Are you sure? Prop 8 was _passed_ (i.e. it was voted in favor of by more than half of California's population), and yet we still regularly hold witch hunts for people that supported it. I've actually been asked about it on a job application.
It seems like that's probably illegal, though here's hopefully some nuance:
It probably shouldn't be illegal. The parts of the civil rights legislation that reach into the private sector should be probably be repealed/sunsetted. It should be sufficient to have the government actually recognize/implement equal protection under the law. E.g., if the KKK burns down the local shop that serves people of color or is owned by a person of color, the police should bring the KKK members to justice.
To keep going, while it shouldn't be illegal, it shouldn't be encouraged either. The employer has their right to free expression and voluntary association but they should strive/remain-vigilant to uphold the spirit of free speech and tolerance even if the law does not compel them to. For those with such self-discipline, their reward is access to the broader, richer market of rational peoples of every stripe.
It's more productive for us to concentrate on the arguments that are actually being made. You don't have to, of course, but I don't think you'll get very far otherwise.
Except that democratic voting systems are set up to make to make it impossible to prove who you voted for.
When the narrative was "Thiel's connection to YC is about prestige, so YC should sever that connection to preserve its reputation", I found it basically reasonable.
But if the narrative is "Disavowing Thiel will make Trump-supporting founders uncomfortable with coming to YC, or uncomfortable admitting their support?" Then we've jumped to punishing people professionally for being in a group comprising 40%+ of the country.
Hounding founders who support Trump (who, perhaps, don't even donate or like many of his views) seems to go straight into the awful kind of patronage/exclusion politics that's being condemned here.
I'm not trying to be uncharitable here - I honestly don't follow. One possibility is that since YC founders often end up quite wealthy, you're talking about discouraging the next Thiel rather than discouraging business with Trump supporters in general?
To be clear, I am not a Trump supporter, but dehumanizing Trump supporters is not a productive approach.
Cutting people off only further isolates them. If you really want to convert Trump supporters, you have to show them the error of their ways gradually, just like with everything else. Writing them off as irredeemable based on their political preferences is not only inadvisable, but fundamentally destructive of the binding social fabric of the republic.
What might interest you more is that I agree with you about Brendan Eich. I think Eich's situation is nothing at all like that of Thiel's. Eich was a full-time employee of Mozilla. From what I know of the situation, Eich hadn't made any of his employees at Mozilla uncomfortable. Eich's support for Proposition 8 was quiet: people dug it out of a database to use against him. And while I disagree with the stance he took against marriage equality, opposition to marriage equality doesn't challenge equal access to the channels of democracy. Eich wasn't campaigning to remove the Muslims from our country, or to imprison those who disagree with him.
What happened to Eich was wrong.
But nothing like that is happening here.
As a European looking from the outside and more than aware of this history, I see the media goose-stepping to the tune of one campaign which uses it to stoke up moral outrage about their opposition of which this story is a current symptom. The candidate that rhymes with history is not the chaotic/offensive TV personality.
What?! Of course it was - history time: the small feller with moustaches joined an anti-capitalist workers party. It's in the name - it was socialist but nationalist so anti-communist but still decidedly to the left of say the DNC today. Check the manifesto including things like banning rentiers, seizing land, obligating pensions and this little gem "We want all very big corporations to be owned by the government" etc. The moral is that its not where you start, its where you go that matters.
Source: I read a biography on Hitler, but I don't have time to go track down the exact citations/references. This page might be a good start:
There were factions in the Nazi Party, both conservative and radical.[23] The conservative Nazi Hermann Göring urged Hitler to conciliate with capitalists and reactionaries.[23] Other prominent conservative Nazis included Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich.[24]
The radical Nazi Joseph Goebbels hated capitalism, viewing it as having Jews at its core, and he stressed the need for the party to emphasise both a proletarian and national character. Those views were shared by Otto Strasser, who later left the Nazi Party in the belief that Hitler had betrayed the party's socialist goals by allegedly endorsing capitalism.[23] Large segments of the Nazi Party staunchly supported its official socialist, revolutionary, and anti-capitalist positions and expected both a social and economic revolution upon the party's gaining power in 1933.[25] Many of the million members of the Sturmabteilung (SA) were committed to the party's official socialist program.[25] The leader of the SA, Ernst Röhm, pushed for a "second revolution" (the "first revolution" being the Nazis' seizure of power) that would entrench the party's official socialist program. Further, Röhm desired that the SA absorb the much smaller German Army into its ranks under his leadership.[25]
Boycotts are a form of speech. The right to criticize is inalienable.
Second, if you think that firing an employee for their political beliefs is a straw man, you should be standing up for Palmer Luckey in this case.
The usual argument runs that this time is unique, that Trump has embraced racism and violence and his major-party status should not bury that. That he is effectively (sometimes "literally") a facist, and should be treated as such. I think it's an inadequate, alarming response.
Just about half of voters will back Trump. At that scale, silencing and marginalizing them is impossible, so whether it's moral doesn't really matter. Shunning influences people when it cuts them off from their social circles, but most of the people embracing shunning admit they know 0-1 Trump supporters. It's not going to marginalize anyone, just deepen a divide between the groups.
Even if Trump were quite literally Mussolini 2.0, firing and shunning his supporters wouldn't end his candidacy. In fact, refusing to engage with facists has historically pushed them further, letting them build their beliefs unopposed.
I respected Altman's explanation. It doesn't matter that Trump is different, or that Thiel donated an exceptional amount (particularly since it was in line with his wealth). Firing people for simple support or donations makes this problem worse, so no amount of importance is a justification.