Ask HN: Has political correctness gone too far? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Has political correctness gone too far?

32 pointsanon3_69 comments

It feels as if there is a mob of silent assassins lurking on twitter and media outlets looking to out anyone who says anything that isn't glowingly politically correct. They are sort of like "political trackers", except they are targeting mostly white, male programmers - but in reality - anyone who disagrees with their narrative (whatever it is) is a heretic.

I find it offensive that there are claims of sexism in OSS and tech. Codes of conduct. I feel like I can't give an opinion, or even make a mistake speaking without being stared down or ruining my career.

I don't want to be politically correct. But it looks like they only way to survive is to be that.

Am I the only one who feels like outsiders are assaulting tech for their own selfish agenda, and we were already diverse by design decades ago?

Someone decided to flagkill what could otherwise be a constructive discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9738526, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9741640

Interestingly, that is an example of the kind of censorship that is taking it too far. I would like a discussion to happen and this not to be censored. Use an anonymous account so you can speak your mind without being persecuted.

View on HN

Someone decided to flagkill

No one "decides to flagkill". It's a cumulative effect of individual user flags. When this happens to an active discussion, we typically unkill the post so the discussion can continue, but don't otherwise override the flags. We did that earlier with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9738526, but not https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9741640 (hadn't seen that one). Otherwise, no moderator touched those posts.

You can't just repost something n+1 times when it has been flagkilled n times. If we allowed that, there would hardly be much point to flagging. So we're going to demote the current post as a duplicate, but not kill it (again so discussion can continue).

Sounds intense.

> we typically unkill the post so the discussion can continue, but don't otherwise override the flags.

Dang, I don't see any conversation on Ask HN for any of the threads made, despite the fact it was upvoted.

That thread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9738526, was killed and still is.

Thanks for unkilling it, if you did. It still looks killed to me. I deleted the 4th post.

> I don't see any conversation on Ask HN for any of the threads made

Flags affect ranking on that page just as they do on the front page.

Not posting anonymously because - I think - my opinions on this matter are well known by those who know me.

1) There is a sexism problem in tech. I have seen it first hand.

2) It's not present in all companies all of the time, and gender balance is not evidence, in and of itself, of the problem existing in a given workforce.

3) Sexism is not unique to the tech industry. My wife is a qualified helicopter pilot, and was told (in 2008!) "sure, send in your resume, but I should warn you that we run an unofficial no-chicks policy" by one outfit she applied to as a junior pilot.

4) The issues about which you're complaining - bullying, harassment, restraint of trade etc. - are not in any way related to either sexism or the tech industry. It's about power. Groups who have in the past been marginalised and oppressed are now becoming powerful, and are abusing that power in exactly the same way as their erstwhile oppressors. It's seen as okay by them and their supporters, because it's targeted at 'bad people'. I used to work for a University nearly two decades ago, and saw the same pattern play out there in fields unrelated to tech. It's just taken a while to get rolling in our industry.

As Rand once said: "every infringement of human rights has begun with the suppression of a given right's least attractive practitioners". Mencius Moldbug is the example who springs to mind here.

The people who are accusing sexism are causing more damage to tech, and the political correct censorship will likely causing bottled-up emotions which will stir up sexists biases.

Regarding your #3 point, that is key. Sexism definitely exists in other areas. But your wife was a qualified helicopter pilot. The most vocal accusers or sexism in tech more often than not have scant to no qualifications or flimsy to no proof of sexism.

"The most vocal accusers or sexism in tech more often than not have scant to no qualifications or flimsy to no proof of sexism."

Even if true - and I'd like to see some evidence, please - that fact has no bearing on whether or not there is sexism in the tech. industry.

E.g. I can call out the sexism my wife encountered despite having no qualifications or experience in her industry.

It's offensive when anyone claims there isn't sexism in OSS and technology. If you happen to have not noticed it, there are long lists of examples readily available that you can peruse if you feel like making yourself sick. But any good engineer should know that "I haven't seen it" does not mean "it doesn't exist"; do you close every bug as unreproducible that you haven't already observed personally before the report?

It's fine if you don't want to spend your career actively trying to solve this particular problem; there are many other important problems to work on. However, there's a big difference between "this isn't what I want to spend my time fixing" and refusing to acknowledge that the problem exists, even when there are plenty of people providing mountains of evidence to the contrary. And at a minimum, it's worth taking the time to learn how to not further propagate the problem yourself.

"we were already diverse by design decades ago"? No, that one is trivial to refute; go look at the numbers.

Codes of conduct are a more formal way of saying "we're no longer willing to put up with awful and abusive people just because they write good code". And quite a few people have held that up as good policy in other contexts as well, such as hiring.

Claiming that you "can't give an opinion, or even make a mistake" is hyperbole. Sure, there are some topics you might want to be careful about; as a general rule, it's a good idea to not pretend you're an expert in a topic you know very little about, or you might embarrass yourself. There are also various places you can go to ask introductory questions and learn, on topics you're genuinely curious about. As for mistakes, it depends on the type of mistake; a genuine mistake can often be handled with a genuine apology, while a "mistake" of the form "I didn't mean to reveal that I'm a terrible person" is unlikely to be swept under the rug. But if your complaint is that you want somewhere you can be sexist or discriminatory without repercussion, find another planet please.

Where is the hard proof and evidence there is sexism?

Try http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents for a start, and other resources on the same wiki for more systemic issues.

> we were already diverse by design decades ago

I would suggest actually asking (not talking) with minorities in tech about how diverse/tolerant the tech industry appears to them. Part of being in a privileged group is blindness to the experiences of those outside the group, so without conversation, we live in an echo chamber.

Discrimination is rarely an intentional thing, but caused by our unexamined attitudes and beliefs. I don't consider myself racist at all, but my half-black fiance routinely points out blind spots I'd never noticed.

> I find it offensive that there are claims of sexism in OSS and tech.

This statement sort of assumes the claims are groundless. But until you ask outsiders for their experiences, how can you be sure? What basis do you use that you are so sure you're right?

> Part of being in a privileged group is blindness to the experiences of those outside the group, so without conversation, we live in an echo chamber.

That's interesting. I haven't see it that way before.

> This statement sort of assumes the claims are groundless. But until you ask outsiders for their experiences, how can you be sure?

Good point, perhaps they will have stories where they have been judged by their race. How can it be demonstrated it's not merely their own perception? The court systems and the internet are both open, can anyone here point out instances of discrimination?

However, asking for experiences without a process to vet the facts may lead to the best data. Doesn't everyone sort of think they come out of unfair circumstances one way or another?

> That's interesting. I haven't see it that way before.

If you're interested in reading about perspectives other than your own, the Geek Feminism wiki is a good place to start; they've got a pile of resources, as well as well-documented incidents.

Your first instinct in reading many of those may be some degree of shock, denial, or a search for mitigating factors. Examine that reaction carefully, resist the natural urge to reject data that contradicts your current views or information, and keep reading.

And since it looks like you're taking either a scientific or legalistic viewpoint in terms of seeking evidence, consider the term "preponderance of the evidence". When you have enough incidents and enough perspectives arguing that sexism is a thing, perhaps you should examine why you're attempting to "debunk" it or make entitled demands for proof rather than listening.

One person's 'political correctness' is another person's 'being respectful'. I have seen situations where a group of young white men make offensive jokes about girls "because there were no girls in the room".

Be polite. Be nice. Be respectful. It would make the world a better place. That means thinking about whether something you are saying or doing is making other people uncomfortable, and then not doing it.

I think it's John Rawls who suggested thinking about the world you want to be born into if you had no idea which gender or ethnic group or sexuality or body type you would be born as. It's a sad truth that I would not want to be born as a female with an interest in programming, and that makes me think there's a sexism problem in programming.

Sure, there are baying mobs going around social networks who will attack just about anybody for anything. But there are also good people rightly calling people out for saying things that are totally unacceptable given their position.

> I think it's John Rawls who suggested thinking about the world you want to be born into if you had no idea which gender or ethnic group or sexuality or body type you would be born as.

This is the cognitive dissonance of our selfish nature. People are willing to buy home insurance because they don't know in advance whether they are in the unlucky group whose homes will burn down, or the lucky group. They don't feel jilted when their home doesn't burn down, and their premiums go to those whose homes did. But since men know from the outset they are in the lucky gender, many of them kick and scream when anything is taken away from them to help level the playing field.

You couldn't get the community to be engage a topic you considered important the first two times, so you're just going to keep re-posting it? Oh goody.

There might or might not be a reasonable discussion to be had on this subject. The place for that is almost certainly not HN.

I'd partially agree that PC hasn't, as such, "gone too far", as much as the loudest people pushing it have too much of a one-dimensional mindset. With topics like this, there's never just one issue in play - there's a whole group of similar issues, each of which is important in its own right, and I'm sure we've all been in arguments where we've felt "How dare the other person avoid the issue most important to me!"

duncan_bayne and JoshTriplett are right to point out that there's been a hell of a lot of sexism around, and I think we can all agree it's hugely important we fix that and move on as an industry. On the flipside, with any group arguing any issue, you always get this moderate-fanatic spectrum, and people pushing for political correctness aren't any different. It's not a PC thing, or a SJW thing, it's a human thing. Happens to everyone. And that's what anon3_, our OP, is talking about - the loudest people pushing this stuff tend to (1) have a brittle, one-dimensional view of their subject matter, and (2) outshout all the other people who are doing their damndest to combine staunch support with tact and diplomacy, and both together create this oppressive atmosphere that OP's talking about. Outrage culture. I don't mean to have a go at them, much of the time it's because they've been on the receiving end of some really traumatic prejudice, and anyone in their shoes would find themselves reacting the same way - but there's just no getting away from the fact that it damages their ability to communicate these issues with skill.

That's the thing - both issues, resolving topics as important as institutionalised sexism, and the counterproductiveness of those who shout about it the loudest - they're both true at once, and both important. I think the question here isn't so much "how much should we dumb down any complex/subtle opinions we might have so as not to inflame the SJWs?", but rather "How do we best reconcile these topics?" The Short Short Short answer is, probably, listen, and do your best to understand everyone, even if you disagree with them.

> hell of a lot of sexism around, and I think we can all agree it's hugely important we fix that and move on as an industry.

"Fixing sexism in tech"

1.) Sexist, Compared to what? 2.) At what cost? 3.) What are the hard facts?

No. I think that some people went too far believing that the internet was their own private club.

The fact that there are people waiting to pounce on every mistake people make is a bad thing. It is not helpful and we should give people room to be wrong and to learn.

However, the parallel you seem to be trying to make between that and the reality (that, in your opinion, there is no sexism problem in tech/OSS) is equally wrong and probably much more destructive. I hope you continue to think about that opinion, listen to those who it hurts when you can, and change your mind eventually.

"I don't want to be politically correct. But it looks like they only way to survive is to be that."

It is the only way to survive. If you say the wrong thing, even if you aren't attacking anyone, you could have your career or life ruined. Just look at the ex-Mozilla CEO for a good example of this. He donated a small amount of money in a cause he believe in, but because it didn't go along with the community narrative, he was bullied online until he was forced to resign.

If it had been the reverse and he donated to a pro gay marriage fund and the company was extremely religious, the same community would be on the side of the CEO. This is what tells you it's all about politics and has nothing to do with what people tell you (freedom, etc).

I just don't understand why we can't just live and let live.

In the end, it means that people like me that ordinarily just want to live and let live now have to resort to under-handed tactics (like getting people fired and ruining the lives of people) to make the world right.

I propose we call this the Brandon Eich Effect. Where if you hold an opinion or donate to a charity that the community of social justice warriors doesn't like, you can be removed and have your career ruined.

Most of these SJWs are left-wing so any right-wingers like Conservatives get targeted and driven out of the industry. You kind of wonder why liberals dominate tech, and then so see that anyone who doesn't hold liberal views gets driven out of the industry.

I kind of liked the tech industry before politics became a major factor.

Politics are always a factor in every industry and every facet of life, it is naive to think otherwise, politics are what happens when a large enough group of people have to be led, be it in a company or a country.

As far as Eich is concerned there are three things to keep in mind: 1) He was the public face of the company, he was supposed to represent Mozilla's values; there was NO problem with Eich when he was an engineer or simple employee of the company 2) It was a non-profit dedicated to openness and freedom and inclusion on the internet 3) He refused to qualify or repudiate his hate speech. It would be like appointing someone who had fought against multiracial drinking fountains the head of the ACLU. Organization over.

Really it's the fault of the board who selected him without a thorough vetting. Hateful and publicly expressed views like that have no place in the public face of any inclusive organization; knowing your leader and boss wants to take your rights away because he doesn't approve of who you have sex with always creates a hostile work environment. They were just able to do something about it because Mozilla stands for something and operates based on principles rather than a top-down dictatorship like most corporations.

And honestly if he had explained how he planned on reconciling his hateful views with managing gay employees and their marriages, etc. he may have been allowed to stay.

True I thought he did apologize and Mozilla supported GLBT rights and same sex marriages. But it was not enough to end the boycott. I could be mistaken. https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/

When I attended the University of Phoenix in 2005, we were taught that to support same sex marriages because it would become legal in most states and we'd get in trouble if we didn't. That GLBT people might be key employees and that diversity is a good thing. So if you have religious beliefs against gay marriage, support gay marriage anyway.

Eich has religious beliefs against gay marriage and donated to a charity that tried to strike down a gay marriage law in California. Those donations were made public.

We're going to see more of this as people hold religious beliefs that don't believe in gay marriage. Many religions are going to have to change.

"Many religions are going to have to change"

Pause and think about this for a moment.

If you believed that there really was a God in heaven who spoke with you and has revealed to you the purposes of live and the purpose of marriage, a God who created the world, gave you life and offers eternal riches in the next life.

If you really believed this, would you bend to social pressure because political winds have shifted against some of the teachings of your God?

If a church bends to social pressure then it's a fake. Pay close attention to the ones that act like politicians and say whatever makes them popular and look at the ones who stick to their beliefs.

We shouldn't punish people for believing what they believe!

You can try to reason with people and have civil discourse and explain your position. But do it without resorting to straw-man attacks, ad-hominim attacks and blatant false accusations in order to garner the mobs against them.

We shouldn't drive away would-be allies simply because they have a diverse perspective. We should welcome their diversity and utilize their wisdom and experience.

Diversity is a good thing. This is why it's important we don't drive out everyone. This means to protect the rights of the gays and the religious.

FYI, I co-founded Mozilla, helped spin it out of AOL, picked the founding team that did Firefox and Thunderbird, led them as chief architect and then long-term CTO, and finally led all of Engineering as Senior Vice President.

That you wrote "an engineer or simple employee" shows some lack of familiarity with the history. Also, at what point prior to my taking CEO was I "ok" as a boss and leader?

As for "repudiate his hate speech", I never uttered hate speech. A donation in favor of Prop 8 is not on its face "hate speech" by any legal or sane definition of the phrase. Nice try, though.

As for "take your rights away", that's also a disputed matter of definition, not some ground truth to assume because you heard it somewhere. California had Domestic Partner law to grant certain positive rights already granted to Conjugal Marriage. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_partnership_in_Califo....

That wasn't enough, but many people including me, for religious and other reasons, do not agree on redefining marriage as the best solution to any remaining inequities.

To turn this history into "an engineer or simple employee" and "hate speech" and me as CEO out to "take your rights" is grotesquely misleading.

I just think its offensive to those who want equal rights not separate rights. No one is redefining marriage. There was never a definition coded into law to begin with and for good reason.

Sure, there was a conjugal (male-female) definition coded into law, at least in California (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_22_(200... also in many other states. The traditional definition was in some cases implicit, and we don't need to dig up the Emperor Heliogabalus (made famous in G&S's "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General" patter song) or other exceptions to try to prove the counterfactual "never defined in law [as conjugal]."

Anyway, just thinking something is offensive doesn't account for the misleading comment to which I was replying. Fine if you want to digress, but please note well that I'm not in fact defending "separate but equal." I think Conjugal Marriage is superior to, not equal to, other definitions. (Feel free to be offended by this, not by s-b-e.)

See http://discussingmarriage.org/ if you want more on the arguments for the traditional definition.

You say marriage was defined as man/woman by pointing to Prop 22 that specifically defined as such in order to prevent same-sex couples from marrying?

And that's you're proof that your position has nothing to do with anti-gay prejudice?

Green account is acting green, but I shall persevere.

First, the argument I made refuted the claim that there was no conjugal definition in law. Job done. Your change to a new argument, "anti-gay prejudice", doesn't undo the fact that not only in CA post-Prop-22, but all over the world for millenia, marriage has been defined normatively as conjugal.

Second, I know the exceptions, they do not prove the rule. Nor does the rule equal "anti-gay prejudice". The word matrimony comes from the Latin word for mother. Revising history won't erase the normative, biological basis of the conjugal marriage definition.

Anti-gay prejudice is a novel claim. 30 years ago many gays resisted or objected to early attempts to redefine marriage, as at least wrong-headed _embourgeoisement_, and often as much worse: an attempt to control and ban sexual expression. See Mark Simpson, e.g. Andrew Sullivan just wrote about this from his point of view.

It's a cheap trick to scream "prejudice" and "bigotry" when the argument is over essential differences. Those differences can be argued to be immaterial (the SCOTUS majority opinion did this, mostly by assertion) but they cannot be erased or reduced to "prejudice".

At this point I will cite http://discussingmarriage.org/ again. "Go green" over there if you must.

There was no conjugal definition in law until anti-SSM people put one there.

All over the world for millennia. In 372, the first Christian emperors of Rome banned SSM and tens of thousands of people across the Empire were led to their deaths as a result. That's also pretty "normative" since the rise of Christianity and its domination of govt. Why would anyone ban something that didn't even exist in the imagination, as you would probably claim.

You rely on a cheap and stupid recollection of the 60s and 70s to claim that gay people didn't want marriage. If they didn't, then explain Baker v. Nelson, 1970. Explain the marriage certificate issued in CO in 1972. Explain the fight for Domestic Partnership, which began in CA in 1979. Explain the marriages conducted, with no legal effect of course, by MCC since the 60s.

Sure, quite a few gay people in the 60s and 70s eschewed patriarchal marriage, in which men owned wives and spousal rape was entirely legal. A lot of heterosexuals did too. I would hope you also oppose certain aspects of the legal tradition of marriage in this country. Even if you don't, I would guess your wife does.

And stop pointing me to hackneyed arguments that ignore the humanity of gay people. It is not "civil" to deny equal rights. And, given your apparent dislike of anonymity, why are you directing people to an anonymous website?

I'll be brief: marriage defined conjugally by common and higher law is not for all (pairs of) humans, and never has been. So no one individual is per-se dehumanized by not being able to marry.

What's more, as dissenting SCOTUS opinion makes clear, revising marriage without any essentialist basis for defining it means that polygamy should be legal too. Dispute or dodge that, and you are the hater:

http://adam4d.com/whos-the-bigot/

Finally, ad hominem arguments are fallacious on their face, and tiresome. I'm calling out your anonymity to level the playing field between you and me, not among us and http://discussingmarriage.org folks, because you keep trying to smear me as "anti-gay" (or now pro spousal rape, or whatever). Argue the facts, not the person.

"Finally, ad hominem arguments are fallacious on their face, and tiresome."

And where do you see one in my comment?

You're just flailing. You spend too much time on the intertubes and think what you're doing is discussing. Later. Well, never actually.

Calling me anti-gay based on a circular argument is an ad-hominem. It makes me the issue. I think that's clear.

BTW it's not cool to downvote your counterparty here. Let others do that.

People can't downvote replies to their posts.

There's a minimum karma threshold for downvoting - about 500 or 750. A green account is unlikely to have that much karma.

Thanks.

Don't accuse people of doing things that are impossible for them to do. It weakens your statements that "Finally, ad hominem arguments are fallacious on their face, and tiresome" and "Calling me anti-gay based on a circular argument is an ad-hominem."

You're being downvoted by people other than the one you're accusing, simply because of the weakness of your arguments, and your historic and ongoing failure to justify your actions.

But you could turn over a new leaf now, and finally explain yourself: Which of Scalia's arguments do you agree with? And do you have any better arguments that he forgot?

You're not the victim here, Brendan. Don't make yourself the issue, if you're not the issue.

You have definitely chosen to make me the issue, Don. The personal animus you sent my way over the years on Facebook got your fake account banned, and it does you no credit.

I'm not going to post that message log for detraction's sake, but people need to know that there is a log. You can't pretend to be civil here as if we are starting from a clean slate, and play _tu quoque_ games.

Anyway, you interrupted BobNNN, who was making me the issue with a personal attack (that I'm anti-gay) based on a circular argument.

I'm definitely the focal point of lots of anger, I get it. The 7M who voted for Prop 8 have me as single-combat avatar now. None of them have to pipe up; I'm "it". But really, any fool can find and read the arguments for Prop 8. I've made some here and cited links.

Don't fixate on Scalia, his intemperate dissent is neither relevant to Prop 8 in its context, nor the best dissent to read (try Roberts).

Given your pathological hate-messaging at me over the years, I'm not going to throw more words your way. You're a smart guy, read all the content here, follow the links. Don't make me or you the issue, look to the substance, not the person.

I've learned that people have this addiction of being "good" (progressive they call it) to the point that they don't see themselves becoming assholes. They even become blind to other social issues.

There is a Harvey Dent quote about it.

"Fuck bigoted free speech, Raif Badawi and Charlie Hedbo had themselves to blame" from several well known "anti-racist", "feminist" progressives in Sweden.

As in everything else, Sweden is light years ahead in that area. Not always good to be ahead in everything, but at least people wake up to the lunacy faster. Swedish Democrats (Conservative) just became the third largest party because of "progressive" nut jobs occupying State TV and most news outlets.

The thing with society, culture, and communities is that things are always a matter of perception. Sometimes that perception can become distorted.

For example in Ferguson where I live, the perception was Mike Brown had his back turned to the police officer, had his hands in the air, and said "Don't shoot!" and was shot in the back about a dozen times, execution style. We had about a dozen eyewitnesses that claimed that happened. When the forensic evidence came into play, Mike Brown was not shot in the back, didn't have his hands in the air, was running towards the police officer and the killing shot was on top of his head so he hung his head down as he ran. Faced with this scientific evidence those eyewitnesses had to recant their testimony. But our community still has the perception that he had his back turned, hands in the air and said "Don't shoot".

They released the names of people who donated to a charity to pass Prop 8. Your name was on the list, as well as the CEO of OkCupid who put up a message when someone used Firefox on their website. http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/04/okcupid-ceo-donate-a...

Notice how it is described as Anti-Gay, anyone who donated to that charity was found to be Anti-Gay. That is the community perception to anyone who donated money to a charity to defeat that law. That they are an Anti-Gay bigot. None of these people are given a chance to explain their position that donated to that charity, none were given a chance to apologize, it was a public perception that they are all automatically Anti-Gay bigots.

It is the same when a politician votes down a law in congress. Maybe they voted it down to get a better law passed later on. Maybe they didn't like the wording that would allow loopholes and voted it down so the next time that wording could be changed. But politics plays the gotcha game where if anyone votes down a law, they must be against what that law represents.

Now one has to watch what they post to social networks and the public Internet. There is no expectation of privacy as donations to charities are made public, email can be hacked, websites can be hacked, phone calls are recorded. All it takes is one comment taken out of context to ruin a career.

Most of the people who campaigned to have you removed didn't even know what Firefox did. I remember watching some shows on Cable TV about it and the host didn't know what Firefox was, but they knew you were against Prop 8 so they wanted you gone. Had no idea of your history, what tech you invented, how you helped co-found Mozilla and spin it off of AOL. How Microsoft had all but put Netscape out of business, so AOL bought it out. People are not aware that Netscape had started a revolution in the Web browser history and that you put code together to make the first JavaScript language. Your critics don't know your full history so they marginalize you.

I am not sure what you are doing these days, how you earn money, but you had to resign because the public perception was against you. It is a matter of public relations, and these days the public very rarely forgives and forgets.

Your long comment is kind of a mess (e.g., the CEO of OkCupid never gave to a pro-Prop-8 charity; he gave to a Republican candidate [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Cannon] who was against SSM -- see http://perezhilton.com/2014-04-08-okcupid-ceo-is-guilty-of-d...).

Obviously some "public perception" was against me, but some was for me, and it then raged against Mozilla (see #nozilla twitter hash-tag). The net effect was probably a wash. You should ask why PR was not good while I was exiting Mozilla. Think it through.

Yes I know there are a lot of people who supported you during that time. I also know that there was a big move to boycott Mozilla.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tonybradley/2014/04/05/backlash-...

According to Forbes the boycott crossed a line.

We are seeing social justice warriors take on FOSS projects like the Github project Opal. One contributor was accused of making a transphopbic tweet and they wanted him removed. Then they closed that issue and made a new issue to make a code of conduct. That is when the trolls came out with zero day accounts.

We haven't seen the last of this thing, and it seems to be targeting the tech industry because that is where a lot of good paying jobs are that are held by mostly white straight males.

They see you, a White straight Christian male as the ultimate enemy. These attacks are coming from the left-wing groups.

I too want to see more women, minorities, GLBTT people in IT jobs, but not at the cost of discriminating against white males to do it.

http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/07/nozilla-surprisingly-no-on...

Apparently conservatives didn't like it that Mozilla caved in to bullies, and ignored that you stepped down and resigned and didn't get fired.

It seems like Mozilla got hit on both the left and the right.

I still use Thunderbird and Firefox, it is because they are good software and open source. I'm sorry to see you and Mozilla got hit by both sides of the same sex marriage debate.

I believe that Brendan did not properly communicate his personal beliefs on the matter. I think people who believe in christian values are afraid of stating those views publicly because in the US there is a bad history of christian fundamentalists (ie Moral Majority) who fanatically attack people who do not ascribe to christian moral values. Despite a high percentage of people in the US who profess to be christians, the US has one of the highest divorce rates in the world. A lot of people see the christian concept of family unit as basically flawed, we live in a culture where divorce and single parents are the norm. There is also the issue of separation of church and state when dealing with family values. So I think a lot of people who are in position of authority are afraid of publicly stating their personal christian beliefs because christian values seem to be so out of touch with what is actually going on. Indeed it is not morally right nor is it lawful to force religious beliefs on someone. But we still have a right to have moral beliefs that we use to help form our decisions. In my view Brendan appeared to back down from openly stating what his personal beliefs are on the matter and to fall back on the idea that he supports anti-discrimination laws (that include discrimination on the basis of sexual preference). I think its possible to have moral convictions based on religion and vote in ways that support those convictions. This is not discrimination, there is no 'ultimate moral code' that transcends all laws or religious beliefs. In the end all laws and moral codes must come from somewhere. These laws must be fair and not tied to any religion or moral code but must be voted on democratically. Brendan backed down from explaining why he holds such beliefs. This sort of makes him a coward and someone who is afraid to speak on what he personally believes to be true because of fear he will be seen as intolerant.

I just want to clarify in my post that I dont believe in a fight or confrontation of christians vs gays or any other group of people. I dont want to give the impression that Im calling Brendan to fight a holy war. My main point is we need to maintain our freedom of speech and freedom of thought, we should be free to say what our values are. Im not accusing Brendan of being afraid and using the word coward is probably overly dramatic. But Im saying we dont appreciate our freedoms until we lose them and I dont think there was healthy or free dialog in how things played out during this controversy. More and more discrimination issues are being brought forward in Silicon Valley and we are going to have deal more and more with people who have strong moral differences to our own. Brendan Eich just happens to be thrown in the spotlight for exersizing his right to vote on something others disagree with. So like it or not this incident will have a president on how issues like this are handled in the future.

SSM isn't something that a lot of people in the tech industry discuss in public. A lot of people in a SSM want to stay in the closet for example.

In 1999 I worked for a law firm that developed a series of web apps. One of them displays employee information from the HR database (We were developing an HR management system) I was added to add some fields to the employee info page. One of them was Spouse_Name. Now this was in St. Louis Missouri that has a city law that protects against sexual orientation and the law firm was connected with the Democrats. I told my manager I objected to adding in spouse name as it out would people who had a same sex partner in the database. He told me it was nonsense and that nobody would discriminate against a gay couple. I told him some might want to keep it a secret just in case. He told me to add it or get fired. So I added it. There were a lot of complaints that the web app was broken and showing a spouse of the same sex. A lot of them supervisors or managers. I was blamed for outing them with my web app. I feel bad about it to this day. Stuff like that stressed me out and lead to my mental breakdown and development of a mental illness. I didn't mean to harm anyone or out anyone with my web app.

But I just wanted to say that some SSM people want to keep it a secret, and not talk about it. Even if it is an issue that needs to be addressed.

There are many people who left Christianity over issues like that, they became non-practicing or atheists as a result.

One by one:

I would argue you're not the public face of the company until you are the CEO, or a PR officer. While your primary job is involved with engineering or architecture, you have a technical role, but as CEO your role shifts to become primarily political and managerial. These roles do of course all blend together at smaller companies, but the spotlight appears certainly the moment you assume the mantle of CEO. You are right I don't know the history by heart (certainly not as well as you do) but I think there's an argument to be made that in most companies there is significantly less concern about the politics/personal beliefs of non-CEO employees than the appointed public face.

While I certainly agree the donation doesn't fit the legal definition, I'd say it falls under a very sane definition of hate speech, at least in the context under which the proposition existed at the time and the movement it represented. Prop 8 was an initiative designed as a symbolic gesture by anti-gay (read: hate) activists to codify in law the explicit removal ("re-removal", in the words of the judge who ruled on it) of rights from a marginalized group of people. Vocal support for it is hate speech. Monetary support is similar but more extreme. I don't think this characterization is far off though I will admit it is unnecessarily incendiary because of the unintended conflation with the legal term. So I will give you this; it is a speech action, and it is hateful, but I shouldn't have characterized it as hate speech.

And for many "take your rights away" exactly characterizes this initiative. Though in California domestic partnerships exist which give the same rights as a marriage, it's codifying in law that a gay relationship is 'less than' a straight relationship. Removing the actual rights associated with the partnership happens to be politically untenable in California, though it isn't in many other states and so they have done exactly this; prop 8 was a symbolic gesture to many that said "We can't take your rights away much as we'd like to, but remember there are still a whole lot of anti-gay people in California".

And since writing my original post I learned more about the history of the incident, read your blog post on inclusiveness in response to the incident which I found very passionate and compelling and changed my mind; I am still vehemently opposed to prop 8 or any measure like it and I still think it's a hateful and ugly thing to support, and that the public face of a company that supports inclusiveness has no business issuing public statements in favor of it, but I agree you were victimized by a crusade, the boycott was out of line and inappropriate, and have no problem with the appointment.

So many news stories pass us by and all we retain from them are snippets of blogspam or clickbait articles or comments on social media and we all get our own impressions of how things occurred, often times they are horribly distorted one-sided glimpses we have into the histories of actual events. I think in general people in this age, myself especially included, are too quick to condemn in situations they don't fully understand so I apologize and I appreciate all the work you've done for Mozilla, and freedom and openness on the internet.

When gays talk about how they are being discriminated against by being prevented from equal rights of marriage that straight people have, I think this is kind of a 'me too' knee jerk reaction and I dont think most gays have put any thought into what marriage really is. Marriage is not just a man and woman committed to living together in a monogamous relationship, thats nothing more than a formalized relationship. A marriage is a contract where a man promises to provide for a woman and the children he has with her. Despite all the talk of 'feminism' and 'patriarchy', we live in a society where women still expects the man to provide for a her and the children they have together. Where does this sense of morality come from? There are societies in the world where men are not tied to women and children are raised as part of a community. The fact is that the laws of marriage uphold an idea of the christian family unit. All this hoohaw that gays make about how they can get married too now is really just a cheap shot at gaining benefits for married couples that are designed to offset the huge expense of having children. The vast majority of gays dont have children so this is whole idea of them getting married is just for show and to cash in on money they dont need. Heterosexual men are the providers of the children of this country whether or not they get married due to the child support laws that exist. There is a reason that many countries call the 'marriage' between gays a civil union, because the vast majority of the time thats all it is. These marriage and child support laws are based on christian morality despite how much divorce lawyers would argue that it grew naturally out of some kind of innate sense of justice.

So why don't you folks fight for changes in the law to only convey the benefits of marriage to couples with children? Surely you'd include gay couples in that if you did, right?

Thats exactly what is GOING to happen, there is going to have to be legal separation between married couple with and without children. In the past there were financial benefits given to everyone who was married rather than waiting till they have children to encourage couples to have children. Also because in western culture we are raised with the idea that a man will support a woman so she can stay in the home whether or not they have kids. All these implicit assumptions are gone now that gays are married. Gay couples are much more likely to be self-sufficient and not have one partner who relies on the other. When a heterosexual couple divorces, the wife takes half even though most often she did not contribute financially to the marriage because there is an implicit idea here that the man is providing ALL the financial support in the relationship. Tax and work benefits also make this assumption and so now we are going to have a lot of gays trying to cash in on all these marriage benefits even though they are most usually not supporting their spouse nor ever going to have children. These issues did not come up in the past because there were hardly any married gays, but now that gay marriage is federally legal you are going to see more legal and statistical definitions distinguishing between marriages where a spouse supports their significant other and possibly children and and marriages who dont. Guess what, you are going to find that 95% of the time that gays fall into the second category.

Thanks.

You continue to evade the fact that, yes, you contributed money to a campaign to remove the right of marriage and to dissolve the marriages of thousands of Californians. You contributed to a campaign that demonized gay people as a threat to children.

A green HN account, whee! Just for others looking on who don't share your animus and weak grasp of the truth:

No marriage was dissolved by Prop 8 -- _ex post facto_ law is unconstitutional. Domestic Partnership remained the option for anyone seeking the positive rights enumerated by law.

No campaign to which I donated demonized gay people as a threat to children. You perhaps heard an echo (possibly from M. Signorile) of the first version of a revised Slate piece by Mark Joseph Stern:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/04/04/brendan_eich_s...

This piece had to be updated with a correction at the bottom:

"Update, April 23, 2014: This post has been updated to clarify that the organization to which Brendan Eich donated money produced only the first of these ads. The other three were produced by other organizations within the same pro-Prop 8 coalition."

Of course, many people did not read the update. Some still insist that the original was right, facts be damned.

I just watched all of those videos (including the three I did not fund), and none of them demonized gays as a threat to children. Nope -- parental rights to education of their grade-school-age children does not equal demonizing gays as threats. Let's have a stand-up argument about education rights if that's what you meant, not a cheap lie to preempt debate by painting opponents as demonizers.

Repeating easily-refuted falsehoods to defame me from green HN accounts simply isn't going to work. But a green HN account is itself continuing "to evade" a straight-up, real-name-to-real-name debate. Do better, or do something else.

What animus?

You contributed to Prop 8 when it was a campaign issue. Nothing in Prop 8 protected the thousands marriages that existed at the time of the vote. The plain language of Prop 8 would have rendered those marriages meaningless. That a court found those marriages undissolvable does not exonerate your side from trying to dissolve them.

Domestic Partnerships were not, at the time of Prop 8, identical to marriage.

I'm sorry I accused you of donating a campaign that demonized gay people. I was unaware of the clarification. You only donated to a campaign to strip fellow citizens of a legal status. Your allies did the demonizing.

Whether you saw or did not see ads demonizing gay people as a threat to children, ads like that certainly were aired.

I am hardly evading discussing this. I have no idea what you mean by "HN". My name is Bob Nelson (not terribly helpful in a nation with thousands of Bob Nelsons, but what can I say, I'm a common man).

Domestic partnerships were, per wikipedia (cited above), equivalent to conjugal marriage at state law level, which was the only level at issue. DOMA prevailed at federal level; I'm on record as against it, and it finally got overturned on good grounds.

HN is hacker news, this site. Anyway, glad to have a real name. Also thanks for acknowledging that I didn't demonize.

To be frank, until this little exchange, I thought you were unfairly treated in the storm surrounding your contribution. I thought social media was mostly to blame and that a lot of folks treated you badly, mostly for their own publicity purposes. Were it not for the effect of internet hype, you'd probably still have your job, and the gay people who worked for you would just have to suck it up.

Even after exposure to your personal beliefs and the sad little arguments you make against gay people, I still think you were mistreated and that social media is to blame, but I now also know you really are anti-gay. That wouldn't, of course, make you an anomaly in this country, especially in the ranks of CEOs (who skew conservative). It does put into perspective the support you received from some gay people at Mozilla. They had your back more than you had theirs.

I'm not anti-gay, as those Mozille people I worked with who had my back (and I had theirs as manager and leader) know.

Your insistence that being against redefining marriage makes me "anti-gay" would make a lot of self-described gay people "anti-gay". I've heard this, of course: they're "self-hating" -- a disgusting, lazy, cheap shot -- also used against folks like Phil Weiss who are Jewish and critical of Israel. You are making an ad-hominem argument.

Anathematizing may work inside your circle, but for people not fully on-side already, it blatantly dodges the unavoidable arguments about essential differences.

Usually people do it to feel good and display status to peers. If you're serious about wanting to argue (no need; we both have other things to do, I'm sure), then drop the "sad little" non-argument comments labeling me with a slur-term for which you have no evidence other than a circular argument: that I'm against redefining marriage because I'm anti-gay, and I'm anti-gay because I'm against redefining marriage.

One last thing. You wrote:

"Were it not for the effect of internet hype, you'd probably still have your job, and the gay people who worked for you would just have to suck it up."

Suck what up? That, after Prop 8 was nullified (not enforced, but let's not look closely), and now after _Obergefell_, when I am indeed among the losing dissenters, people I might have worked with longer at Mozilla would have to suck up that I in fact dissent -- and yet without my treating anyone badly?

So it's all about thought control, in the end?

Disagreeing on redefining marriage looks like a metaphysical argument.

So explain why you still to this day refuse to explain you reasons for voting for Proposition 8, Brendan?

Better yet, will you please FINALLY explain you reasons for voting for Proposition 8? Or just refer to the parts of Scalia's arguments that you agree with? Thank you!

Don, what is it with you? We met once when you interviewed at Netscape, yet I have a very long log of hate-messages, truly hateful stuff, that you've put on my facebook content or sent me there sporadically over the years, including from your fake accounts (one was just suspended).

You are acting the bully and bigot. Ok, I can take it, but it doesn't help anyone, certainly not you. What's the point?

Since you asked, the point still is:

So explain why you still to this day refuse to explain you reasons for voting for Proposition 8, Brendan?

Don, go read these two articles in full and you'll have the answer you already know and don't want to face, preferring to straw-man and spew abuse at me, and make me "the issue":

http://discussingmarriage.org/

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/you-will-be-assimilat...

Your abusive approach since 2012 when you learned of my donation leaves me very much not willing to walk you gently through the arguments that I'm sure you know already, as if you were approaching me in good faith. You are, and have been, approaching, detracting, and abuse-spewing (from fake FB accounts, even) in very bad faith. Find another target for your anger, or better yet: find some help.

Well I'm sorry that I offended you with my words, but I didn't have the opportunity to destroy your marriage by spending $1000 of my own money, Brendan.

here Don, here is a new cause for you: http://www.nambla.org/

Brendan Eich was free to try and stop gay marriage. But where is it written that others don't get to call him a bigot for doing so? Freedom cuts both ways. Nobody should get immunity from being criticized.

> I just don't understand why we can't just live and let live

Because gay people want to marry and are tired of people not letting them just live their lives the way they want to... in matrimony?

As far as policing what you say, I can assure you from my experiences with my half-black fiance, apologies for unintentional flubs work wonders. Much discrimination is unintentional (e.g., the Implicit Association Test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit-association_test), so an apology and the intent to learn from mistakes goes a long way.

We won the Cold War. And now we've also lost the Cold War.

The whole political correctness thing and the social justice warriors who are destroying everything decent in the world -- are simply the fruits on the neo-marxists of the Frankfurt School.

Critical Theory.

Look it up. And while you're at it, look up The Frankfurt School.

It was always their plan to destroy capitalist society through the simple strategy of complaining about shit without offering any solutions - and creating class warfare on every possible front.

So the social justice warriors who play the oppression olympics are generating classes of oppressors and oppressed out of thin air.

It is after all, impossible to wage class warfare without distinct classes. One must always be the oppressor. Another must be the oppressed.

It's brilliant.

Evil.

But brilliant.

It's the new witch hunt. The new Spanish Inquisition. The new McCarthyism. Tail-gunner Joe was an amateur.

Nobody expects the PC Inquisition!

Cultural Marxism is no joke.

http://www.academia.org/the-origins-of-political-correctness...

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