It speaks a lot to his integrity that he didn't. Would you rather have a CEO who says one thing in public and then goes and does another thing surreptitiously, or one who stands up for his beliefs even when they're unpopular?
It was once unacceptable to hold the opinion that different races were equal, and more recently it was unacceptable to hold the opinion that different genders were equal.
That is, your idea that social consensus determines right and wrong is really dangerous. We have historical examples where it proved to be a terrible guide to morality.
Why don't you let Brendan Eich play the victim and feel sorry for himself, he doesn't need any of your help.
http://www.freep.com/assets/freep/pdf/C4220110321.PDF
The basic question was: is there a rational basis to deny gay couples the same right straight couples have? One of the offered reasons for preventing gay marriage is that it was worse for children. That being a factual question, social science research was relevant. The short version: the judge, like other judges, found that the evidence offered favored the "gay people are just fine" side of things.
I fully support gay marriage and I personally think Brendan is on the wrong side of this issue, but I also fully support the right of people to hold their own opinions, even when other people find them unpopular. If they weren't allowed to hold unpopular opinions, then pretty much all the social progress we made in the last century - racial equality, feminism, gay rights, etc. - would never have happened.
The only people in this entire story that were/are trying to take away the rights of others were the people who pushed for Prop 8. The right to support legislation like Prop 8 remains intact. The right to not be criticized by others for doing so has never existed in the first place. There is no "right to not be criticized".
[Edit] The voting swings on this comment indicate to me that it is controversial, so I will attempt clear some things up:
* Whether or not you believe that same sex couples should be allowed to marry, the fact is that before Prop 8 they did have the right to marry.
* The purpose of Prop 8 was to remove this right, because the supporters of Prop 8 felt that it should not be a right.
* After this entire series of events, Brendan remains free to donate to similar political causes in the future. He remains free to publicly hold these beliefs. He remains free to be a CEO.
* The general public remains free to criticize Brendan for anything that they please.
* The rest of the general public remains free to criticize those criticizing Brendan for his political beliefs.
Each one of the rights currently afforded to people in a marriage or civil union should be split up and any two people for whatever reason should be able to opt into some, none or all of those rights.
I'm hoping that one day those pushing for additional rights afforded only to married people, straight or gay, get the exact same treatment that Eich did here.
Marriage shouldn't even be within the purview of the government, only religions.
For example, if I want to jointly own a home (and only a home with no other possessions jointly shared) with someone, we would not receive a total $500k capital gains exemption on the sale of the home after 5+ years of ownership. Only married people filing taxes jointly get this right. Instead, me and the other person would only be allowed a $250k exemption. How can such a situation possibly be fair? The correct abstraction would have been to allow up to $250k capital gains exemption for each individual on the deed. [0]
At the end of the day, we should be designing laws the way we design software. Strong separation of concerns should be a design goal when drafting legislation.
[0] http://charliedunn.com/_Sellers_Tips/Capital_Gains_Exclusion...
Why can't I have an easy way to pass on my estate to someone with all the same tax benefits without having to have sexual relations with that person? Why can't I get insurance options that can be extended to those I cohabitate with regardless of the nature of the relationship beyond the fact that we live together. Why are there not citizen affordances for other relationships such as extending rights to siblings as well? I'm talking exactly about all those same rights the gay community wants. Just like there is no reason many of those rights should be restricted to straight people, there is also no reason that many of those rights should be restricted to two people in a long-term sexual relationship. There's also no reason why we shouldn't be able to pick and choose which rights and obligations we want to opt into or which rights we may want to share with person A and which rights we may want to share with person B.
There is absolutely no reason in this day and age that we can't switch over to a la carte packages over 10-20 years. All you need to do is start offering those options on each of those rights individually and to let all the rights for married couples expire and for those that don't expire, you can work on sunsetting them once a suitable a la carte solution is available.
You do NOT have the right to judge anyone based on "race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty"
You violated Brendan Eich's human rights, it's that simple. Bigot.
However, "the right to not be judged or criticized by fellow citizens" is not a right that is outlined by the UDHR. Not as I am reading it anyway. Specifically which article and section details the right that you think Eich is being deprived of?
Nor are they isolated from historical context.
All you have to do is look at all the public figures who express views, and act on them in much more thorough ways, who get a free pass. Look at the all the famous Hollywood types with very sketchy behaviors in their backgrounds. Look at politicians as well, where it's even easier to find skeletons. Eich has been held to a standard that a whole lot of people in public life, CEOs, politicians, movie stars, sports heroes, would not live up to. Do we now move on to all of them?
The biggest problem I have with this situation is not that it happened to Eich, but that the mob has been so selective. There are plenty of people in the public life who have done far more than donate $1000 to a state referendum that, let's not forget, was popular enough to pass in one of the most liberal states in the Union, but haven't been hounded out their jobs for it.
All the folks celebrating that a moral victory has been won with Mozilla ought to consider what happens if this considerable power is put to an evil use, or a use for which they personally find objectionable. Don't think it can't happen. 100 years ago, Fascism was the big thing because it allowed the leaders to Get Things Done, and in fact, many good things were done in that era by dictators with tremendous power to make sweeping changes. But some other stuff happened, too.
Of course, I'm speaking in a political climate where I heard many people state in 2009 that they wished President Obama weren't limited by the Constitution so he could _really_ fix things. I've never heard such a frightening thought from an American in my life, yet I heard it from a number of people back when the President was elected. That isn't a political thing either, because it would scare me equally no matter who the person was talking about. Sure, I don't like President Obama, but I wouldn't want that kind of power in the hands of someone who was the combined reincarnation of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Gandhi, Winston Churchill, and the Buddha himself either.
If we are living in a country where people are that ignorant of history and of human nature, then this society isn't long for the world anyway.
Maybe the tide is changing and this the start of a new era of populist activism. I guess you have nothing to worry about as long as you hold popular opinions... and, of course, those _never_ change.
Mob rule is a powerful thing and genies never go back in the bottle after they've been let out.
Eich paid good money in an attempt to restrict how people in Mozilla's home state live their lives — some of them even Mozilla employees. He expressed no regret for doing so, then became CEO of Mozilla, a company that virtually defines itself by freedom and inclusion.
There were myriad ways he could've attempted to resolve this, and he did precisely none of them. That he would rather give up the job entirely speaks volumes about what he finds important.
People aren't taking this seriously because in this case they disagree with Eich's opinion, so they feel it's all okay. They're letting that blind them.
What if Eich actually had the "right" opinion? And this is hypothetical at this point--I'm not talking about gay rights anymore. Suppose you are an oracle and you know that the mob was wrong rather than right and Eich was right rather than wrong. Don't fool yourself into thinking that things would be different. They wouldn't, and this has caused extraordinary difficulty in righting many wrongs of the past, including slavery. It can severely impede the democratic process because people are afraid to hold dissenting opinions--not due to legal ramifications, but social ones.
There are and have been plenty of movements to boycott companies that I am certain are misguided. "One Million Moms" is an example of a group that organizes pushback on companies that I feel is wrong.
Even in those cases, it is their right. If they had been putting pressure on Eich to step down because he supported same-sex marriage, I would maintain that no rights were being removed from Eich.
What are you proposing? That we shouldn't object to injustices, on the off chance we're wrong and too many people agree with us?
We can all only do what we think is best. Eich thought he was making the world a better place by trying to block gay marriage. It seems the world disagrees.
Actually there were a small number of rich and powerful people with the "right" opinions. They could hardly voice those opinions or they'd risk losing all that power and, as a consequence, wealth.
The whole point is that the people who had the power to do something about it didn't do anything for a very long time, for the most part, because it would ruin their reputation, at best.
> What are you proposing? That we shouldn't object to injustices, on the off chance we're wrong and too many people agree with us?
Yes and no. You conveniently phrased this as a loaded question, making it hard for me to respond.
No, we shouldn't ignore injustices. But yes, we should be tolerant of certain things to a certain degree. But it turns out we already have a centuries-old system that allows us to do this without resorting to public shaming and near vigilante tactics. I'm suggesting we just use that system rather than trying to scare people into sharing our opinions.
> It seems the world disagrees.
You're jumping the gun. It's entirely possible that many (or even most) people who are against gay marriage don't even know who Brendan Eich is.
Not so fast. Rabbling at a village gathering is surely the most ancient form of protest. :)
But you're dropping a lot of context here. This wasn't just some dude with some job holding some opinion. He acted to enforce his opinion on others, then became CEO of a company whose entire schtick is to not do that sort of thing.
That nobody has come out in support of Eich's opinion is exactly why he's unfit to be CEO: Mozilla believes in some things, the people who care deeply about Mozilla also believe in those things, and Eich actively opposed those things. He represents the company, and he has a known history of acting against what the company is supposed to stand for.
If it turned out Ballmer had donated to prop 8, would there be nearly this outrage? I seriously doubt it; I would still call him something uncomplimentary on Twitter, but it's not like I have any existing philosophical expectations of either him or Microsoft. People called Eich a dick two years ago, but nobody expected him to quit his job.
Given the content of the OP, this is demonstrably untrue. He attempted to be a CEO and was effectively prevented from doing so.
Nothing and nobody forced him to resign. He could've weathered the storm and risked Mozilla's most valuable asset, its goodwill, over his beliefs. It would've been a terrible thing to do to the company and made him a terrible CEO, but nothing stood in his way.
Claiming that someone's rights were violated because he voluntarily quit his job is patently absurd.
He will not be barred by the government from doing all of those things. He is not being prevented from exercising his right to be a CEO. He was asked to step down by many people, as is their right, and he did.
I understand the demand for equal treatment doesn't change though.
There is no such thing. I agree with them, and under various moral philosophies I could make convincing arguments that they're right, but you're off the rails.
Or, if you've really found an objective measure of right and wrong that isn't based on a subjective positing of objectivity, you've upended an entire field of study, have a very rewarding future and are totally set for life. You'll just have to forgive us for not waiting with baited breath.
but it's downright _scary_ how people get so _zealous_ once they firmly believe they are "objectively right".
i don't know if i'm happy or sad this tendency has been adopted by the leftwingers. of course it will help them to battle the rightwingers (who always felt "righteous"), and let me be crystal clear i want the rightwing crushed, but i can't help but think that something has been lost.
i'm unsure you can _beat_ intolerance _with_ intolerance.
-bowerbird
p.s. go ahead and downvote this; it will prove my point.
This entire affair is troubling. This individual's livelihood was affected because of his socio-political views and activities. Your 2nd paragraph correctly underlines the more important issue.
Or for a less cut-and-dry example: If he had donated to Pro-Life organizations, would you expect him to be accepted as CEO of Planned Parenthood?
Your socio-political views and activities have consequences. If you believe strongly enough in them, you will weather them. His views and activities certainly had consequences for a lot of California families.
He still works for Mozilla (as far as I can tell) and he almost certainly still has a significant say in how it's run through the shares he almost certainly has (I can't find any specifics on it in a cursory search, but it would be astounding if it were not so).
But when he made that donation, he was tying himself to a cause. As an officer of a company he is a face of that company. This is true in all companies and for all causes, and it was his choice to make the donation and the company's choice to appoint him to a position where that donation would reflect poorly on them.
Nope.
> he almost certainly still has a significant say in how
it's run through the shares he almost certainly has Shares? We're talking about Mozilla. It belongs 100% to the non-profit Mozilla Foundation.
That is a shame if so, as his technical contributions are still clearly valuable.
[edit] https://brendaneich.com/2014/04/the-next-mission/ answers my own question.
And I'm okay with that.
I very much disagree with the KKK, but I believe in a society where they have the right to think whatever they want about non-white people, without getting harmed.
"Not given death threats" != "Giving a free pass".
If you want to kill people who you disagree with, are you any better than them?
Intolerance toward Prop 8 supporters is appropriate due to the threat to liberty that the restriction of same sex marriage creates.
There is no need to be tolerant of someone who threatens your security and liberty.
This was never about security or liberty (although it's a bit like the Monty Python sketch - "We're being oppressed, we're being oppressed! We really are!".)
I'm not saying there isn't discrimination against homosexuals in other areas, but this wasn't it.
This was basically a semantic debate about marriages versus civil unions.
A majority of Californians (Eich included) took the viewpoint that marriage was a traditional institution, and if people had a new style of relationship, they should have a new term for it, even if it had the same privileges (not rights - government's can't grant rights).
However, another group said no, we want to use the same word for it (I assume for ideological reasons, as opposed to purely utilitarian ones).
So no, please don't hoist the whole "WE'RE BEING OPPRESSED" flag - it doesn't help your case
The point of Prop 8 was to prevent gay marriage, and all the privileges that marriage includes. That is, to strip a civil right from gay people.
That same sex marriage, isn't a new style of relationship, and that civil unions could never provide the same "privileges" is the whole point.
It's not just semantics, it's about real people.
For thousands of years, we've had the concept of "marriage" and "families", and (more or less) monogamous relationships.
Central to this has been the idea of a man and a woman procreating, and raising children.
Now, perhaps we'll evolve away from that - maybe we'll simply clone people.
Or perhaps we'll have special breeder castes, and we'll raise the children away from their (biological) parents in learning centres.
Or perhaps the idea of having children will seem antiquated, and we'll just die away as a species.
Who knows.
But this (large scale homosexual relationships in society) is most definitely a new thing - and procreation, and nuclear families have no place in it.
Hence this whole ideological fight over whether to call it "marriage" (with all the associated ideas of families and raising children) or something else entirely.
Look, for many cultures - marriage aren't about love (or aren't solely about love) - this is very much a Western/modern thing.
For them, marriages are part of society - a married couples has responsibilities to the society.
And the family unit, and raising children are a big part of it.
You need to look outside your own experiences.
That's what I don't get about this whole fracas.
You have all these people on HN screaming and jumping up and down, saying EICHS IS A BIGOT! ONLY MY VIEWPOINT IS CORRECT! IT'S SO OBVIOUS?!!!!
Well, if they were as "big-minded" as they claim, then they'd see that there many people with differing opinions to you. Shock!
I think this poster said it best (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7526663)
Don't support welfare? You're against poor people. Support welfare? You're against the working man. You're pro-choice? You're against babies. You're pro-life? You're against women.
On the other hand, there's no absolute right to be a public-facing CEO, and it's not unreasonable for the public to name-and-shame companies for their stances on public issues and the people they choose as corporate leaders.
In some cases, this means right-wing activists boycotting and gay-marriage advocates praising Target for same-sex wedding registry ads; in others, it's blue-staters deciding not to eat at Chik-Fil-A for its right-wing political donations, and red-staters buying that 24-piece combo for the exact same reason. Personally, I do think that Eich did all the right things as far as policy and PR goes, and I'm actually a bit sorry that he's stepping down.
I think that the real sin here was not his political donations, it was the fact that he and MoCo didn't make at least cursory efforts to wargame out the possible PR issues that they ran into, which meant they were unprepared to deal with the firestorms.
It's obvious that a significant number of board members weren't happy with Eich's promotion on strategic grounds, and the Prop 8 issue was just the icing on the big poisonous cake of bad publicity. Generally speaking, if you're the CEO, the company should be in the news, not you, and Eich was getting hammered left and right.
Citation needed.
Pretty sure that is incorrect.
Mozilla =~= Google
I see the point that it's different for a non-profit than it might be for a for-profit, but I'd also think differences in primary focus matter too.
If I was looking at the conversation over the last week as a representative, I'd suppose that Mozilla is more of an LGBT standard-bearer than an open-web advocacy group.
One could argue that's a ridiculously narrow window to focus on, and that's probably correct, but it's no more narrow a focus than that turned on Eich's donations vs the whole of his behavior and what he had to offer as CEO.
He was the CEO of the for-profit Mozilla Corporation, not a non-profit.
We have the exact same protection for political expression as East Germany. That's freedom? "The Lives of Others" was a warning, not an instruction manual.
Mozilla made a business decision that the guy was a liability for a public non-profit. That's capitalism, not totalitarianism.
The Hitler thing is uncalled for.
Or even closer to people in Northern Ireland still who will choose or avoid a Catholic/Protestant-owned store because of strong Unionist/Nationalist beliefs, even when the store itself has no basis.
Or a boycott on a chain of stores in the US where the owner contributes to anti-immigration policies, even when the chain itself has taken no political stance.
These later ones fall squarely under a right of free association. The East Germany comparison does not. That's why this comparison is malarkey.
With the Red Scare (which started decades before the Cold War), the government was involved early on, and at a high level. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Red_Scare for some of the details of what happened in the 1920s. Senator McCarthy of course used the bully pulpit to push anti-communist policies. The House Un-American Activities Committee played a key role in starting the Hollywood blacklist.
Of course there were certainly non-government pressures as well. People were anti-bolshevik and worried that the US would be overthrown just like Russia was. Others saw anti-Communism as a way to frighten people, and use that freight as a way to gain power. But without the government we wouldn't have had laws like the Taft–Hartley Act, which for 18 years prohibited union leaders from being members of the Communist Party. The Communist Control Act of 1954 is still on the books.
With Eich there's absolutely no government involvement, and the opposition is based on the right of association. Some Mozilla employees, some volunteers, some citizens, and some organizations don't want to associate themselves with Mozilla.
With East Germany, the police wanted to be involved in the actions of dissenters, and had the power to do so. With the Red Scares, the US government also used their power to force others to not associate with Communists. But with Eich .. what power do the dissenters have other than their right of free association?
That's why these cases are very different.
Mel Gibson ruined his career with unpopular statements, Tom Cruise nearly did, and nobody started talking about the Stasi then. The Stasi comment was completely uncalled for itself, a Godwin rejoinder was begging to be made.
Eich went beyond merely having and expressing an unpopular opinion. He took action to support the effort to have his opinion forced upon others by the government. He couldn't restrain himself to respectful disagreement, and that's why he's suffering more severe consequences.
You are advocating a double standard. Why is it ok for people to support "gay rights" being forced upon others by the government, but not ok for people to support traditional marriage values being forced upon others by the government? In either case, there are people who do not want the government to force those opinions upon them. So, if the majority is going one way, you're saying the minority should do nothing other than "respectfully disagree"?
The East Germany comparison is actually quite appropriate here.
The government derives its authority from the people. If the people go right ahead and oppress you themselves instead of going through government processes, you aren't any less oppressed.
All those who participate in a boycott are of course also oppressive. So are those on strike.
Do you really think this is the exact same as East Germany?
It's tough to bear, but we do allow private clubs to discriminate on the basis of race. That's part of what freedom of association means in the US. (For that matter, in most states, if I am a business owner and I have two employees, then I'm still allowed to discriminate in the workplace on the basis of race, religion, etc.)
Your point can be valid, if there is widespread inability to get work when publicly holding a minority viewpoint. That does not seem to be the case here. All evidence is that Mozilla would have been able to continue in some fashion with Eich as CEO, and that Eich could easily get work elsewhere.
If you mean you form an angry Internet mob to try and force someone's employer to fire them just because they talk too loudly, you're crazy. If not, I don't think you're making a fair comparison here.
> Do you really think this is the exact same as East Germany?
No, I think it has much more in common with the Red Scare in 1950s America. "This guy holds a political opinion that would abridge my liberty if it took over the country. Let's get him fired."
> Your point can be valid, if there is widespread inability to get work when publicly holding a minority viewpoint.
The fact that these people aren't consistent in trying to get Prop. 8 supporters fired doesn't change the fact that, if they were consistent, "there is widespread inability to get work when publicly holding a minority viewpoint" would probably be the case. The lack of consistency in putting their beliefs into practice doesn't really make me like the philosophy of personally targeting your political enemies any better.
As to the Red Scare reference, see my comment in the sibling thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7526405 , which starts:
> "I don't want to do business with a company which has Eich as a CEO" is rather not the same as the Stasi. It's closer to US sentiment during the Red Scare of "I won't do business with any company which employes a member of the Communist Party." (The US still has a number of anti-Communist laws still on the books that I consider reprehensible.)
(I then point out a couple things which I think are even closer.)
Even then, there was several decades of government involvement, from state representatives to Congress and the president. That's not the case here. And without that high-level government involvement, we likely wouldn't have had the Hollywood blacklist and laws to prevent Communists and leftists from being able to work.
As to your consistency point, you propose that the issue is "trying to get [all] Prop. 8 supporters fired". You haven't shown that to be true. It could be limited mostly to non-profit organizations which promote community development and "doing good." (Mozilla.org says "Doing good is part of our code".)
Nor might have you shown it's a universal goal. As Sarah Silverman once said "If we can send a person to the moon, we can send someone with AIDS to the moon, and then someday we can send everybody with AIDS to the moon." Clearly a partial goal is acceptable even if a universal goal isn't.
There are also strategic goals. If I boycotted apartheid South Africa am I inconsistent for not boycotting other countries with deep racial, religious, and caste segregation? Perhaps. Or perhaps I realize that South Africa is a special case where a boycott might work.
But it's obviously a totally different case when you become the CEO. You are meant to be the highest public-facing representative of the corporation. It was publicly known that Eich holds very conflicting views to what many consider a basic civil right, and per his interviews seems to still hold. I can fully understand how this is an impossible equation with leading a company that claims to be committed to equality and inclusiveness.
Do not confuse freedom of speech with lack of public accountability.
Presumably, Mozilla Corporation's board and its sole owner (Mozilla Foundation).
That's not to say I wasn't uncomfortable about the CEO appointment though.
Plenty of people on this forum have radical political philosophies, ranging from anarcho-capitalist to communist. Some of them are probably far more radical than Brendan Eich, who might be utterly mild in his politics otherwise. And yet because they are not speaking out against individual rights, all these bomb-throwing radicals coexist.
If he had defended or explained his position on the basis of religious beliefs -- this might not have ended any differently, but it would at least give the community context for why he feels the way he feels. Not having that context and his outright refusal to elaborate on it, only made it worse.
I'm aware of one board member that's true for. Note that the Wall Street Journal blog post that everyone has been quoting on the board member issue pretty much just got the story wrong. Two of the board members had been meaning to move on to other things for a while and just stuck it out to the end of the CEO search, since that's one of the board's key functions.
What makes this obvious? I haven't heard any statement to that effect from any of them.
How is it obvious? The board appoints the CEO. It's true that several board members left shortly after the appointment, and some outsiders have claimed that it was in protest, but I've not seen any confirmation of that. At least some of the ones leaving must have approved, because the remaining board members, I believe, do not have a majority.
I've seen other claims that these people had already planned to leave, and were just staying around to finish the CEO search. Some evidence for this is the fact that the people who left also announced their next major engagements. People who quite on short notice in protest generally don't know where they are going next.
But, the thing is, these ideas have trajectories. The idea that slavery is wrong or women should have the right to vote never got less accepted over time.
For example: Iran's official policy went from being progressive to oppressive, but it was a result of the Islamists moving into power in the 70s. They didn't just suddenly convince everybody that "hey we should oppress women". All of those people were there, and had been there for a long time. They just weren't in power.
This cannot be the case, because those ideas have not existed since the beginning of time. They had an origin and therefore an upward trajectory towards their reification in law.
Let's go to first principles here. Which, for America at least, come down to equality and liberty. Principles enshrined in the founding documents of this country. Oppressing people because of their sexual orientation is not a neutral proposition in regards to those principles, it is very much an exception to the principles of equality and liberty.
The two scenarios you describe are NOT and have never been symmetrical.
For example, the KKK is horrendously ostracized in this country. And I think that's OK. But while they might be ostracized, KKK members still enjoy their rights, they still have the opportunity for free speech. And I think that's important too. I wouldn't equate the ostracization of open racism with McCarthyism and I don't think most folks would either.
The lesson from the McCarthyism scare isn't that ostracizing people for their beliefs is wrong. That's a valuable, even essential, function of society and an important aspect of free expression. Although we should definitely be careful in its use. The lesson is that hounding people for mostly private activities or activities in their past is wrong, and conducting public witch-hunts using the power of the government where the flimsiest of evidence is allowed to decide someone's fate is also wrong.
On the other, you have oppressed people who face horrors. Social movements who challenge the powerful. If you're black in the US, you're vulnerable to incarceration in the country which is the world's biggest jailer. If you're a woman, you're a target of violence and subordination. If you're not entirely heterosexual, you get abuse and humiliation heaped on you.
You mention history; would you compare Turing's fate to Eich's?
Anyway, nonprofits like Mozilla have serious problems if they're so top-down that your ability to contribute is limited by your distance to the CEO crown.
We cannot compare Eich's position of denying a freedom to some people to those of the people who stood for racial equality and feminism.
"Sec. 7.5. Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."
Now, whether we should distribute food stamps or whether there should be benefits for married couples is another argument, but merely expressing an opinion on the definition is certainly not the same as denying someone an essential liberty.
The bottom line for me is that America is supposed to be a place of freedom and equality. If we're going to say that a man and woman can get married, then we have to say that two men or two women can also get married (assuming consenting adults, etc.).
Food stamps are different. They're about helping out people who are struggling to survive (at least that's the idea. Don't want to turn this into an argument about food stamps).
I think you missed what I was trying to say, sorry I wasn't more clear.
> The bottom line for me is that America is supposed to be a place of freedom and equality.
Freedom, yes. Equality? That's tougher to quantify. America certainly has a notion of "inalienable rights", but is Marriage one of them? It doesn't seem so, because if you want to "marry" a 5-year-old, we don't call that a marriage. And we don't call polygamous relationships marriages, at least not for state purposes.
I'm claiming that the Prop 8 campaign is not a civil rights issue, because there are no "fundamental rights" being violated. There's nothing in the constitution that guarantees your right to be married.
Furthermore, the only actual harm that you can claim to have been done to you as a result of Prop8 is a denial of certain financial benefits. That's where the food stamp argument comes in. I'm not equivocating the two situations in a moral sense. I'm merely pointing out that we allow discrimination which we've deemed to be morally neutral for the purposes of allowing access to government benefits.
> If we're going to say that a man and woman can get married, then we have to say that two men or two women can also get married
Why do you make that assertion?
This isn't a situation where he's sticking his neck out and weathering flack of negative personal repercussions to achieve a point, at least, not yet. If Brendan wants to use this experience to further voice his support against gay marriage, he can certainly do that.
But thus far, Brendan has gone out of his way to NOT discuss the unpopular opinion he holds -- he hasn't even explained why he feels the way he feels.
It's sort of hard to draw an analogy between someone who stuck their neck out and said "not supporting LGBT rights is wrong and bigoted and I'm going to talk about it, even if it means losing my job. And I'm going to continue talking about it until things change." and someone who says "yes, I have to confirm I gave money to this cause b/c it's public record, but I refuse to explain or defend my position, stop asking me about it, it doesn't matter."
It's not about freedom of speech, but actually holding you accountable for what you say, which is a great thing.
[1] http://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-ceo-gay-marriage-firestorm-...
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/01/mozilla-ce...
Can you envision any scenario where he would be able to express his views that wouldn't have angered the mob even more, without modifying his views to be those of the mob?
> It's not about freedom of speech, but actually holding you accountable for what you say, which is a great thing.
For this, pg's "What You Can't Say" essay cuts both ways:
"The statements that make people mad are the ones they worry might be believed. I suspect the statements that make people maddest are those they worry might be true."
And if he had said this in a blog post at any before becoming CEO, he could have skated through this easily.
On the other hand, if he still believes gay people to be inferior and not deserving of full civil rights, then yes, people could have reasonably questioned how he could be the boss of some of them.
Sec. 7.5. Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.
Gay people are inferior and not deserving of full civil rights.
If you really want to attack his ideas, attack their best interpretation, not their worst.
We have no idea what Eich's ideas are, because he has refused to say. But I can and will judge him by his actions. And no, I don't believe that's a straw man. I don't believe it's possible to have a rational and consistent view that includes both the 14th amendment (explicitly naming equality before the law as a civil right) and using the power of the law to keep gay couples from marrying like any other couple.
Back in the day, they weren't allowed to hold unpopular opinions. The history of civil rights is a story of many people going to jail for their beliefs, and then being force-fed when they performed hunger strikes and being lynched by roving mobs. The righteousness of their ideas became apparent because they clung to those beliefs and refused to budge until physical force moved them, and because they never renounced their beliefs despite the torment of their oppressors. To paraphrase Ghandi "You can kill me if you want, and you will have my dead body. But you will not have my obedience."
I'd argue that the stakes are not nearly as high here. We're not talking about sending Brendan Eich to jail. He is free to move about the world and continue making boatloads of cash at whatever firm is willing to hire the foremost JS expert on the planet. We just don't want him running this particular organization.
Therein lies the problem. He clearly does not think he is wrong. If he made an apology it would only be for show.
Lying to appease the masses in this scenario would be no different than is he had the inverse opinion (not discriminating against gays and then telling everyone you do).
That's crazy, man. I can't imagine it would take too much effort to come up with some popular opinions that reasonable people could disagree with.
"Unacceptable"? Really? I don't get this mindset. The core premise of a free and open society is that you can hold any opinion you want, no matter how unpopular or "unacceptable".
Personally, I absolutely value this kind of integrity. An individual should stand firm to their principles and stand by them, regardless of what "society" or "out culture" think.
Of course, there may be consequences (economic, or whatever) as a result of having that opinion, at least if you're vocal about it. But to suggest that one should change one's views to simply fit the majority, is one of the most disturbing things I could imagine.
So I think I agree with you. If he had come out and said he had changed his mind, it would have been a small victory for gay rights at the expense of his own integrity.
So it isn't accepted by everyone yet. So why should he or me or you ever change opinion because majority says so?
If majority says so, what's the point of minority opinion? You don't have to agree that gay deserve equality, but once the law is written, you have to accept that the gay is protected under the law.
Until all the states accepts to give marriage equality to all, the expectation of everyone to accept is hard. You don't have to agree with my disagreement in order to accept that we can agree to disagree.
Dude, what?
What if he doesn't feel it was wrong? Furthermore, who the fuck cares what he believes and what he spends his money on in his own PRIVATE time? That's COMPLETELY outside of his job at the Mozilla foundation which he's been working at just fine for 15 fucking years.
Your comment genuinely irritates me.
If there was a fear of discriminatory treatment, we would've heard about it much sooner.
"We haven't detected X, ergo X doesn't exist" is an obviously false notion. It's false even in the same situation, but it's even more obviously wrong in a different one. As CTO, he would have had a hard time making a bigoted technical decision. But as CEO, he's in charge of all sorts of stuff where a subtle bias could be expressed, and there's no longer an executive above him who could hold him accountable.
But contrary to what you're trying to link it to, that does not affect his professional life or the way he managed mozilla up until this point. There's simply no evidence of it. There's no logical fallacy. There's just no evidence that he's done anything discriminatory. No angry anonymous mozilla blog posts about brendan. No company leaks. nothing.
Saying that because he's CEO and in charge and doesn't have someone to hold him accountable so he can do whatever he wants...outlines your ignorance of company structure and...office politics. Sure, a CEO can call the shots, but Brendan had been in charge of many things at Mozilla for a long time and could've realistically gotten rid of people or shuffled them around whenever he wanted to. But he didn't.
Could he have been secretly scheming to get rid of "the company gays" at Mozilla for 15 years and only now finally realized his master plan that he was CEO? I honestly, seriously, doubt it.
The fact that you cannot, and will not separate personal life from business is what truly worries me. Many people are cooperative and productive despite having different beliefs and backgrounds. Sometimes they can offer insight from a different perspective and sometimes they can be a hindrance. This is a core prospect of working with a group of people, and it is a great advantage. Brendan has shown that he wasn't a hindrance the 15 years he was at Mozilla, and he's given back a lot to the open source community.
On an off note, and I am not implying that you are doing this at all, surrounding yourself by a group of people that hold the same mindset is bad. It creates an echo chamber and allows for really terrible ideas to flourish.
I'm not accusing him of secretly scheming. I am saying that helping to strip marriage rights from gay people -- which is indisputably what his donation did -- is reasonable cause for employees and partners to suspect anti-gay animus.
It's up to each individual to judge his actions. If you would like to give him one scorecard titled "at work" and one titled "not at work" and believe them unrelated, great. Then you can make your judgments about working at Mozilla on that basis. But that is a very particular view. You don't get to decide that for everybody. Me, I think that people are unitary individuals, and their beliefs don't change depending on what building they've walked into.
You can only do this successfully if you are prepared to discuss the reasons for your opinions in public. Eich isn't.
If he'd at least come out and said "yes, I oppose gay marriage, but I have no intention of involving that with Mozilla" then I would still not be thrilled but I would respect him more. As it stands, I know he won't talk about what he believes publicly, but he will merrily support it privately.
Anybody with an ounce of integrity couldn't claim with straight face that gay marriage negatively affects their personal or religious beliefs and freedoms.
Not standing up for their beliefs but surreptitiously acting on them anyway is exactly what people like Eich do.
On the other hand, Eich probably didn't make such utilitarian calculation, and followed "do not lie" deontology instead. Pity.
On the other hand, imagine you have two choices. You can either lie, or Google Chrome achieves 90% market share, all of web runs on Pepper, and there is no more open web. (Let's call this world "Google Earth".) Mozilla's mission is to prevent such world, right? Do you seriously think not lying is the right thing to do in this case?
Now imagine you have choices of lying and making Google Earth 10% more likely.
Now imagine you have choices of lying and making Google Earth 1% more likely.
How much Google Earth worth is not lying? Eich probably believed him being CEO is worth some reduction in probability of Google Earth. I would be surprised "not lying" has more utility than such probability reduction. I conclude he didn't decide not to lie because of utilitarian calculation.
It's ironic that bigots of Brendan's ilk strongly believe that it's possible for gays to change their sexual preference, while they continue to cling to what they believe in the face of all the facts that prove them wrong.
The collateral damage of advocating a world with more liars (which is what you are doing) is gigantic, because you are now forcing everybody to waste (more) mental energy on trying to discern truth from lie.