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The Excuses for Purging Brendan Eich Are the Old Excuses for Firing Gays

84 points by DaveMebs 12y ago

mullingitover 12y ago
> It used to be social conservatives who stood for the idea that companies could and should fire employees based on the “values” and “community standards” of their “employees, business partners and customers.” Now it’s liberals. Uh, pretty sure social conservatives far and wide are still wholly in favor of discriminating against homosexuals. We're decades early on this being a case of the persecuted becoming the persecutors.
- danmaz74 12y ago
  The problem is that, now, it becomes more difficult to argue that people shouldn't be fired because of their opinions about sexual preferences.
  - npsimons 12y ago
    If someone donates money to support a bill to make it illegal for straight people to marry, then the comparison might be justified. Until then, equating a private, in-born sexual preference (or opinions of such) with attempting to enshrine bigotry in the law is really stretching things.
  - pessimizer 12y ago
    Were people ever arguing that, or were they arguing that people shouldn't be fired because of their sexual preferences? Are racial minorities being fired because of their opinions about race?
    - danmaz74 12y ago
      Racial minorities being fired because of their opinion about race - ie, their opinion that they should have the same treatments are whites - was very common as far as I know. To make a different example, the new laws in Russia aren't against "being gay", they are against those who argue for the rights of gays.
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neilk 12y ago
Whether or not these points have merit, this media pundit is only replying to other media pundits. Some important nuances are being lost. If there is a way to make this sad story even sadder, it's turning it into a political football. Is there anything Mozilla or Eich can do to clarify things? But I don't know if that matters any more, now that American political commentators have tasted blood.
danmaz74 12y ago
I think that this case is doing a lot of bad to the cause of gay rights, because it feeds intolerance and radicalization.
- npsimons 12y ago
  I think that this case is doing a lot of bad to the cause of gay rights Indeed; if one were of a more conspiratorial bent, they might be inclined to think that's the exact purpose of this whole farce.
- aneisf 12y ago
  Intolerance of an intolerance is not equatable with the original intolerance.
  - stcredzero 12y ago
    Isn't that, "Two wrongs make a right?" In any case, it is still an intolerance. It's very dangerous ground to label political donation as "intolerance." It's inimical to civic and democratic political processes in a free society. In fact, I would label it as intolerant. If a person is taking actions that are nonviolent and legal, and they do not advocate the active destruction of our system of self governance, they should be allowed to coexist. This is what tolerance means. We need to let people oppose us and take positions we don't like. That is what it means to live in a free and democratic society. So long as those people don't act like sore losers, they get to take part. While it was done legally, the actions that got Brendan Eich fired for a donation he made six years ago strike me as the actions of "sore winners." Brendan Eich's behavior, while a PR disaster at the end, consisted of running a company with policies friendly to homosexual relationships. Mr. Eich was the one behaving magnanimously in this situation.
    - differentView 12y ago
      > While it was done legally, the actions that got Brendan Eich fired for a donation he made six years ago strike me as the actions of "sore winners." Brendan Eich's behavior, while a PR disaster at the end, consisted of running a company with policies friendly to homosexual relationships. Why the attempt to make it sound like this was ancient history? The donation was made six years ago because that's when California's Proposition 8 happened. Also, wouldn't a company with policies friendly to homosexual relationships be more likely to have a higher percentage of people who support such policies and not want a CEO that could potentially change those policies?
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rjknight 12y ago
I think we should be very wary of mainstream media coverage (and yes, Slate is mainstream media here) of this issue, because writers like William Saletan know relatively little about the specifics of Mozilla, technology or the personalities involved. This article ignores the specifics of the case and places it entirely within existing "culture war" political narratives. It's designed to present the story to people without having to actually tell them anything they don't already know. A much better attempt at the same basic argument (that it's a shame Eich was forced out) can be found here: https://medium.com/p/7645a4bf8a2 https://medium.com/p/7645a4bf8a2 Given the tools at our disposal and the massive number of people from the tech community who blog, there's really no need to rely on Slate to tell us what to think here.
- mcherm 12y ago
  While I think David Flanagan's essay is excellent, that in no way detracts from Slate's coverage. And this deserves to be placed in the context of the broader "culture war" -- no part of this fiasco turned on any technical or browser-specific details.
- jessaustin 12y ago
  Thanks I had missed that. The crux of the issue, for me: Most (or perhaps all) of the Mozillians who tweeted this were employed by the Mozilla Foundation, not the Mozilla Corporation which means that they report to the executive director of the foundation and not to the CEO. As foundation employees, they did not share the same org chart as Brendan. I didn't realize the foundation had so many employees.
  - 001sky 12y ago
    So, Mozilla is a three headed monster: > Executive Chairwoman, Mozilla Foundation (Mitchell Baker) > Executive Director, Mozilla Foundation (Mark Surman) > CEO Mozilla Corporation (New position, 2008) Mark Surman's employees using @mozilla handles were calling for the resignation of a competing CEO? Am i reading this right? In other words this was under political air-cover. The Mozilla Foundation now focuses solely on governance and policy issues... The corporate governance here actually seems like a problem. The new CEO and the New COO of @mozilla are going to look at this with ???
koenigdavidmj 12y ago
The lesson Mozilla learned here is that the angry Internet mob can get whatever it wants. It doesn't really matter which side of history the mob is on. The lesson that other boards learned with this is not 'hire socially-conscious people', but 'keep your head down and maintain the status quo'. Fifty years ago a similar uproar would have developed if a company hired a black CEO. The press release announcing his removal a week later would have been the same, some fluff words about being unable to effectively lead when he's spending all his time dealing with this.
- ryandvm 12y ago
  Indeed. I don't agree with Eich's personal views on gay marriage, but I'm kind of disappointed that everybody seems to be cool with getting people fired because they stood up for their personal views. People are comfortable with his firing because they feel his views are "wrong", but pretty much all progressive views, by definition, started out as "wrong" as well...
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > I don't agree with Eich's personal views on gay marriage, but I'm kind of disappointed that everybody seems to be cool with getting people fired because they stood up for their personal views. No one got fired here. Brendan Eich quit a job that, from all reports, he was dubious about taking from day one.
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  - thumbtackthief 12y ago
    What if it came out that his personal views (and political donations, more importantly) were against interracial marriage or women's suffrage? No one would bat an eye at his losing his position as CEO (voluntarily or not). Everyone is just shocked because our society is finally starting to recognize anti-gay bigotry as abhorrent as racism or sexism.
- 12y ago
pessimizer 12y ago
Or at least the PR reasons ("do what the customers want") and the libertarian reasons ("private companies can make any decision that they want for any reason") for not wanting Eich for CEO are the old PR and libertarian reasons for firing gays. What if your reason is that he supports the elimination of benefits for a commonly discriminated against minority class, and he's being put into a position to at least indirectly make decisions about those benefits at a company that has historically supported them? Any way to figure out an analogy to that in discrimination against gays? edit: That's a serious question, and if you have a serious opinion, I'd think you'd reply after downvoting.
- stcredzero 12y ago
  What if your reason is that he supports the elimination of benefits for a commonly discriminated against minority class, and he's being put into a position to at least indirectly make decisions about those benefits at a company that has historically supported them? What the record actually shows is that the policies of Mozilla, in the time he was CEO, treated well those who had cause to oppose him in his private political life.
  - pessimizer 12y ago
    >in the time he was CEO You mean during that week that everybody hammered him about his anti-gay donations and then he quit? I have doubts about his ability to push substantial policy during that period, to say the least.
    - stcredzero 12y ago
      So, basically people were just against what he might do. (Which also has clear parallels with past justifications for firing a gay CEO.)
dclowd9901 12y ago
He's right. And so the fuck what? It's not the reasoning I care about. It's never been about the reasoning. No one ever bought any bullshit about "community standards" even when it was being used to oust gays. It was about the act of marginalizing individuals over something that literally affects nobody else. If a gay person works at my company, his being gay will have no affect on my livelihood. People with an anti-gay agenda have made a choice to stand in the way of progress. That means their actions negatively affect the people around them, malevolent. They're entitled to no consideration, because it's their choice to ostracize themselves for their ignorance. It should be seen the same as firing someone who habitually shits on the bathroom floor.
- secstate 12y ago
  Thanks for the well-positioned comment. I had half a mind to nod my head at this article, but you're so right. The problem with Eich's donation was that it made an otherwise-unnecessary personal opinion perfectly obvious. Actively contributing to a campaign to crush individual rights is a pretty strong indicator that as a CEO he'd have trouble living up to all sorts of equal-opportunity employers requirements. Yeah, it sucks that this was dragged into the public, and don't even get be started on the waste-land of cable news. But he probably should have thought of the employment implications in donating to a campaign against gays before he did it. I like the bathroom floor analogy, because there's a tacit social contract that we don't shit on the floor. Same is true in business. He's free to say whatever he wants in public, but he's also free to be heavily encouraged to resign over whatever is he DOES say.
  - stcredzero 12y ago
    Actively contributing to a campaign to crush individual rights is a pretty strong indicator that as a CEO he'd have trouble living up to all sorts of equal-opportunity employers requirements. The actual policies of the organization he helped to run would suggest exactly the opposite.
- news_to_me 12y ago
  "If an anti-gay person works at my company, his being anti-gay will have no affect on my livelihood. People with a gay agenda have made a choice to stand in the way of progress. That means their actions negatively affect the people around them, malevolent. They're entitled to no consideration, because it's their choice to ostracize themselves for their ignorance. It should be seen the same as firing someone who habitually shits on the bathroom floor." See how this goes both ways?
doe88 12y ago
From the start I was unconfortable with the idea of firing or demoting someone who had worked 15+ years in an organization without any related issues raised before. And now I'm appalled by all these justifications while nobody seems to really discuss the huge technical loss. Maybe it's my engineering side speaking but I'm outraged to see such a great engineer forced to leave by people who in the end for the most part don't really care about Mozilla and will soon go to the next cause to defend. Meanwhile Mozilla has lost a bit of its soul and a part of its mind. The outcome is just sad.
- stcredzero 12y ago
  will soon go to the next cause to defend Just who is being "defended" here? No free society should take offense to a nonviolent political stand, even unpopular ones. Going after someone like this is not defense. It's attack.
  - devindotcom 12y ago
    Wait, why is it defense for him to speak in favor, and attack for others to speak against? Don't mass speech and boycotts constitute a "nonviolent political stand"?
    - mkr-hn 12y ago
      I think a lot of people got their first taste of politics through cable news and never learned the older, more useful vocabulary with words like "disagree" and "challenge."
    - stcredzero 12y ago
      why is it defense for him to speak in favor Wow. Reading comprehension, please.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  Doesn't placing "such a great engineer" in a CEO role already mean he's not being applied to engineering tasks?
stcredzero 12y ago
People have forgotten the magnanimous spirit championed by Martin Luther King. He did not advocate that one day, the oppressed would be on top and the "bad guys" would get theirs. That sort of attitude would be inimical to what he, Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela would have advocated. Getting Brendan Eich fired makes nobody more free or less oppressed. Instead, it moves society towards a state where no one feels free to say what they really think, unless it hews to the majority opinion, and where might makes right and principles of tolerance and decency are only applied to the "correct" people. In days past, the "correct" people would have excluded non-whites and homosexuals. An English vicar once said that to judge someone's character, observe not how they treat the people they need, but how they treat the people they don't need.
- devindotcom 12y ago
  You seem to know these men well! Would they have said we should not have spoken out when a company we know and would like to trust advances a man demonstrably and unrepentantly against equal rights for gay people to its highest post? Or would nonviolent activism and speech asking that such a person not be allowed to represent that company, and that someone with such views should not be honored but repudiated, be "inimical" to their philosophies? I don't presume to know what King or Gandhi would have done. But I don't think speaking out against a public figure who stands against equal rights is wrong.
  - stcredzero 12y ago
    I don't presume to know what King or Gandhi would have done. But I don't think speaking out against a public figure who stands against equal rights is wrong. Sure, but going after someone for a political donation from 6 years ago after the issue has already been won seems vindictive and socially counterproductive. Can you point me to something that MLK, Mandela, or Gandhi did or said that would indicate they'd do something like that? I can point to many examples of words and actions of theirs that would suggest they'd advocate for a more magnanimous path.
    - nate_meurer 12y ago
johngalt 12y ago
It's ok though, because this time the mob is right. All those other times the mob was wrong. So long as you can predict exactly which way subjective collective reasoning will go for years into the future you'll be fine.
- devindotcom 12y ago
  Ah, so you would have maintained a healthy distance during the civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s as well?
  - johngalt 12y ago
    Would I distance myself from MLK? no. From the black panthers? yes. There is a vast difference between believing something to be true, and wishing harm upon those who refuse to acknowledge that truth. Are there any injustices you see in the world that aren't also the popular opinion in your peer group?
    - devindotcom 12y ago
      Boy, what a loaded question! Tell me, do you still beat your your wife? But seriously, do you think there are any injustices in the world at all? It sounds like they don't count if they come from, or ar at all influenced by, one's peer group. How do you propose to find justice and injustice if not by agreement by the people that make up society? Second, by your definition of harm, if a restaurant refuses to serve black customers, and people boycott it so the owner must close down, they have wished him harm and are on the "black panther" side of your equation, yes? Even if he must only change his policy, his "right to think" has been impinged upon, so I suppose that is also harm, right?
mkr-hn 12y ago
I really wish anyone at all would acknowledge that not everyone who had a problem with his donation wanted him out of a job. People are too eager to combine everyone into two faceless mobs when the arguments were far more nuanced than two mindless binaries. The general wave of anti-gay equality campaigns didn't start or stop with prop 8. It began as a reaction to some of the early victories of the pro-equality movement. My own state tried to make it legal for businesses to deny service to me just a few weeks ago. His donation exists in a context where people are still suffering from the constant assault on their status as equal citizens.
lexcorvus 12y ago
I'm sure many supporters of Brendan Eich's ouster are completely sincere, but it's difficult to explain the intensity of their feelings on this issue. It can't be as simple as "civil rights" and "marriage equality"; for example, (first) cousin marriage is important to many groups—indeed, in Islam cousin marriage is not only allowed, it's often preferred [1]—but it is illegal in most states [2]. And yet, I rarely see advocates of "marriage equality" get all lathered up over this issue. Are advocates of "marriage equality" in favor of legalizing cousin marriage? If not, why not? If so, why have they not worked harder to achieve it? I see no way to resolve this paradox from within the context of progressive ideology, but it's trivial to explain once you view it from the outside. As the example of cousin marriage shows, the behavior of Eich's purgers is not consistent with mere "civil rights" and "marriage equality", but it is consistent with signaling tribal membership, seizing political power, and smashing their enemies. As it happens, right now gay marriage is an effective club with which progressives can beat conservatives. At some point, this may also be the case for cousin marriage—I can easily imagine opponents of cousin marriage someday being branded "Islamophobes", just as today opponents of gay marriage are branded "homophobes". But I predict that this will happen if, and only if, it serves progressive political ends. [1]: http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Cousin_Marriage_in_Islam http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Cousin_Marriage_in_Islam [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_law_in_the_United_States_by_state http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_law_in_the_Unit...
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > I'm sure many supporters of Brendan Eich's ouster are completely sincere What "ouster"? > It can't be as simple as "civil rights" and "marriage equality" Even ignoring the questionable use of "ouster", yes, it can. > for example, (first) cousin marriage is important to many groups [...]. And yet, I rarely see advocates of "marriage equality" get all lathered up over this issue. So, what? Opponents of interracial marriage bans in the 1950s-1960s didn't get "lathered up" over cousin marriage bans, or same sex marriage bans, either. That doesn't mean that opposition to interracial marriage bans wasn't all about civil rights and equality. > Are advocates of "marriage equality" in favor of legalizing cousin marriage? Some probably are, some probably are not. As with most political issues, position on this issue doesn't absolutely determine position on any other issue. > If not, why not? Conceptually, regulating new legal family relationships on the basis of existing family relationships is different than doing so based on some other non-family status, so there is no real reason why positions on these should be expected to correlate. > If so, why have they not worked harder to achieve it? This is the "why aren't advocates of 'X' spending equal effort on every other analogous issue" argument, which ignores that actually effecting change often requires serial focus, rather than parallel effort. > I see no way to resolve this paradox from within the context of progressive ideology And yet, as noted above, I see several that fit quite well in that framework. Maybe what you fail to see says more about what you want to see than about what actually is there?
MetaCosm 12y ago
> Losing your job for being gay is different from losing your job for opposing gay marriage. Unlike homosexuality, opposition to same-sex marriage is a choice, and it directly limits the rights of other people. He wrote an entire article equivocating them, then he quickly writes a couple sentences pointing out he full well knows it is absolute nonsense. Well played by him, I read the article.

84 points by DaveMebs 12y ago

> It used to be social conservatives who stood for the idea that companies could and should fire employees based on the “values” and “community standards” of their “employees, business partners and customers.” Now it’s liberals. Uh, pretty sure social conservatives far and wide are still wholly in favor of discriminating against homosexuals. We're decades early on this being a case of the persecuted becoming the persecutors.

danmaz74 12y ago
The problem is that, now, it becomes more difficult to argue that people shouldn't be fired because of their opinions about sexual preferences.
- npsimons 12y ago
  If someone donates money to support a bill to make it illegal for straight people to marry, then the comparison might be justified. Until then, equating a private, in-born sexual preference (or opinions of such) with attempting to enshrine bigotry in the law is really stretching things.
- pessimizer 12y ago
  Were people ever arguing that, or were they arguing that people shouldn't be fired because of their sexual preferences? Are racial minorities being fired because of their opinions about race?
  - danmaz74 12y ago
    Racial minorities being fired because of their opinion about race - ie, their opinion that they should have the same treatments are whites - was very common as far as I know. To make a different example, the new laws in Russia aren't against "being gay", they are against those who argue for the rights of gays.

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neilk 12y ago

Whether or not these points have merit, this media pundit is only replying to other media pundits. Some important nuances are being lost. If there is a way to make this sad story even sadder, it's turning it into a political football. Is there anything Mozilla or Eich can do to clarify things? But I don't know if that matters any more, now that American political commentators have tasted blood.

danmaz74 12y ago

I think that this case is doing a lot of bad to the cause of gay rights, because it feeds intolerance and radicalization.

npsimons 12y ago
I think that this case is doing a lot of bad to the cause of gay rights Indeed; if one were of a more conspiratorial bent, they might be inclined to think that's the exact purpose of this whole farce.
aneisf 12y ago
Intolerance of an intolerance is not equatable with the original intolerance.
- stcredzero 12y ago
  Isn't that, "Two wrongs make a right?" In any case, it is still an intolerance. It's very dangerous ground to label political donation as "intolerance." It's inimical to civic and democratic political processes in a free society. In fact, I would label it as intolerant. If a person is taking actions that are nonviolent and legal, and they do not advocate the active destruction of our system of self governance, they should be allowed to coexist. This is what tolerance means. We need to let people oppose us and take positions we don't like. That is what it means to live in a free and democratic society. So long as those people don't act like sore losers, they get to take part. While it was done legally, the actions that got Brendan Eich fired for a donation he made six years ago strike me as the actions of "sore winners." Brendan Eich's behavior, while a PR disaster at the end, consisted of running a company with policies friendly to homosexual relationships. Mr. Eich was the one behaving magnanimously in this situation.
  - differentView 12y ago
    > While it was done legally, the actions that got Brendan Eich fired for a donation he made six years ago strike me as the actions of "sore winners." Brendan Eich's behavior, while a PR disaster at the end, consisted of running a company with policies friendly to homosexual relationships. Why the attempt to make it sound like this was ancient history? The donation was made six years ago because that's when California's Proposition 8 happened. Also, wouldn't a company with policies friendly to homosexual relationships be more likely to have a higher percentage of people who support such policies and not want a CEO that could potentially change those policies?

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rjknight 12y ago

I think we should be very wary of mainstream media coverage (and yes, Slate is mainstream media here) of this issue, because writers like William Saletan know relatively little about the specifics of Mozilla, technology or the personalities involved. This article ignores the specifics of the case and places it entirely within existing "culture war" political narratives. It's designed to present the story to people without having to actually tell them anything they don't already know. A much better attempt at the same basic argument (that it's a shame Eich was forced out) can be found here: https://medium.com/p/7645a4bf8a2 https://medium.com/p/7645a4bf8a2 Given the tools at our disposal and the massive number of people from the tech community who blog, there's really no need to rely on Slate to tell us what to think here.

mcherm 12y ago
While I think David Flanagan's essay is excellent, that in no way detracts from Slate's coverage. And this deserves to be placed in the context of the broader "culture war" -- no part of this fiasco turned on any technical or browser-specific details.
jessaustin 12y ago
Thanks I had missed that. The crux of the issue, for me: Most (or perhaps all) of the Mozillians who tweeted this were employed by the Mozilla Foundation, not the Mozilla Corporation which means that they report to the executive director of the foundation and not to the CEO. As foundation employees, they did not share the same org chart as Brendan. I didn't realize the foundation had so many employees.
- 001sky 12y ago
  So, Mozilla is a three headed monster: > Executive Chairwoman, Mozilla Foundation (Mitchell Baker) > Executive Director, Mozilla Foundation (Mark Surman) > CEO Mozilla Corporation (New position, 2008) Mark Surman's employees using @mozilla handles were calling for the resignation of a competing CEO? Am i reading this right? In other words this was under political air-cover. The Mozilla Foundation now focuses solely on governance and policy issues... The corporate governance here actually seems like a problem. The new CEO and the New COO of @mozilla are going to look at this with ???

koenigdavidmj 12y ago

The lesson Mozilla learned here is that the angry Internet mob can get whatever it wants. It doesn't really matter which side of history the mob is on. The lesson that other boards learned with this is not 'hire socially-conscious people', but 'keep your head down and maintain the status quo'. Fifty years ago a similar uproar would have developed if a company hired a black CEO. The press release announcing his removal a week later would have been the same, some fluff words about being unable to effectively lead when he's spending all his time dealing with this.

ryandvm 12y ago
Indeed. I don't agree with Eich's personal views on gay marriage, but I'm kind of disappointed that everybody seems to be cool with getting people fired because they stood up for their personal views. People are comfortable with his firing because they feel his views are "wrong", but pretty much all progressive views, by definition, started out as "wrong" as well...
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > I don't agree with Eich's personal views on gay marriage, but I'm kind of disappointed that everybody seems to be cool with getting people fired because they stood up for their personal views. No one got fired here. Brendan Eich quit a job that, from all reports, he was dubious about taking from day one.
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- thumbtackthief 12y ago
  What if it came out that his personal views (and political donations, more importantly) were against interracial marriage or women's suffrage? No one would bat an eye at his losing his position as CEO (voluntarily or not). Everyone is just shocked because our society is finally starting to recognize anti-gay bigotry as abhorrent as racism or sexism.
12y ago

pessimizer 12y ago

Or at least the PR reasons ("do what the customers want") and the libertarian reasons ("private companies can make any decision that they want for any reason") for not wanting Eich for CEO are the old PR and libertarian reasons for firing gays. What if your reason is that he supports the elimination of benefits for a commonly discriminated against minority class, and he's being put into a position to at least indirectly make decisions about those benefits at a company that has historically supported them? Any way to figure out an analogy to that in discrimination against gays? edit: That's a serious question, and if you have a serious opinion, I'd think you'd reply after downvoting.

stcredzero 12y ago
What if your reason is that he supports the elimination of benefits for a commonly discriminated against minority class, and he's being put into a position to at least indirectly make decisions about those benefits at a company that has historically supported them? What the record actually shows is that the policies of Mozilla, in the time he was CEO, treated well those who had cause to oppose him in his private political life.
- pessimizer 12y ago
  >in the time he was CEO You mean during that week that everybody hammered him about his anti-gay donations and then he quit? I have doubts about his ability to push substantial policy during that period, to say the least.
  - stcredzero 12y ago
    So, basically people were just against what he might do. (Which also has clear parallels with past justifications for firing a gay CEO.)

dclowd9901 12y ago

He's right. And so the fuck what? It's not the reasoning I care about. It's never been about the reasoning. No one ever bought any bullshit about "community standards" even when it was being used to oust gays. It was about the act of marginalizing individuals over something that literally affects nobody else. If a gay person works at my company, his being gay will have no affect on my livelihood. People with an anti-gay agenda have made a choice to stand in the way of progress. That means their actions negatively affect the people around them, malevolent. They're entitled to no consideration, because it's their choice to ostracize themselves for their ignorance. It should be seen the same as firing someone who habitually shits on the bathroom floor.

secstate 12y ago
Thanks for the well-positioned comment. I had half a mind to nod my head at this article, but you're so right. The problem with Eich's donation was that it made an otherwise-unnecessary personal opinion perfectly obvious. Actively contributing to a campaign to crush individual rights is a pretty strong indicator that as a CEO he'd have trouble living up to all sorts of equal-opportunity employers requirements. Yeah, it sucks that this was dragged into the public, and don't even get be started on the waste-land of cable news. But he probably should have thought of the employment implications in donating to a campaign against gays before he did it. I like the bathroom floor analogy, because there's a tacit social contract that we don't shit on the floor. Same is true in business. He's free to say whatever he wants in public, but he's also free to be heavily encouraged to resign over whatever is he DOES say.
- stcredzero 12y ago
  Actively contributing to a campaign to crush individual rights is a pretty strong indicator that as a CEO he'd have trouble living up to all sorts of equal-opportunity employers requirements. The actual policies of the organization he helped to run would suggest exactly the opposite.
news_to_me 12y ago
"If an anti-gay person works at my company, his being anti-gay will have no affect on my livelihood. People with a gay agenda have made a choice to stand in the way of progress. That means their actions negatively affect the people around them, malevolent. They're entitled to no consideration, because it's their choice to ostracize themselves for their ignorance. It should be seen the same as firing someone who habitually shits on the bathroom floor." See how this goes both ways?

doe88 12y ago

From the start I was unconfortable with the idea of firing or demoting someone who had worked 15+ years in an organization without any related issues raised before. And now I'm appalled by all these justifications while nobody seems to really discuss the huge technical loss. Maybe it's my engineering side speaking but I'm outraged to see such a great engineer forced to leave by people who in the end for the most part don't really care about Mozilla and will soon go to the next cause to defend. Meanwhile Mozilla has lost a bit of its soul and a part of its mind. The outcome is just sad.

stcredzero 12y ago
will soon go to the next cause to defend Just who is being "defended" here? No free society should take offense to a nonviolent political stand, even unpopular ones. Going after someone like this is not defense. It's attack.
- devindotcom 12y ago
  Wait, why is it defense for him to speak in favor, and attack for others to speak against? Don't mass speech and boycotts constitute a "nonviolent political stand"?
  - mkr-hn 12y ago
    I think a lot of people got their first taste of politics through cable news and never learned the older, more useful vocabulary with words like "disagree" and "challenge."
  - stcredzero 12y ago
    why is it defense for him to speak in favor Wow. Reading comprehension, please.
dllthomas 12y ago
Doesn't placing "such a great engineer" in a CEO role already mean he's not being applied to engineering tasks?

stcredzero 12y ago

People have forgotten the magnanimous spirit championed by Martin Luther King. He did not advocate that one day, the oppressed would be on top and the "bad guys" would get theirs. That sort of attitude would be inimical to what he, Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela would have advocated. Getting Brendan Eich fired makes nobody more free or less oppressed. Instead, it moves society towards a state where no one feels free to say what they really think, unless it hews to the majority opinion, and where might makes right and principles of tolerance and decency are only applied to the "correct" people. In days past, the "correct" people would have excluded non-whites and homosexuals. An English vicar once said that to judge someone's character, observe not how they treat the people they need, but how they treat the people they don't need.

devindotcom 12y ago
You seem to know these men well! Would they have said we should not have spoken out when a company we know and would like to trust advances a man demonstrably and unrepentantly against equal rights for gay people to its highest post? Or would nonviolent activism and speech asking that such a person not be allowed to represent that company, and that someone with such views should not be honored but repudiated, be "inimical" to their philosophies? I don't presume to know what King or Gandhi would have done. But I don't think speaking out against a public figure who stands against equal rights is wrong.
- stcredzero 12y ago
  I don't presume to know what King or Gandhi would have done. But I don't think speaking out against a public figure who stands against equal rights is wrong. Sure, but going after someone for a political donation from 6 years ago after the issue has already been won seems vindictive and socially counterproductive. Can you point me to something that MLK, Mandela, or Gandhi did or said that would indicate they'd do something like that? I can point to many examples of words and actions of theirs that would suggest they'd advocate for a more magnanimous path.
  - nate_meurer 12y ago

johngalt 12y ago

It's ok though, because this time the mob is right. All those other times the mob was wrong. So long as you can predict exactly which way subjective collective reasoning will go for years into the future you'll be fine.

devindotcom 12y ago
Ah, so you would have maintained a healthy distance during the civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s as well?
- johngalt 12y ago
  Would I distance myself from MLK? no. From the black panthers? yes. There is a vast difference between believing something to be true, and wishing harm upon those who refuse to acknowledge that truth. Are there any injustices you see in the world that aren't also the popular opinion in your peer group?
  - devindotcom 12y ago
    Boy, what a loaded question! Tell me, do you still beat your your wife? But seriously, do you think there are any injustices in the world at all? It sounds like they don't count if they come from, or ar at all influenced by, one's peer group. How do you propose to find justice and injustice if not by agreement by the people that make up society? Second, by your definition of harm, if a restaurant refuses to serve black customers, and people boycott it so the owner must close down, they have wished him harm and are on the "black panther" side of your equation, yes? Even if he must only change his policy, his "right to think" has been impinged upon, so I suppose that is also harm, right?

mkr-hn 12y ago

I really wish anyone at all would acknowledge that not everyone who had a problem with his donation wanted him out of a job. People are too eager to combine everyone into two faceless mobs when the arguments were far more nuanced than two mindless binaries. The general wave of anti-gay equality campaigns didn't start or stop with prop 8. It began as a reaction to some of the early victories of the pro-equality movement. My own state tried to make it legal for businesses to deny service to me just a few weeks ago. His donation exists in a context where people are still suffering from the constant assault on their status as equal citizens.

lexcorvus 12y ago

I'm sure many supporters of Brendan Eich's ouster are completely sincere, but it's difficult to explain the intensity of their feelings on this issue. It can't be as simple as "civil rights" and "marriage equality"; for example, (first) cousin marriage is important to many groups—indeed, in Islam cousin marriage is not only allowed, it's often preferred [1]—but it is illegal in most states [2]. And yet, I rarely see advocates of "marriage equality" get all lathered up over this issue. Are advocates of "marriage equality" in favor of legalizing cousin marriage? If not, why not? If so, why have they not worked harder to achieve it? I see no way to resolve this paradox from within the context of progressive ideology, but it's trivial to explain once you view it from the outside. As the example of cousin marriage shows, the behavior of Eich's purgers is not consistent with mere "civil rights" and "marriage equality", but it is consistent with signaling tribal membership, seizing political power, and smashing their enemies. As it happens, right now gay marriage is an effective club with which progressives can beat conservatives. At some point, this may also be the case for cousin marriage—I can easily imagine opponents of cousin marriage someday being branded "Islamophobes", just as today opponents of gay marriage are branded "homophobes". But I predict that this will happen if, and only if, it serves progressive political ends. [1]: http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Cousin_Marriage_in_Islam http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Cousin_Marriage_in_Islam [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_law_in_the_United_States_by_state http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_law_in_the_Unit...

dragonwriter 12y ago
> I'm sure many supporters of Brendan Eich's ouster are completely sincere What "ouster"? > It can't be as simple as "civil rights" and "marriage equality" Even ignoring the questionable use of "ouster", yes, it can. > for example, (first) cousin marriage is important to many groups [...]. And yet, I rarely see advocates of "marriage equality" get all lathered up over this issue. So, what? Opponents of interracial marriage bans in the 1950s-1960s didn't get "lathered up" over cousin marriage bans, or same sex marriage bans, either. That doesn't mean that opposition to interracial marriage bans wasn't all about civil rights and equality. > Are advocates of "marriage equality" in favor of legalizing cousin marriage? Some probably are, some probably are not. As with most political issues, position on this issue doesn't absolutely determine position on any other issue. > If not, why not? Conceptually, regulating new legal family relationships on the basis of existing family relationships is different than doing so based on some other non-family status, so there is no real reason why positions on these should be expected to correlate. > If so, why have they not worked harder to achieve it? This is the "why aren't advocates of 'X' spending equal effort on every other analogous issue" argument, which ignores that actually effecting change often requires serial focus, rather than parallel effort. > I see no way to resolve this paradox from within the context of progressive ideology And yet, as noted above, I see several that fit quite well in that framework. Maybe what you fail to see says more about what you want to see than about what actually is there?

MetaCosm 12y ago

> Losing your job for being gay is different from losing your job for opposing gay marriage. Unlike homosexuality, opposition to same-sex marriage is a choice, and it directly limits the rights of other people. He wrote an entire article equivocating them, then he quickly writes a couple sentences pointing out he full well knows it is absolute nonsense. Well played by him, I read the article.