Comment by panarky | Hacker News Reader

Comment by panarky | Hacker News Reader

  ... it was hard to watch as people who should know better pulled
  out the Chick-Fil-A playbook

That's exactly right. By all means, protest a corporation that uses corporate resources to fund hate. That's not what happened at Mozilla.

  I am equally disappointed in Mozillians and in demagogues who didn’t
  see the irony in hounding someone for their private opinion
  because of "intolerance."

Mozilla is beautiful because they've united very different people for a common, worthy purpose. To accomplish that, they must firewall personal opinions, politics and prejudices that are not relevant to their mission.

That firewall has now been breached. It's scary to think that an important organization with a critical mission could be damaged by this breach.

  If this is the gay rights movement today – hounding our opponents
  with a fanaticism more like the religious right than anyone
  else – then count me out. If we are about intimidating the free
  speech of others, we are no better than the anti-gay bullies
  who came before us.

Well said and incisively reasoned, Andrew Sullivan.

He basically echoes all the points I tried to make, and got hounded for making. But I think folks on the internet are just really fond of a good lynching once and a while. It's a consistent pattern.

This scandal was really weird from a HN commenter's perspective. For me it was the first time I experienced "wild veering" of comments, where I would write a comment that was downvoted multiple times within a few minutes and then later see it climb to thirty or so positive karma.

I was very disappointed to watch in real time as this post was moderated off the HN front page and into oblivion. It happened at 8:46 PM PDT on April 3.

Once it reached #24 on the first page, even as it was gaining points and comments, this post quickly fell several pages.

Yes, we had a few posts on this subject already hit the main page, with one garnering over 900 comments. But especially when we're dealing with an issue with such obvious free speech implications, insightful articles like these should be allowed to run their natural course on HN.

Being against gay marriage is not free speech, it's plain and simple hate, don't try to flip the table like that.

Donating and voting for prop 8, and therefore not in favor of redefining their "institution of marriage" (ignorant as that may be on their part) is not plain and simple hate, it's clear that you didn't even bother to read the blog post if you're willing to trivialize this issue like that. Even if you don't respect Brendan's beliefs, beliefs that I certainly don't respect, please stop trying to turn this into a black and white, "tolerant" vs "bigot" issue.

At some point, all sorts of horrible "opinions" where just that -- opinions. Society shifts and those opinions become unacceptable and revolting. The political landscape has shifted a lot in 6 years, and being against marriage equality is rapidly becoming akin to being a racist or sexist, based on broad public opinion.

I look at it from a practicality standpoint: abolishing the state-recognized marriage institution and just leaving religions to squabble amongst each other while moving everyone to civil partnerships for the benefits is impractical. So marriage is going to have to be redefined, whether they like it or not.

Most of the people I know who are against gay marriage (yes, I know some such people) aren't against gay people being considered married by the state. Civil unions, and most other forms of marriage ceremony, are A-OK with them.

People against gay marriage are, as far as I'm aware, really just against gay people being considered married by the (Christian) church, because--in their opinion--Christianity has a specific definition of "marriage", and gay marriage doesn't qualify.

It seems to just be a bunch of people talking past one-another. Each group sees their definition of "marriage" ("marriage" as in "legally considered together", or "marriage" as in "accepted as a couple by your local congregation") as the only one that actually matters, and so obviously that's the one their opponents are arguing about as well.

Was Prop 8 about the Christian definition of marriage? It wasn't, it was about the LEGAL government regulated institution of marriage. Marriages by the way pre-date Christianity.

It isn't two groups talking past each other, it is one group trying to get their religious values instituted as government regulations.

Letting a same sex couple get marriage by a judge, in a courthouse doesn't do anything to harm the internal religious definition of marriage... it is the government regulated one.

I am all for banning marriage as a government institution and only having civil unions. Hell don't even call them civil unions, call them flipflapadingdongs if you want, but as long as they are done by government they must be equal, playing name games is BS.

This faux outrage over one man's views, which were hardly extremist given they were shared by 7 million Californians in a vote, has robbed Mozilla of its co-founder. Who the hell is Hampton Catlin to call a boycott? I doubt anyone had even heard of him or his software company.

Message to Hampton Catlin and Michael Lintorn Catlin: if you want to make a brave stand for gay rights, why don't you start protesting outside a mosque or an embassy where under Islam the penalty for simply being gay is DEATH ?

[1] Goodbye, Firefox Marketplace: http://www.teamrarebit.com/blog/2014/03/24/goodbye_firefox_m...

[2] Five Reasons Eich Should Step Down: http://www.teamrarebit.com/blog/2014/03/28/five-reasons-eich...

[3] A Sad Victory: http://www.teamrarebit.com/blog/2014/04/03/a-sad-victory/

Plain and simple "hate"? Have you considered the idea that they are trying to defend what they consider a social institution as important -to them- as "property" is for you? Or "money"?

Because it may be so and not hate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com