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Comment by codeoclock | Hacker News Reader

He had the right to free speech. He exercised his right to free speech. He had to deal with the consequences. There is no right to free speech without consequences. Each and every person who has the right to free speech (because remember, many don't) can say whatever they like, but cannot possibly expect it to never affect them further down the road. Particularly when you're in the position of CEO where you're expected to represent the company's ideals in your every public action.

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From what I can tell, you're suggesting that it's perfectly acceptable for somebody to lose his or her job merely for expressing a stance against gay marriage.

Does that mean that it's also perfectly acceptable for somebody to lose his or her job merely for expressing a stance in favor of gay marriage?

This is madness. Is it ok for someone to lose their job for being racist? Is it ok for someone to lose their job for not being racist? Is it ok for someone to lose their job for being sexist? Is it ok for someone to lose their job for not being sexist?

Is it ok for someone to lose their job for being homophobic? Yes. Is it ok for someone to lose their job for not being homophobic? No.

Do people lose their jobs for being LGB or T? Yes. Do people lose their jobs for supporting LGBT rights. Yes.

If you think some people have less rights than other people just because of the way they were born, then you're a bad person. He wasn't born a homophobe, he became one, and it's just and right to make assessments of people for the things they chose to do.

You assume not supporting gay marriage makes someone a homophobe. Fine, but others would disagree.

It does. You do not get to chose the parameters of what makes a homophobe. The people who suffer at the whim of homophobes make that distinction. Opposition to same sex marriage is 100% homophobic. Same sex marriage doesn't hurt anyone. It's prejudice, plain and simple.

You do not get to chose the parameters of what makes a homophobe. The people who suffer at the whim of homophobes make that distinction.

Your logic is flawed. Group A defines group B, and group B defines group A. As a result, there is no way to define membership in group A or B.

Opposition to same sex marriage is 100% homophobic. Same sex marriage doesn't hurt anyone. It's prejudice, plain and simple.

Does this apply to all acts that don't hurt anyone, yet are not subsidized/supported by the government? Paying below minimum wage? Failing to buy health insurance? Cutting hair without a license? Failing to purchase a home?

Somehow I don't think you actually believe your own argument.

I don't think you know what logic is for. It has very little bearing in the real world.

From the article you just read:

> For a cynical person, this would be a great way out: “OK, I am not $x, so it is not my problem, you just claimed that I have no right to an opinion as I never experienced the suffering. Done.”

I'm not going to debate you: re-posting your opinion with no supporting arguments means you've obviously made up your mind.

I think it's rubbish that someone can't access their life partner in hospital because they're not married, and support gay marriage based on that idea. But know there's a lot of people who:

- May have grown up with the idea of a bride and groom for most of their lives. Eich is 52.

- May think of marriage as a framework for raising children, and believe children have a right to a mother and father.

- May be closeted homosexuals who find homosexual behaviour confronting

Or a number of other reasons.

You're going to respond to this post with: "no, all those people are homophobes" - like Heilmann wrote about, you're looking for the box to put your angry comment in. I get it, you don't care about any arguments that disagree with your stance, you've concluded your thought process already.

But I'm writing this for our audience, who may put more thought in.

I'll answer your first two points one go; So what? If their concept is diminished by someone else's interpretation of marriage, then that's their problem, no one else's.

Do christians think jews have no right to worship? Do methodists believe anglicans have no right to worship? Of course not. They all worship the same god, and they all seem to have no problem allowing the other group to have their own definition of what worshiping god means without it diminishing what they believe worshiping god means.

So why does one persons definition of marriage take precedence over someone else's?

I don't know what you're attempting to say with your third point, but then I don't think you've properly thought anything through, as evidenced by your childish gambit of "You can't call me a homophobe because I said you can't".

If you think it's ok to deny same sex couples the opportunity to marry, then you're a homophobe. Regardless of wether you argument against it is in support of some other persons beliefs.

> So why does one persons definition of marriage take precedence over someone else's?

Democracy.

> I don't think you've properly thought anything through, as evidenced by your childish gambit of "You can't call me a homophobe because I said you can't".

Do you genuinely think I said that, or an equivalent, are you trolling, or are you just so angry you want to lash out at someone, like Heilmann mentioned in the article?

I cannot imagine how anyone would call someone in favour of gay marriage a homophobe simply because they can see the other side of the argument. So no, I don't really feel much need to 'defend myself', anybody attacking me from that point of view would obviously not be thinking rationally.

I think you're so angry you didn't even realise I share your stand on the matter.

Sorry, you're right, you didn't say that. I was on a rant and went too far there. I still believe there's a kernel of truth in what I said though. You do suggest that calling people out for being homophobic isn't a valid argument. I believe it is.

"Do people lose their jobs for supporting LGBT rights. Yes."

Which is as much of a problem as what happened to Brendan Eich.

"If you think some people have less rights than other people just because of the way they were born, then you're a bad person."

Careful with that; all it would take is some new research on sexuality and sexual orientations to completely undermine that point.

There's no evidence to support the idea that people are "made" homosexual. The only sane assumption to make is "Some people are gay, they're probably born that way."

Some people have more pubic hair than others. We have to wait until puberty before we know which people will have lots of pubic hair and which ones wont. But by your logic, there's some external force that occurs during childhood that will determine how much pubic hair a person will have. You'd be an idiot to think that way.

Gay folks are significantly more likely to have been abused as children. That means one of two things- either there are social factors that influence homosexuality, or there are biological factors that can cause a child to be abused. Most of us consider the former to be more plausible than the latter.

The argument that some traits are influenced by socialization does not imply that all traits are influenced by socialization; your second paragraph is just inane.

Even the perception that you might be gay tends to draw abuse from family and peers. If there's a connection, it doesn't surprise me.

What would create the perception that a pre-pubescent child is gay? And do you believe that this perception is an accurate predictor of actual homosexuality?

Generally, any deviation from socially enforced gender roles. There are plenty of kids who were abused for it and didn't turn out gay.

But you believe that most kids who deviate from standard gender roles are gay? If not, there's no reason to believe that gays would be overrepresented in abuse statistics if this deviation was the cause of the abuse.

> But you believe that most kids who deviate from standard gender roles are gay?

Honestly not sure how you could read what I wrote and pick that up. It's the opposite of what I said.

Right. So if gays aren't more likely to deviate from standard gender roles, there's no reason to think that they would be more likely to be abused, if deviation from gender roles is what leads to abuse.

Peer abuse is rampant, so it's almost inevitable that any given gay person will have been abused. The abuse that comes from being perceived as gay based on stereotypes tends to be more violent and persistent.

You didn't provide the studies you base your opinion on, so I have no way to know if your claim that the two have been linked is true.

Again, if gay people are not more likely to act in a stereotypically gay manner, and you've said that they're not, then there is no reason to believe that gays are more likely than their straight peers to be abused for behaving in ways that are perceived as gay.

This turns out not to be the case, as shown by this study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11501300

We're talking about different kinds of abuse.

> Gay folks are significantly more likely to have been abused as children.

Am I going mad? Is the whole tech community homophobic? That is an outright lie.

The National Health and Social Life Survey (NHSLS) 1.51% of the population of the US identify as GLBT, whereas other studies put this figure as high as 8%. However, statistics for people abused in childhood are significantly higher that this, with reliable estimates given for child sexual abuse to be 16% for males and 27% for females in the USA (NRCCSA, 1994).

Therefore, if there is a causal link between childhood sexual abuse and identifying as GLBT later in life, then why aren’t the figures for the number of GLBT people in the population reflected by the abuse statistics? There are significantly more cases of sexual abuse than there are people that identify as GLBT (Macmillan, 1997), and furthermore, the vast majority of persons sexually abused as children are heterosexual (Keith, 1991).

In addition to this, virtually all statistics agree that females are more likely to be sexually abused in childhood than males are - and yet, and yet there are proportionally more men that identify as being gay than there are women who identify as lesbian (Hite, 1991; Janus, 1993, Jefferson, 2001).

http://www.pandys.org/articles/abuseandhomosexuality.html

Your link contains nothing to refute the fact that gays are more likely to have been abused (which is true), just the idea that abuse is the singular, causal factor of homosexuality (which nobody is suggesting).

> gays are more likely to have been abused (which is true)

It is not true. Where the hell are you getting all this nonsense from?

Here's a study on the topic.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11501300

Here's that study being debunked

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2009/06/05/a...

Who said Eich is a homophobe?

If marriage were a right, why are we denying it to so many groups - not only gays, but polygamists and relatives?

Also, do not equate racism and interracial marriages with homosexual marriages. The former is just a matter of skin color - a black man and a white man are the same. If we go by the racist logic, it would be OK to deny a tanned white man marrying a pale white woman.

Homosexual marriage is a whole other matter and a lot of people don't know where they stand. If you want the public to support your cause, no matter what it is, it would be wise to be positive, firm and unemotional. I am sure the media sh*tstorm that hit B.Eich has affected a number of people and undoubtedly turned some of them away from pro LGBT causes.

Oh how you're wrong, let me count the way.

Polygamists are entitled to get married. You can't be a polygamist if you're not married. Everyone who has the right to get married has the right to be married to one other person at a time. Polygamists included.

As for relatives, they're free to marry people who are not close blood relatives for solid biological reasons that are well defined and well understood. You strain your argument to the point of ludicrousness to suggest anyone should be ok with close blood relatives marrying. Adopted siblings would be free to get married. A man would be free to marry his adopted mother. As abhorrent as that may sound to any people reading this (adopted or otherwise), the law isn't that you can't marry relatives, it that there are specific kinds of relatives you are not allowed to marry.

What on earth are you talking 'bout willis? Are you saying that gay men are different to straight men? Because if that's what you think, then you are, without a shadow of a doubt, a fully qualified homophobe. In fact, you could get a job teaching homophobia at the international college for cunts.

If you want the public to support your cause

I don't care one jot wether the public support it or not. They sure as hell didn't support equal rights for black people. Where would black people in america be now if they had to wait for the white man to acknowledge their rights? This stuff isn't up for debate, this is the way the world is going to be wether you like it or not. If you think the world is waiting for you to say, "it's OK, gay people can have rights, I'll allow it", then you're delusional.

This really isn't that complicated, he had views that the community was overwhelmingly against, hence he was not qualified to serve as CEO. The community did not fire him.

Also, there's a fundamental difference between the two views you juxtaposed. One suppresses the freedom of others, while the other promotes it. You can't really be intolerant by being against intolerance.

> You can't really be intolerant by being against intolerance.

I'm pretty sure religious people can be intolerant of gay people who are intolerant of religious people.

-or-

Gay people can be intolerant of religious people who are intolerant of gay marriage.

I, for one, have no tolerance for all this intolerance.

If gay marriage adversely affected people that the somebody had authority over, then certainly: that person should lose their job for taking that stance. You can't effectively lead people who are afraid of you.

If Eich hadn't been in a position where his views could adversely affect Mozilla employees (as he hadn't up until a few weeks ago) there would have been no problem (as there wasn't up until a few weeks ago).

Or basically: You have free speech, but shut up, who knows if something you said in the past will ruin your career in the future. (does not even matter if you still believe in what you said in the past or not... I did not saw anyone asking Eich)

No no no, not "shut up" at all. That's not what I said. But, bear in mind that everything you say can affect your future. Which is totally fair enough. Judging a persons character by what they have said and done in the past is standard, and fair, practice. Expecting immunity from everything you've ever said or done is unrealistic.

If Eich no longer believes what he believed, it's on him to make sure he makes that point. However, Eich never said anything to that effect, nor did he apologize, so we have no reason to assume that his opinion has changed.

Judging a persons character by what they have said and done in the past is standard, and fair, practice.

You judge a CEO by the actions/decisions made in professional context. You don't use a personal decision to extrapolate what-if scenarios.

"If Eich no longer believes what he believed,"

So the issue is not speech but rather thought. George Orwell had a term for punishing people for their thoughts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughtcrime

And he acted on his thought about marriage equality, so it was not a piece of thoughtcrime

No, the action of donating money to helping the suppression.

I don't think Eich would deny job to someone just because (s)he was gay. He didn't tried or even thought to split any gay couple apart.

He just couldn't accept a definition of marriage which includes same sex couples.

But those are subtle details for the liberal fascists.

> He just couldn't accept a definition of marriage which includes same sex couples.

Then he took it a step further and donated to group that was working to destroy human rights for homosexuals.

> He didn't tried or even thought to split any gay couple apart.

You're right, he didn't try to split a gay couple apart, he just sought to dissolve their marriage...

So, as Pacabel just asked, would you support someone being forced to leave their job because they supported gay marriage?

This is a ridiculous question, of course not. Please don't try to act like pro/anti gay marriage are equally ethical positions, they aren't.

You see same-sex marriage as a human right. (You would surely agree that same-sex marriage was a right even were it not a legal one.) To those of us who believe in human rights, which undoubtedly includes Eich, that would make anyone who took action to deny anyone that right unethical.

The problem is Eich doesn't see it as a human right. Indeed, to him, it may be the case he sees same-sex marriage as unethical. (We don't know what his objections are.) At any rate, he has no reason to find the support of gay marriage ethical or the opposition of it unethical.

There is no objective morality that tells us who is right or wrong here. There's no divine tablets we can all interpret listing out all our rights.

You can't stop at "same-sex marriage is a human right" and "opposing gay marriage is (ergo) unethical." That just leaves you talking right past people like Eich. It doesn't advance the argument or the cause - it just labels people as stupid or bad.

Sure, it's a free country. If someone doesn't want to exchange dollars for work hours anymore, for any reason, that should be totally fine.

I'd also stop giving that company money.

> (does not even matter if you still believe in what you said in the past or not... I did not saw anyone asking Eich)

Full stop. He had ample opportunity to speak out but he didn't. When someone says "I believe X" I assume that that person believes X until they either say "I don't believe X" or "I believe in Y" where Y is the opposite/different viewpoint on the same issue. Eich has made no such statement therefore I can only assume he is still anti-marriage equality, a homophobe, and not the right choice as the CEO of Mozilla.

Yes, you have free speech but just as codeoclock (and countless other HN'ers) said, you have to deal with the consequences. What you are proposing is a world where we can say whatever we want but never be held to what we say. I, for one, do not want to live in a world like that. I have said things in the past that I later changed my stance on and I have made every effort to make my change of view just as public as the original statement was. Sometimes this means talking to an individual or a small group and sometimes it means posting it to twitter.

I believe that if Eich had come out and said that his previous stance on marriage equality was wrong and he has since changed his view that this would not have ended the same way. Instead in both his blog posts [0][1] after this whole thing broke he drones on about how he will treat everyone fairly and how his personal beliefs will not affect his performance as CEO but he cleverly dances around the fact that he feels that homosexuals do not deserve the same rights as heterosexuals.

[0] https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/ [1] https://brendaneich.com/2014/04/the-next-mission/

"he cleverly dances around the fact that he feels that homosexuals do not deserve the same rights as heterosexuals."

Yes, and obviously that is completely orthogonal to the kind of treatment he has received over his beliefs about gay marriage. It is easy to criticize people who are afraid to speak their minds when you have an army of thought police standing with you ready to punish anyone who dares to disagree.

I for one am extremely happy that we have an "army" of people ready to defend an oppressed group of people. Also this is not the "though police" he donated to a group working to destroy human rights for homosexuals. If we were talking about a CEO that was racist and had donated to the KKK would you still rush to call foul when they were forced to step down by popular opinion?

Funny how the donation becomes the issue only after someone mentions thoughtcrime. Until then, the issue is what Eich believes.

"If we were talking about a CEO that was racist and had donated to the KKK would you still rush to call foul when they were forced to step down by popular opinion?"

Here are the guidelines I would use:

1. What does the organization they are CEO of do? If it is an organization devoted to providing aid to oppressed minorities, obviously KKK membership would be a conflict of interest. If on the other hand the organization makes general purpose software, I fail to see the relevance.

2. Is the CEO trying to use the organization to promote the KKK's agenda? If so, there is a problem with his professional conduct. If not, then his KKK membership is something he does on his own time; hateful, sure, but I do not want to live in a world where people are not allowed to separate their personal and professional lives.

> the position of CEO where you're expected to represent the company's ideals in your every public action.

I find that over the top.

Also, everybody has to deal with the consequences. The open web is not a toy to be taken for granted. I dare say many of the recent successes of LGBT were in part enabled by something like an open web existing.

The practical effects of leaving someone who in the past donated money to an agenda which lost: zero. Sure, if you think about it and get angry about it, it has an effect on you -- that's why it's called taking offense I guess -- and in turn the "revenge" can feel good.

The practical effects of Eich leaving Mozilla: incalculable, assuming he would have done great things.. on the other hand, the practical effects of, say, OKCupid disappearing from the face of the Earth: zero, dating sites are a dime a dozen.

BTW, since HN doesn't seem to like this topic, the discussion on slashdot is quite good: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/04/03/1924250/brendan-eich...

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