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Comment by oneeyedpigeon | Hacker News Reader

Some opinions are very difficult to separate from behaviour. When you hold the view that someone is less entitled because of their sexual orientation, it is probably difficult to prevent that from affecting your relationships with some members of your workforce, however well-intentioned you may be, however hard you might strive.

What about if Eich had donated money to an organisation trying to stop black people getting married? Would you still think him entitled to be the CEO of a commercial organisation, without dissent?

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I feel like your comparison of sexual orientation to ethnicity is a bit of a stretch. Marriage is something a lot of people have strong and (from my point of view) old-fashioned opinions on. The fact that he feel marriage is a bond between two members of a different gender does not necessarily mean he's going to actively discriminate members of the LGBT community in a professional environment.

It's of course possible that he might, but several things make me feel like he should have been given a chance to prove himself: * He made a public statement clarifying his personal beliefs would not affect his work at Mozilla. * He is being accused of discriminating at Mozilla, while as far as we know, no such thing has happened (yet). * Given the amount of backlash he has suffered because of his 6 year old contribution to some campaign, I'm sure he's smart enough to handle matters in which he might be strongly biased by delegating them to someone else.

I was outraged when his contribution came to light a few years ago, but I honestly feel like he's getting too harsh a treatment for what he did.

"I feel like your comparison of sexual orientation to ethnicity is a bit of a stretch."

Why?

Because, as he wrote just after that: "Marriage is something a lot of people have strong and (from my point of view) old-fashioned opinions on. The fact that he feel marriage is a bond between two members of a different gender does not necessarily mean he's going to actively discriminate members of the LGBT community in a professional environment."

People had (and have) a lot of strong and often (from my point of view) old fashioned views on ethnicity.

If I said that I don't think a black employee should be allowed to have the same voting rights as me (something which was historically the case and was felt to be reasonable by - for a long time - the majority), how much faith would you have in my not activity discriminating against them in a professional environment?

Less than I would have if you had spoken about marriage rights.

The difference being that to deny a group voting rights, it means you have something against that group specifically.

Whereas for marriage, it could just be that your notion of marriage as a custom (how you think marriage should be) is incompatible with the group performing it.

OK, let's make it direct then.

If you found a minister of a non-specific religion who refused to marry to black two people just because he just didn't see marriage in his faith as something that happened between black people, how much faith would you have that he had nothing against black people, that it was just about he saw marriage?

Well, if his religion stated so, then I would have no reason to doubt him.

Religion can have any arbitrary rule. No marriage for X group. No priesthood for Y group. That doesn't necessarily mean that it also sees Y group in a specific light otherwise.

And what if members of his religion has mixed views on the subject?

This is part of the problem with it as a religious argument - most religions don't have a unified view of the subject. To bring it back to the matter at hand there are plenty of Christian's who have no problem with gay marriage so is it really a Christian view, or just a view held by some Christians (which is a somewhat different thing)?

Oh, and religion may have any arbitrary rule but that doesn't mean we have to accept it. There is more biblical justification for stoning than for homophobia yet we're not on side with stoning.

> I feel like your comparison of sexual orientation to ethnicity is a bit of a stretch.

How, apart from perhaps ease of concealment, is there any difference between the two?

The Mozilla Manifesto (http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/) talks about openness, equality, community and an Internet for All Humans.

The public head of contributed to a campaign aimed at removing rights from a significant part of the population. This wasn't off-hand remark or ill-received joke, his intentions cannot be misinterpreted in this case.

If you can put yourself in LGBT shoes, can you imagine working for Mozilla? What if it had to be closely with Mr. Eich? Could you be his PA?

Maybe if gay rights weren't at the forefront of public opinion right now, this could have slipped by unnoticed for a while. But especially now that it did, do you see a company with that manifesto keeping a CEO like Mr. Eich onboard?

Team Rarebit, two developers who are a gay couple, have made several blog posts about how support for Prop 8 affected them from an immigration perspective, which of course had both personal and professional consequences.

They also posted about how Eich's resignation is not their preferred outcome, and they would have preferred to see him acknowledge that his past actions had an impact on the Mozilla team and community that extended beyond personal feelings http://www.teamrarebit.com/blog/2014/04/03/a-sad-victory/

"Marriage is something a lot of people have strong and (from my point of view) old-fashioned opinions on."

One of those "old-fashioned opinions" has historically been an opposition to "miscegenation".

On the flip side, I would expect a vegan who donates money to organizations trying to stop state subsidies to meat production still be working fine with carnivores.

Definitely some very significant differences here; I'll just mention the most significant of all: people choose to be vegan.

Also, few people in Western countries got persecuted, ridiculed, bashed or killed because they were godless carnivores. In recent history.

People don't choose to have homosexual sexual relationships, or choose to redefine marriage to embrace non-hetero pairings?

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