, and how that implies he's a terrible person, or Mozilla's eminent destruction. Yet, I've not heard anyone talk about why the board selected him, because I'm sure board saw many strong skills in the man, and thought he would do a fantastic job.
Why can't we see the good in people anymore? Why couldn't we work with the man to help him look at life in a different way?
I know we're fighting for a good cause, but people still matter. Remember: Honey before vinegar.
Update: why the down votes? Be constructive.
Mozilla and Firefox are a brand, now associated why homophobia since its CEO is clearly homophobic.
So it's not difficult to understand how it could hurt (or not)Mozilla, and all it's employees.
Maybe it wont, Chick-fil-A did not go bankrupt with its homophobic CEO, but for a brand in the tech world, things may be different.
And to be frank, I still eat at chic-fil-a. I think their lemonade is a little strong, but I never think of them as an anti-gay Resteraunt chain--because they're not.
because someone doesn't support gay
marriage does not mean they're homophobic.
Unlikely nearly all the comments here.
This same story happened back during the peak of the civil rights movement, and I can guarantee you that someone just like you and I had this same exchange. History repeats.
FWIW, I'm pragmatic on Eich. I don't like his behavior, but people change. He's been scalded enough and put under such global scrutiny that I imagine he will not attempt the same prejudicial behavior. He's entirely well-equipped, outside of this issue.
Now, you may opine that it does not reflect the facts. It just seems to me that:
- a majority of commenters on the forum disagree with Eich's position
- as gays form a fairly small part of the population at large, and I'm not aware of any overrepresentation of gay people on HN, it follows that the majority of commenters are straight
Ergo, it's likely that most people protesting against Eich's appointment on HN are straight, and that it's not a gay conspiracy.
I'm not sure where you saw a "wrong side" to my argument either. For the record, I disagree with his position, but I also recognize that it is shared by the majority of the population of California, and that it is entirely possible that for a man like Eich, 1000$ represents pocket change. In any case, I'm of the mind of letting his actions as CEO speak for him.