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Comment by batiudrami | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately Eich's opinion (and monetary contributions) are damaging to others, which is why it's an issue. It's not "I like blue soccer balls and not red ones", it is "those with red soccer balls are immoral and therefore should not be allowed to play soccer". The campaign is not trying to force him to like red soccer balls, it is to accept that he should not be able to prevent those who like red soccer balls (or, as is likely, were genetically predisposed to only like red soccer balls) from playing soccer at all.

Whether or not he should have lost his job/been forced to resign/felt compelled to resign is another question. I don't think anyone would debate that he has been bad for Mozilla in his time with them so far.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but Eich donated to a cause that believes the word "marriage" has religious connotations that make it incompatible with a union between two people of the same sex.

That argument in and of itself doesn't cause any harm to anyone.

The harm comes when government institutionalizes marriage in a way that gives it greater rights or scope than someone in a civil union would have. In many states, this isn't the case.

Personally, I don't particularly care what the word marriage means, I'm not religious in any meaningful way. But arguing that the simple inability to use the word marriage does harm to a person is a pretty weak argument in my mind.

Further, your analogy is wrong. From his perspective, imagine you always played soccer with a round ball, and couldn't use your hands. Suddenly a group of people show up with oval spheroid and claim you should be able to use your hands. They then say that not letting them call their sport soccer is unfair and harmful. But ya know, we don't call that sport soccer, because it's different, we call it football.

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As an aside, I think the proper way to handle the marriage debate would have been to remove any and all rights associated with the word, and force all couples to get a civil union. Tax that instead. Churches are welcome to marry people all they desire (on both sides, gay or straight as they please according to their beliefs)

I would be upset if I used an analogy on HN and the first reply didn't include some form of 'your analogy is wrong' ;).

That's a reasonable argument except that gay civil unions were (are?) illegal in California so it is actively denying rights to people.

>As an aside, I think the proper way to handle the marriage debate would have been to remove any and all rights associated with the word, and force all couples to get a civil union. Tax that instead. Churches are welcome to marry people all they desire (on both sides, gay or straight as they please according to their beliefs)

That could work. I don't see why churches need to have any bearing over the specific term 'marriage' though. Sure it has a religious basis but so do a huge number of things which have been appropriated for the current time. Let them call it a 'Christian marriage' if they want. I don't know, Australia is much less religious than the US so perhaps I lack some perspective.

I think once the legal implications are removed, churches would lose their control over the word by default. It doesn't have meaning outside of the church at that point, and the government "shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" So if gay people wanted to get married, no one could stop them.

Side note, California had (and still does, as far as I'm aware) domestic partnerships. From the wiki page one it:

It affords the couple "the same rights, protections, and benefits, and... the same responsibilities, obligations, and duties under law..." as married spouses

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