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Comment by Aloha | Hacker News Reader

I'm openly gay - I came out at 15.

I agree with you, I don't think this is a scandal, its effectively mob/victors justice - why should there be social or employment consequences for expressing profoundly held religious beliefs - in my mind this is just as bad as when employers fire employees for being gay.

Now personally, I'm a about as religious as a door stop and honestly in my opinion most of the arguments against gay marriage either seem to boil down to "I think its icky" or "My deity tells me its bad", that said, I think anyone ought to be welcome to hold opinions contrary to mine, and speak them in the public square without fear of reprisal - so long as they are not violating the law, or actively discriminating personally.

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With respect, isn't the process funding a law to make gay marriage illegal actively discriminating against said same people? It seems fair, I think, to call someone out for something like that. What if his religion called for outlawing marriage between some other group of consenting adults? Perhaps I'm just less willing to make the free speech street one: he can express his opinion, but we shouldn't express our opposition to his opinion. Seems reasonable that it should flow both ways, if that's what you're saying. I may have misconstrued your point, if I did, meaculpa.

The thing I find most challenging about the context of this whole story is this: if we extrapolate the moral position out properly, anyone that has ever - at any point in their life - been a bigot (in any way), been sexist in any way (toward men or women), or been racist in any way (toward blacks, whites, anyone), is to be disqualified from being Mozilla CEO. One comment at any point in a lifetime, should be enough to warrant exclusion and mob justice.

The typical response: oh, but that'd be going too far. It's only too far when it starts to ensnare most of the population. The mob likes easy, solitary targets, that could never include themselves.

I say let's see how this holds up under actual practice. Every Mozilla CEO must be diligently screened for having ever once said or done something hateful toward any possible category of persons.

Ever told a racist joke? Ever said something inappropriate to someone? Ever leered at a woman or man inappropriately? Ever supported a politician whose stated position was to discriminate against gay marriage? Disqualified. The mob is always a mass of hypocrites and cowards, unwilling to apply their projected standards to their own thoughts, behavior and choices.

It's essentially a mob of hysteria - using pitchforks, torches and the protection of the mob to uphold standards they would be unwilling to stand up for directly - by making a bunch of noise online, they can assuage their individual guilt for their inaction elsewhere.

Bullshit. All it would have taken would have been a "my position on this has evolved over time" statement and a $1k donation to a pro-LGBTQ organization, and the situation would have been defused.

Instead, Eich dug in his heels insisting that his personal opinions in this area would not affect his work as CEO. This might have actually been true, but it didn't seem credible.

Under Islam, the penalty for being gay is DEATH. Beheading, stoning or hanging, depends on how the Sharia court is feeling that day. So why don't all these activists start calling out and protesting outside mosques and embassies?

Perhaps the mob are cowards, more comfortable lynching one man over his views rather than tackling real persecution on a global scale.

I don't think it is, honestly. Nothing about his desire to suppress gay marriage speaks to how to treats people and individuals, nor how Mozilla would - look at Bill Marriott he also contributed to Prop 8, and Marriott is very well regarded for benefits to gays and lesbians (100% score as of 2014 for Marriott International) - in short, just because your personal views are X doesn't mean that X is the view your business will take.

If we don't defend the rights for free speech any of us could run the risk of being on the wrong end of that knife in the future.

Was Marriott well regarded before he (I'm assuming he was in charge at the time) contributed to Prop 8? Then he has a track record of not letting his personal views get in the way.

I think people were mostly unhappy that Eich has no track record in this regard - not that there's any reason to suspect he would be discriminating - and that he kept dodging the issue in interviews. It's a PR disaster on Mozilla's part - putting him in charge was always going to create an internet frenzy and the - possibly entirely innocent - coincidental departure of three board members does not look good.

Eh. I think it could all have been handled in a much wiser fashion by Mozilla and none of this would have happened.

Agreed. Laws reflect society's view of morality; on gay marriage, those views are changing and the laws haven't quite caught up. Now, I am very carefully not saying that it's okay to use the democratic system to persecute minorities, because it's not, but no sensible person is going to argue that laws against theft should be struck down because they persecute kleptomaniacs. There must exist a grey area somewhere in the middle of the scale where it's hard to tell whether the law is persecuting a minority or upholding a legitimate moral principle (the fact that euthanasia is illegal likely falls in that area right now), and though that grey area is hard to discern (contentious public political discussions would be a reasonable approximation though) I think at least in principle we should be able to respect other people's views on issues in it.

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