It's the urge-to-punish that I find objectionable, applied with increasing levels of indirection, and in spheres of life that should be consciously firewalled from religion/politics.

Mozilla is clearly a very inclusive project and a pro-LGBT workplace, which also does a ton of good on other issues. So what's "kind/respectful" about boycotting all of Mozilla, because of a one-time outside-the-workplace political donation by one manager?

The boycott tactic says: "bend to our preferences or we'll shun/nullify/punish you totally, not just in the zone of disagreement". That's the same kind of zero-tolerance orthodoxy-enforcement that drives censorship or war-making. Look at the "enemies" language OKCupid uses!

I prefer instead the logic of coexistence, and cooperation on common interests, even during the deepest of disagreements. That's important, because in our reasonably-wealthy, mostly-free society, every remaining political disagreement involves difficult issues of identity, rights, and morals.

I'm hypertolerant. I buy from, and do work for, and consume the rhetorical/cultural output of, people I vigorously disagree with all the time.

But also, I don't really buy anything "from a CEO". I don't even know the names (much less the religions or political sympathies) of most CEOs heading firms that supply my daily needs. This goes equally for local businesses: at a restaurant operated by a Catholic family, my 1st question will be, "what are the specials?", not, "have you publicly renounced the Pope's regressive stances on social issues?"

Many communities have already evolved to the point where gay rights are a given. In those places it's time to be gracious winners! As easy and fun as it may be to dig up the corpse of Proposition 8, and shoot it in the head again and again, there are plenty of live battles on similar issues elsewhere.

I'd prefer California (and our industry) be a positive example of how, after gay marriage is recognized and normalized to become "no big deal", everyone can still get along. Not an example of how retributive anger, and the appetite for economically-punishing losing dissenters, never ends.

More likely his (assumed) belief that marriage can only be between a man and a woman stems from ignorance and his religion instead of bigotry or hate. And while that doesn't negate the harm that his donation caused: please stop comparing him to racists.

You don't know Brendan, I don't know Brendan, nobody in previous threads comparing him to fucking racists or the Nazis knows Brendan. It's disgusting, please stop.

>Should we be respectful for these often-arbitrary beliefs or should we try to make people/companies with these beliefs uncomfortable (but in kind/respectful way)? Honest question.

You should take the moral high ground and send him a personal communication detailing how his donation has caused harm.

No one's asking you to respect his belief, though, but this is just majorly unfair to everyone else who has contributed to Mozilla.

Is a racist hateful? My grandmother was a racist and was a really good/kind women who dedicated much of her life to helping others (including people of color). She didn't treat other races hatefully, but she did have warped beliefs about other races- "stemming from ignorance and her religion instead of bigotry or hate" (your words).

I didn't compare him to nazis, skinheads, or other violent/hateful racists. You shouldn't equate racism with hate.

In short, I think it's a fair comparison. Right now, I don't think he's a hateful person though more information could change my mind.

Not sure what religion you're referring to, I'm aware you were using the parent's words but you were using them. So what religion do you think influenced your grandmother to be racist?

Christianity. There were plenty of racists back in the day who used the bible to support their views: https://www.google.com/search?q=biblical+support+for+racism

Though you could step beyond my/the parent comment's literal words to get to the gist of the point: While they deserve some sensitivity because they are a product of their religion/upbringing/culture, they don't get a free pass (google "moral relativism" if you want to see a mess of discussions about this).

> You don't know Brendan, I don't know Brendan, nobody in previous threads comparing him to fucking racists or the Nazis knows Brendan.

I know Brendan. I met him on a number of occasions while working at Mozilla and interacted with him on many more. I think the comparison to racism is completely valid. I don't think he's a bad guy (he was always quite cordial with me) but his actions caused harm to a large number of people; I don't think that's okay.

What actions did he take besides donating $1,000 to Prop 8?

What other actions does he need to take? Passing prop 8 harmed people.

I didn't mean to imply otherwise: the phrasing of but his actions caused harm to a large number of people led me to believe there was something else that occurred of which I was unaware.

It's his inactions that have also caused problems. Refusing to change his beliefs. Refusing to justify his unchanged beliefs. Refusing to explain why he did what he did and what outcomes he intended. Refusing to respond to anyone's valid criticisms and questions. Refusing to apologize, but instead issuing a cynical, verbally acrobatic non-apology apology, that backflips and dances around the burning issues. Refusing to step down after he's caused damage to the Mozilla project.

He created Javascript

How is it valid? Have you talked to him personally about his beliefs? He's offered to share them with anyone he meets in person.

Fortunately for us, we have the opportunity to form our opinion of him by the actions he takes rather than the words he uses.

Again: Believing that marriage can only be between a man and a woman, because marriage has a religious connotation to them, is not bigotry.

It's a stupid fucking belief, and it leads to seperate but equal bullshit, but it's not homophobic on its own.

Except all marriages are civil marriages - and the government has to treat all equally. that is all. Your church, temple, or mosque can be as exclusionary and ignorant as they want to be. that's fine, and protected free speech. But the government shouldn't give rights to some and not all (inheritance, consent, tax breaks etc).

Well, no, that's the point.

There are civil unions, and there are marriages - and if it was simply about "rights" and "benefits", then people wouldn't give a c*ap which group they were in.

However, even though they have civil unions (in many countries/states), they also want to redefined marriage.

I'm not saying that's wrong or right - that's an argument I won't go into here.

However, to try to pretend that this is anything but redefining something is pretty deceptive.

Maybe they'll win, and we will redefine marriage. Who knows.

You keep saying this throughout the thread. You are misinformed. Marriage and civil unions are legally different things with different rights, responsibilities, and scope.

They are legally the same in Connecticut and other states. Not all, but in some. But it's not equal in the "institutional" sense so we should just redefine marriage in states instead of building civil unions with the same framework as marriages and have two seperate but equal legal frameworks.

Fortunately, momentum is building for marriage equality here in Georgia. Maybe this state isn't so bad after all. The editor of the local small town paper even came out in support.

Marriage and civil unions embody the same legal rights in the US (at least, in the states that they were created so far), at issue is some people beliefs that marriage as in institution should not be changed. And I don't agree with that, "seperate but equal" is personally unacceptable to me.

I'm just trying to explain what his (assumed) beliefs are, and pointing out that his donation and beliefs shouldn't automatically label him as "anti-gay."

Says who? This is such a weird statement. These people are treating gays unequally, why do they get a pass if they are choosing to follow homophobic dogma?

If a religion said black people were cursed and had no souls, there wouldn't be so much hemming and hawing over whether or not they were racist. (Articles about the Mormon church all mention its "racist past".)

Opposing gay marriage [1] is a sign of bigotry and hate, by that fact alone. It's akin to excusing white supremacists in the 1950's for segregating blacks and whites and underfunding black schools because their opinions were religiously motivated (and most claimed a religion as one of the reasons--children of Ham, and all that) and because they ignorantly believed blacks were inherently intellectually inferior. Nope, no hate or bigotry at all there.

[1] With a sliver of a possible out if you support ending all legal recognition of marriage.

From a well-known gay British art critic, writer and broadcaster. Is he a hateful homophobic bigot too? Obviously he does not represent the whole gay community, but it does serve to highlight how the abusive language directed towards Brendan and the call for a boycott are a complete over-reaction.

Why I will never be converted to gay marriage

...the recent institution of civil partnerships seemed to be the final necessary reform, giving homosexuals the right to inherit each other’s property, just as may a man and his wife; and if they want a family, there is now no barrier to their adopting children – in the case of homosexual men, so long in error bundled together with paedophiles and pederasts, an astonishing recognition of moral responsibility.

Why then do they and lesbians demand the right to marry? Indeed, how many of us have made that demand? One in 20? One in 10? Most of us... are content with civil partnerships and have not pleaded for gay marriage. But every minority has within it a core of single-issue politicians and protesters who are never satisfied and always ask for more, and homosexuals, both male and female, are no exception.

Since the institution of civil partnerships there has been no impediment to their celebration with a party as extravagant as any wedding, but not all homosexuals are so exhibitionist. Most of us are content with what we now have within the law, and are happy to respect the deeply-held belief of sincere, thoughtful and informed Christians for whom marriage is the one sacrament in which we cannot share.

We have wasted our resources on the wrong campaign – the battle still to be won is against prejudice, the most insidious of enemies.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10729717/Brian-Sewe...

This pattern of thought is not new as noted by another commenter but beyond that, it is dismissive. If, and a big if would be given should marriage be a truly sacred multi generational ceremony. It's not, it began with ownership of people and is presently accompanied by a farce of a concept that diamonds are actually worth anything.

If you could look beyond that joke of a concept you can see it's really about EQUAL rights, not about samesies.

To some the concept of marriage means something, to others it's a way to get insurance or better tax deals. This debate is about equal rights. period.

As a side note, the only real argument i've heard against same sex marriage was it opens the doors to lawsuits, because if you have the same rights you can be sued you when you infringe them. And that's what the true opponents of equal rights fear.

pps the only thing about the quote that makes any sense is it is wasted resources, this should not even be a debate.

Zora Neale Hurston supported segregation. Would you argue that segregation wasn't racist?

In many countries what separates a Civil Union (that may in fact also be between Man and Woman) and Marriage are tax benefits an easy fix would be to just tie the tax benefits to something else, like the fact that you are raising children.

>Opposing gay marriage is a sign of bigotry and hate, by that fact alone.

No, it is not. One can actually have empathy with gays and believe that marriage can only be between a man and a woman.

I don't agree with those beliefs, but I'm speaking from experience that there are many people who believe that marriage has a very religious connotation.

Can you please cite a single interaction in which Brendan has looked down upon someone personally due to their sexual identity?

When he donated money to remove a law in order to deny gay people their human rights.

You can't just slap "but it's my religionnnnn" on something and call it a day. It's like you haven't bothered to read the rhetoric that right-wing politicians used in the segregated South or apartheid-era South Africa.

I'm not saying you should respect his beliefs. I'm saying you should stop calling him a bigot because you don't know what he actually believes, and don't have any evidence that he's homophobic.

All we know is that he donated $1000 to reaffirm, in law, that marriage can only be between a man and a woman.

Perhaps he believes that the state should remove all recognition of marriage and just recognize civil unions going forward for everyone with the benefits from marriage.

We don't know, because he hasn't talked about his beliefs. And honestly, I don't believe they're that important when Mozilla has reaffirmed their strive for equality.

> Perhaps he believes that the state should remove all recognition of marriage...

Just a heads-up, this is a strawman developed by anti-same-sex-marriage proponents to provide a possible (though not plausible) reason other than denying people their rights why someone might oppose same-sex marriage (and you also have to buy that someone who wanted to grant same-sex couples those legal right would vote/donate/campaign/etc to deny them).

If you're going to assert it, you need to have specific evidence that the individual in question actually believes that.

I used the modifier "perhaps", which was followed by acknowledgment that we don't know his beliefs (because he won't talk about them except in person.)

Brendan is (or was at the time of donation) ignorant, there's no sense in disputing that. I'm just tired of people labelling him as anti-gay, bigot, homophobe, etc.

Perhaps you're an apologist for bigots.

I know him. You're wrong. He's an unrepentant homophobic bigot.

Marriage is not really a human right anyways, apart from the symbolic gesture the state grants priviledges like tax benefits, adoptions rights and so on. Typically the state has to have some kind of justification for granting priviledges in this case it was probably motivated by religion, but it could also be tied to potential child production / child care.

Ideally laws would be reformed in such a way that the priviledges granted today are tied to something other than you are a man and woman and want to marry. It could be just you are two or more people who want to marry. In my opinion things especially tax benefits should be tied to the fact that you are actually providing a service (like raising kids, your own or adopted, but maybe just caring for each other financially is enough).

Really, denied them their human rights?

I think you might be overblowing the horn just slightly there.

Sigh.

Nobody is being oppressed.

In most progressive countries, civil unions are available, which confer exactly the same benefits and rights as a traditional marriage.

In fact, in many countries, you don't even need to do that - simply having a de-facto relationship will be enough.

So basically, it's about a word - in this case "marriage", which has traditionally been between a man and a woman, they want to redefine it to include any two humans.

I'm not saying that tradition is "right" just because we've done it that way for thousands of years - maybe it's "right" that words should change over time.

However, to try to claim the moral high ground by making disingenuous comparisons to Apartheid is pretty disgusting for all those that actually suffered through Apartheid.

What next? Comparisons to the pogrums?

Not overblowing at all. Marriage is a human right. Since you're in such an affected high dudgeon over apartheid [1], here's a question for you: was the ban on interracial marriage something anti-apartheid activists blew off as just a jolly good time that's not at all oppressive, or did they consider it part and parcel of an oppressive system?

[1] An aside: Do you know anything at all about apartheid? Did you actually protest against it? Do you you know about the deep links between the LGBT-rights movement and anti-apartheid movement, which was a factor that led to South Africa's being the only constitution in Africa, and one of the first in the world, to give formal equal rights to the LGBT community and subsequently legalize gay marriage?

Well, your point is actually a logical inequality - apartheid was against the idea of interracial relationships, married or not.

It's not exactly like these interracial couples were offered a "union" which conferred the same rights, but don't call it a marriage.

But even if they were, it's still not close to the current battle over gay "marriage".

For most of recorded human history, the concept of marriage was very much tied to the idea of family.

For example, Susan Treggiari, a professor of Roman history writes "Matrimonium is an institution involving a mother, mater. The idea implicit in the word is that a man takes a woman in marriage, in matrimonium ducere, so that he may have children by her".

Homosexual relationships cannot by definition create a family - they are not a procreative relationship.

I'm not saying they're wrong because of this - this is simply a biological fact.

This is what a lot of gay marriage activists seem to miss - it's not opposition to the idea of them together. If they want to be together, they will be together.

It's simply that they wish to come along and redefine an existing word, to fit a new definition of what a family is.

Perhaps as a society, we will agree - and we will allow "marriage" between any two humans, and gender will become irrelevant.

However, to simply come along and assume, oh, a man and woman get it, so a man and man should get it automatically is either being intentionally blind, or very presumptuous.

A man and woman family is different to one composed of a man and a man - not because one is more valuable or not valuable - but simply because of their roles.

It's like saying, oh, a woman gets pregnant, so she must be more valuable than the man in a marriage. Well no, they are different - they play different parts, and we call them different things.

So it comes down to "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." You just recite a long litany of naturalistic fallacies and claims that marriage is X because marriage is X.

Yeah, there's a reason people think people who support straight marriage while opposing gay marriage are homophobic bigots.

Dude, it's biology....sigh.

(And probably anthropology thrown in there as well).

I don't get it, for people who claim to be super-rational, and only believing in "evidence", some of you atheists are a strangely illogical bunch.

And then when you say "Err...but wait, did you actually think this through - what about X?", they start throwing around labels like BIGOT, BIGOT!!!! NYAH NYAH!!!

Ok, I'll try and put in in HN tl'dr terms =).

Man + Woman = Procreation

That is a fact of life (literally, the fact of life) - human's engage in sexual reproduction.

For most of recorded human civilisation, we've had marriages - to try and foster the family unit, and engage in aforesaid procreation.

Now, in modern times, we've had an upsurge in homosexual relationships - some people decide to have sexual partnerships with same-gendered people.

Now, this can't by definition by procreative - which for most of recorded history was the point of marriage and families.

So some parts of society want them to come up with a new term to describe this relationship, which is sexual in nature, but not about families or procreation.

However, the other group say that because their relationships are sexual in nature, and they still like the concept of kids, they should still use the same label.

Here's one instance: he donated money to prevent people from getting married due to their sexual identity.

For some reason denying gays their equal rights is somehow ok as long as the person is not foaming at the mouth, and if they're refusing to be open-minded about their religious beliefs. I don't get it.

Maybe marriage certainly is between a man and a women within THEIR RELIGIOUS point of view. And that's fine. Their church can be as exclusionary as they want to be. But the US government shouldn't be exclusionary. Marriage in the US affords civil rights and distinctions (inheritance, consent, taxes) that should simply be equal for all citizens. Your religion and their obsolete views of things makes no difference. Who cares if your church or temple won't do a gay ceremony.

Opposing gay marriage isn't always linked to bigotry.

I oppose ALL state-sanctioned unions because I don't believe it's the state's business to say who can and cannot be in an official relationship (hetero, homo, or all the poly/group unions). As long as the people consent, why does the state need to approve?

Considering marriage is a non-binding contract (no fault divorce), the contract isn't worth the paper it's printed on (even prenups are overruled with alarming frequency).

From the state's perspective, what does approving marriage offer? It offers monitoring and control (and a religious position), but almost nothing else. Child guardianship is already a non-marital issue. Last will and testaments along with living wills (if enforced properly) deal with most legal issues pertaining to marriage. Minor modifications to tax law deals with the rest.

If someone wants to be married, they should go to their local church, mosque, synagogue, or whatever. If they want legal protection, have a will and they should sign the proper docs (even married persons should do this). If they want a binding contract, they should contact a lawyer and get one (just as they would with a prenup if they want something semi-binding).

Eich didn't give $1000 to an anti-state-marriage proposition, he gave to an anti-same-sex-marriage proposition.

>from ignorance and his religion instead of bigotry or hate

I am not one of the fedora-tippers, and I have no problem with individual faith, but it's been my experience that organized religion (of any sort) tends to discourage critical thinking and encourage ignorance. A byproduct of this is prejudice which leads to the dark side.

I don't believe you can quite so easily separate religion from discrimination.

Acts 8:26-40 Read it. I don't know how you conflate religion with racism. It is not the truth.

Explain that to the many religious people who used their religion to justify racism and misogony, as they now use their religion to justify homophobia. You can cherry pick and whitewash your religion however you choose, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a powerful weapon for racists and misogynists and bigots, and they use it against people they hate.

Of course maybe I'm misinterpreting you. If by "it is not the truth," you mean the religions that people use to justify their hate are not the truth, then I agree with you.

Yes we agree, it was the point of the reference I gave too. Anyone who invokes religion for _or_ against in the matter of deciding what marriage is defined as and what new term is needed, is wrong. True religion is about joining people together not separating them.

Did you read what I wrote? I don't think you read what I wrote.

>You should take the moral high ground and send him a personal communication detailing how his donation has caused harm.

I think there is far to much 'walking on eggshells' these days in regards to rights being infringed.

Please stop being an apologist for bigots. Racists and homophobes and misogynists and nazis are all cut from the same cloth, and they all support each other, so attacking the root cause of their hate is fighting them all. And asking people to stop being "unfair" to them is asking people to treat them all fairly, which they don't deserve, because they acted unfairly first.

The Paradox of Tolerance is a resolved philosophical debate, so the idea that it's ironic or wrong to be intolerant of intolerance is an unoriginal and misguided idea. Philosopher Karl Popper asserted, in The Open Society and Its Enemies Vol. 1, that we are warranted in refusing to tolerate intolerance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

I do know Brendan, since the time I interviewed with him at Netscape in the 90's, and I know people who work with him and know him much better than I do, who say he has a lot of insane hateful beliefs that he doesn't like to share with people (except by paying money to other people to fund making TV commercials demonizing gays, destroying existing gay married families, and preventing future ones until the Supreme Court stepped in, of course), and that he refuses to change or justify his unjust beliefs.

Mozilla has tried to recruit me on numerous occasions, and I've turned them down because of Brendan, sending them and Brendan my explanation of why, but I've never heard anything back from Brendan or Mozilla about it. And I'm not the only person who refuses to work with Mozilla because of Brendan, so he's already harmed the Mozilla project as well as the people he hates.

So I DID tell him how his donation has caused harm, both to me and my friends, and the Mozilla project, and he ignored it. Now what do you suggest?

----

There remains an huge elephant in the room, Brendan, which causes your message of inclusivity to fall flat.

"I'm sorry." "I was wrong." These are the words abusers never say; you want our forgiveness without actually promising to stop harming people, or explaining what was going through your head when you DID harm people before.

You're not sorry. You refuse to mention you were wrong, and apologize for the tangible harm you caused. You skirt around the well known fact that you donated money to destroy the existing and potential marriages of gay families. Everyone knows that. It's on the record.

Your verbal gymnastics to avoid addressing that fact overshadowed your message. Why didn't you mention that YOU PERSONALLY are the cause of people mistrusting Mozilla's commitment to equality, and explain WHAT you did and WHY you did it, as you have always refused to do.

If you learned anything, and changed your bigoted beliefs, then you should ADMIT to making a mistake, EXPLAIN why you made it, and APOLOGIZE for the harm you caused.

But no, you're still an abuser, because:

You refuse to admit you were wrong.

You refuse to explain what the fuck you were thinking when you donated money to support Proposition 8.

You refuse to explain why you intended and succeeded in destroying the existing and potential marriages of gay families.

You refuse to explain what you learned from being wrong, so other bigots like yourself can learn from your mistakes, and hopefully change their ways.

Brendan: You are a bigot, and an abuser. Not just because of your beliefs, which you have kept to yourself because they are so unjustifiable that you are ashamed to discuss them, but because of your ACTIONS, which tangibly contributed to the success of Proposition 8, thus destroying the existing gay marriages in California and preventing others. That was your intent, and that was the result of your actions, so you deserve credit for destroying those marriages, and you should be ashamed of yourself.

The Supreme Court finally ruled that Proposition 8 was wrong. Can you finally admit that YOU were wrong?

But I am sure you won't, because as a religious bigot, you think you're better than everyone else, and that you have a right to tell other people how to live their lives.

You've so much as proven that with your latest cowardly statement, a non-apology apology, which dances around the fact that you did what you did, that brought shame to the company that you direct, and blatantly avoids saying you're sorry and that you're wrong.

This is how your non-apology apology sounds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ocv5WdBmSok

I'm sorry that you feel I'm being an apologist for bigots, but I have no evidence to suggest that Eich is himself a homophobe. We all know about the donation, obviously, but that in and of itself is not evidence of his "anti-gay" stance.

If your anecdote is true and he actually is homophobic, I'll be even more hurt. But I still believe that there's really no reason for Brendan, being the most qualified, to step down when he seems comitted to equality going forward. Regardless, what OkCupid is doing is unfair (especially considering factual inaccuracies in their message) to both Mozilla Co. and Mozilla Fnd. in addition to all of the contributors.

Welcome to the club of being even more hurt.

A lot of people disagree with you, because they believe financially supporting Proposition 8 is prima facia evidence of homophobia, just as donating money to the KKK is evidence of racism.

But you're performing logical backflips, and parroting implausible straw man arguments usually proffered by dyed in the wool homophobes to justify their hatred, without actually having any knowledge of Brendan's beliefs, in an attempt to counter arguments and testimonial from people who DO know him and HAVE been negatively affected by his beliefs.

That's why it's my belief that you're being an apologist for bigots. Your "maybe he's against all marriages" argument has been shot down -- don't try it again.

>because they believe financially supporting Proposition 8 is prima facia evidence of homophobia

And they're wrong.

>without actually having any knowledge of Brendan's beliefs

I'm going on Mozilla employee's reactions, people who actually interact with him on a day to day basis. No one else seems to pin him as an "unrepentant homophobic bigot" (as per your other comment) except you.

>Your "maybe he's against all marriages" argument has been shot down -- don't try it again.

I'm in favor of redefining marriage and abolishing all civil unions because they're fundamentally unequal. And no, it hasn't, we simply don't know what his opinions are.

Your demeanor in comments really doesn't lend any credibility to your anecdote compared to the experiences shared by Mozilla Co. employees.

> Would you work for or buy products from a CEO who was an unapologetic racist just because his beliefs were a product of his family/community?

Do you mean someone like William Shockley, perhaps?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley

Also... for your question to be meaningful or relevant to the current discussion, I think you'd have to get more specific about what you mean by "unapologetic racist", and also weigh what other contributions they were bringing to the table as a CEO.

Note: nobody could tolerate Shockley and his story is not a success story. His sharp, unsympathetic and impractical opinions were mirrored directly in this management style. The style lacked pragmatic approaches to problem solving:

While Shockley had received a Nobel Prize in Physics and was an experienced researcher and teacher, his managing of the group created harsh working conditions.He chose a strategy for circuit design that failed and created an intolerable working atmosphere. The group of PhD graduates hired demanded that Shockley be replaced. When their demands were rebuffed, they realized they had to leave. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight

Wait. The guy is also the inventor of Javascript. Shouldn't everybody be boycotting that? I mean it has a lot more to do with him than Firefox does. After all, he's the CEO of Mozilla Corporation (not the Foundation), which is only indirectly connected to Firefox, but he _invented_ Javascript!

What am I missing here?

You seem sincere, so here's an honest answer.

What you're missing is the nature of the job of CEO, especially in Silicon Valley. It's not a job where you bury your head down and get the work done, a huge part of the job is being the public face of the company.

The Mozilla Corp. has decided that their public face should be someone who is opposed to equal rights for gays. That's completely different than having a racist working as a programmer or in the mail room or even as CTO.

Boycotting javascript would be silly. Nobody is trying to say that everything Eich has touched now has cooties and we should stay away from it. However, it's perfectly reasonable to ask what kind of company Mozilla wants to be when they decide they want Eich as their public representative.

I wonder how many people making this "public face of the company" argument could name the current CEO of Netflix.

Or, before the recent controversy, name any of the prior Mozilla CEOs. (It hasn't seemed to be an organization reliant on big-personality/high-profile CEOs.)

So I'm downvoted to hell, but what about my question?

It's easy to do a boycott that doesn't hurt you. Everybody can live without Firefox.

So why not get serious about this and show people that you are willing to make an actual sacrifice as a stand against his position?

Maybe that would be inconvenient?

>> What am I missing here?

> So I'm downvoted to hell, but what about my question?

The question does not deserve an answer, but you are obviously not going to realize and will remain enraged, which would be counter-productive.

Firstly you are missing that there is choice about browsers; but no choice whatsoever in a scripting language in browsers. They are asking their users to make a choice, one that will not hurt their users. By removing all use of JS they would actively hurt their users.

Secondly you are missing that even as CEO of Mozilla he does not remain in control of JS, even if he created it.

Hey, I would totally be in for a boycott of Javascript. Let's do this.

Pick a Time Machine, and go back to 1995, I wish you the best of luck.

A boycott is meant to inconvenience the target of the boycott. If your goal is to nudge the Mozilla Corp into action, Firefox downloads is really the way to do it, as that's pretty much their sole source of revenue.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation

JavaScript is something he produced, think of it as a work of art. The language itself doesn't portray his personal beliefs on topics other than language design. Putting him in charge of people who lifestyle he is not accepting of is different. It will influence the choices he makes in dealing with people and in how the organization behaves.

If the language had something like logging levels which were labeled by derogatory terms for a subset of people that'd be another issue but it doesn't.

Imagine if Ted Bundy had created a cure for cancer. Would you want to boycott it? Would you put him in charge of people? Now admittedly Bundy might be a bigger danger to a specific subset of people than Eich but Eich is still a danger in some way to a subset of people.

Boycotting FireFox isn't about the product, it is about sending a message to the organization that puts him in a position of power over people.

So you're saying you'd boycott Nazi Germany, but you wouldn't boycott an art gallery that displayed Hitler's paintings?

The point of a boycott is to pressure some company or person to change. Boycotting Javascript is too abstract to be valuable. Javascript can't fire him, to cite the obvious example.

The fact that it's realistically possible to boycott (i.e. not use) Firefox, but boycotting Javascript is - essentially - impossible. Sure, you can disable it in your browser, but that's nowhere near an outright boycott.

(BTW, this is just one difference, one that I haven't seen anyone else pointing out, whilst other, just as good - if not better - differences have been identified in this very post)

Ok I see that it is quite unrealistic to go community-wide with a Javascript boycott (and I was talking about developers, not users). It's just that singling out Firefox to me seems so arbitrary.

Now the target is Firefox, the last big independent browser, even though it was _Mozilla Corporation_ (not the foundation) that made the wrong choice. Mozilla Corporation is IMO the place were pressure should be applied.

I realize now that this is probably what annoyed me most about how this affair developed. I am quite attached to Firefox and was rather surprised that it became a target in a scandal that revolves around a stupid move by Mozilla Corporation.

Have you ever tried to program in JavaScript? It doesn't have classes but the syntax looks similar: this is actually a pointer to that.

null == false // false

!null // true

He should be exiled for inventing JS.

</joke?

Thinking that marriage is by definition between a man and a woman is not the same as thinking there's anything wrong with being gay. You can't claim someone is oppressing someone's rights by participating in the public debate about what exactly those rights should be.

I disagree with Eich, but I reserve my moral disapproval for those who seek to shame anyone holding an opinion different from that currently politically correct.

People, also, used to define marriage as being between two people of the same race. Let us dispense of this tangent once and for all: Marriage is a civil right. It is the cornerstone of this civil rights movement, as it was to the last one, and the one before that, and all the ones that haven't happened yet. The cry "marriage for all" is not politically correct; we would like it to become politically correct -- what a milestone that would be. We aren't shaming Eich because he's politically incorrect. We are shaming him because he chose to join a long line of people who have circumscribed marriage in the name of tradition or fear or ignorance. People who use their money and resources taking something that requires nothing of them to give. People who have been proven wrong, time and time again. People who we, regretfully, did not shame at the time.

Sorry, but the whole race versus gay marriage thing has been done to death, and proven patently false.

Nobody is stopping gay people from being together. Nor, in many countries/states, are they stopped from claiming the same benefits (e.g. via civil unions).

This is simply about them redefining marriage to encompass any two humans, rather than just a man and a woman.

I'm not going to go into whether that's "right" or not - that's way off topic here, and is only going to descent to a flame war - this isn't the forum for that.

However, this is about redefining a word - marriage has traditionally been between a man and a woman, and to claim otherwise is blatant historical revisionism.

Tradition is not necessarily "right" though, so they're certainly within rights to claim they feel the word should be redefined.

Just like Eichs is within right to say no, marriage should be defined the same.

And Eichs was classy enough to keep it out of his work - by all reports, he's never discriminated against gay people, or had anything against them - he's simply got his own views of what "marriage" should mean.

Nobody?! Uganda? Russia? India?

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2014/03/31/how-evangelicals-wo...

"Evangelicals took to Twitter and Facebook to threaten to stop sending money to their sponsored children unless World Vision reversed course."

All this over a word?! An etymology war... #not.

Err, couple of corrections.

On a geographical front - the US is a different country to Uganda/Russia/India.

I was speaking on the topic at hand - which is about Brandon Eichs, a US citizen, supporting a US piece of legislation, and about Mozilla, a US organisation who he works for.

Perhaps it's slightly US-centric - but then this is a US-based site. If you want articles about other countries, you're free to submit them.

And secondly, on the religious front - Africa as a whole is not particularly homosexual friendly. I suspect part of this is cultural - they're just very conservative in how they view relationships/marriage.

This isn't about religion, but simply about their society as a whole.

For example, arranged marriages are still common, and they frown very strongly on things like adultery.

So to somehow try to link it to a Californian legislation about legalistic definitions of marriages versus civil unions is a big disingenuous.

Russia and India likewise are two countries that are quite conservative in their values.

It's the same in China -they're most definitely not a Christian society by any stretch (Christianity is basically a punishable offence), but they also don't like LBGT relationships.

The funny thing is - you don't see the same level of noise about this issue in Muslim countries.

I've always wondered why that is.

YEAH! Mozilla and Uganda ... I get the two confused all the time!!!

However, as is often overlooked, this isn't purely a debate about one's personal ethics and morals; marriage extends into the legal domain, and brings with it a plethora of complex legal ramifications. So, in fact, preventing marriage does impact an individual's rights.

I would also point out that “politically correct” is about as dismissive a term as can be found today.

Cultural attitudes may shift, and at some point a marginalized concept dismissed as “politically correct” becomes simply “correct.”

Well, no, it doesn't.

In many countries/states, civil unions are the norm for gay people, and have been for some time.

However, the current debate from gay people seems to be that they want to re-use the "marriage" label, which has traditionally been for between a man and a woman.

I'm not saying it's right simply because it's tradition - but trying to argue that it has been anything but between a man and a woman for thousands of years is just historical revisionism.

So yes, you can try to argue that, we should redefine marriage to include between any two people who want it.

However, to claim that they're somehow being "oppressed" because we don't simply let them win their argument is just silly.

If this was really about them wanting benefits, then the civil union would achieve that.

Unsolicited feedback: The way you disagree is pretty disrespectful-- I've seen this in a few of your comments. Don't refer to people's arguments as "silly".

Civil unions or legal gay marriages are still not possible in about 2/3 of the United States.

It's not "historical revisionism" for the definition of a word (in the eyes of the law) to change or evolve. For example, marriage used to be legal with women under 16-- now it's largely not. I'd say that most proponents care more about the rights than the label.

It's irrelevant what's possible in 2/3 of the US. The California status quo until the court case, which Eich was implicitly trying to restore by supporting prop 8, was civil unions with identical treatment to marriage under state law except the name.

That's not Uganda style death penalty as some are equating it to.

Aside from the ethical issues, civil partnerships only had identical treatment to marriage under Californian state law. They weren't treated as marriages under federal law, or by many other countries and US states that recognised gay marriage. Likewise, Prop 8 meant that the marriages of gay couples from outside the state couldn't be recognised in California.

Civil Unions don't grant the same benefits as Marriage does. So it's not the same thing.

There's no etymology war, you can keep the word "marriage", just give everyone equal rights to marry and have their marriage recognized everywhere.

Prop 8 was entirely a terminology war. Prop 8 is not magically the entire concept of gay rights. It only addressed the issue of whether California would have same sex marriage or civil unions with identical treatment.

Federal law doesn't recognize civil unions. Separate but equal is never equal.

Then the issue is: Federal law needs to recognise civil unions.

Or we could just say that Federal law shouldn't engage in sexual discrimination re. legal marriage.

> but trying to argue that it has been anything but between a man and a woman for thousands of years is just historical revisionism.

It's a good point, unfortunately the problem with that is how far back we should we go?

For example: Same sex marriage ( not just civil union ) did occur for example in the Roman Empire, until the Christian Emperors Constantius II and Constans passed a law prohibiting same sex marriage and making it punishable by death.

No, it actually didn't actually exist in Rome - for example, see the Wikipedia article on it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage#Ancient

The examples were apparently satirical, and had no legal standing under Roman law.

The exceptions were a few Roman emperors who had...interesting....whims.

But hey, it's the emperor, who are you to tell him what's legal or illegal.

Fast forward a few thousand years, and the one other exception is history is one Spanish priest in 1061.

Here's an idea. What if Eich had donated to a cause which stated the idea that marriage could only be between two white people. Sounds nonsensical but what if instead of it being based around sexual orientation, it was based around race?

The idea of racial equality has been around a lot longer and is more generally accepted than gay marriage rights (which only recently have begun to gain wider acceptance) so I imagine more people would be on the “he should resign” side in such a case.

When I first heard about this issue I didn’t think it was a big deal as long as his personal views did not influence his professional behaviour and ethics. But as some people have pointed out, he is the public face of an organisation that touts openness and inclusiveness as values. Furthermore, if I was gay I’m sure I’d feel more strongly about this, in the same way that someone who is non-white (or in the marginalised race) would feel strongly if the issue was around race as I've described above.

Finally, to people calling for him to apologise….him coming out with an apology to pacify everyone wouldn’t mean that he has changed his mind. It could just mean him saying what he needs to say to be able to get on with things while still harbouring the same thoughts and ideas within. Ask any politician.

The comparison to race still fails to make me think publicly denouncing a company in its whole because of the personal beliefs of one member is in any way justified.

People will never be homogeneous in their beliefs, and I think that's a good thing. But when you're unable to interact with another person in any way at all because of their private beliefs, you're being an idiot.

A person's beliefs do not define their contribution to society. Life has a lot of shades of grey, everyone has opinions that run counter to the current societal ideal. It's not ok to shun or denounce that person, all you're doing is spreading hate. It IS ok to speak out about what you believe. Do some good. Instead of getting angry about someone you've read about on the internet, go volunteer somewhere. Spread some love instead.

I agree with the points you've made. I was simply stating that I can see why some people are calling for him to step down. The person who leads the company - the CEO in most cases - is by default often considered to be a public face for said company and to also be a representation of the kind of company it is. I'm not saying that that's how it should be or not, just that's how it seems to be.

> 50 years ago, being a racist was acceptable to lots of people. Would you work for or buy products from a CEO who was an unapologetic racist just because his beliefs were a product of his family/community?

It depends.

If it were, say, 100 years ago, when racism was the norm, I probably wouldn't take the racial views of the CEO into account when deciding what to buy or where to work. When a small group shuns a business, it generally hurts the small group more than it hurts the business. Heck, it may even help the business if people who agree with the CEO start doing more business with the company in a show of support for his racist views.

If it were today, where racism is much much much less acceptable than it was 100 years ago, I'd consider it. The people shunning the business for racism would very likely outnumber those who might increase spending to support it.

When 95% of the population believes something, it is pretty silly to shun a business whose CEO believes that. When 5% believes something, then shunning might make more sense. The interesting question is where is the crossover point?

Do you think that these actions are actually furthering the cause of gay rights? It seems to me it's just an emotional reaction to want to "punish" the "hated enemy" [1]. And people on the other side will have the opposite reaction and further their bias against marriage equality supporters.

[1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/

You seem to imply that societal morals always "improve" (according to some definition) over time. But what if, 50 years from now, being racist is widely acceptable again? Does that suddenly make it "moral"?

> what should we do right now?

This is a long answer, so here's the TLDR: All sides of the debate need to tone down the name-calling, demonization, boycotts, and ostracism of opponents. Treat the other side of the debate like they're intelligent and well-meaning, but somehow picked up some misinformed, misguided, or mistaken assumptions and doesn't realize. Try to figure out how to change people's minds so they believe the right thing, instead of focusing on punishing people who believe the wrong thing.

I'm the rare HN'er on the opposite side of this cultural divide, so I thought my perspective would be informative. A lot of people who read the previous sentence have probably already characterized me as either a poorly educated hick or a slavering, sadistic bigot.

The truth is, that by dehumanizing your opponent and assuming bad faith, you guarantee that people who don't agree with you won't listen to what you have to say. This means you can't really change minds.

If you want to further the cause of gay rights, figure out the reasons people disagree with you, and try to convince them otherwise. Try to teach and explain; stay away from confrontation, condemnation and personal attacks. If someone else (on either side) becomes indignant, keep calm and encourage them to do likewise.

For example, in a little bit I'll give you a list of questions I've had about gay rights that no one's ever answered to my satisfaction. Based on past experience, I should give you a few warnings about my questions first.

You will probably think these questions are highly inflammatory, but I don't intend them to be trolling or snarking; rather they're things I'm honestly confused about. You should try to remain calm and think logically while reading my questions. This is apparently very hard for most pro-gay-rights people, for reasons I don't really understand.

Opponents of gay rights say these questions have no good answers. Instead of providing good answers, proponents of gay rights call anyone who asks these questions very bad names like "hateful," "offensive," "bigot," or "dinosaur," and don't actually answer the questions.

I don't know the answers to these questions because neither side ever actually answers them. The only thing I have to go on is the behavior of the two groups. Based on the above typical interaction of the two sides of the debate, I have to say the opponents of gay rights win: The pro-gay-rights side's only answer to skeptical questions is calling names. I'd probably change my mind if the pro-gay-rights side offered good answers and the anti-gay-rights side were the ones who weren't able to offer a coherent response.

Here are the questions:

What are the reasons you believe what you do? What is the evidence that homosexuality is an in-born quality as opposed to a choice? How strong is it? What about concerns that gay people are promiscuous, spreading AIDS and other STD's? Is a gay household an unhealthy environment for children? To what extent is homosexuality associated with crimes like rape and pedophilia? Why is homosexuality traditionally considered morally wrong (e.g. Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible), a symbol of decline (e.g. the late Roman Empire), and even outlawed? If the millenia-old traditional viewpoint was wrong, why did it last so long? Were the anti-gay-rights people always wrong, or has technology changed the picture (e.g. maybe STD's are now less serious due to inventions like condoms and antibiotics)?

And one last question, which doesn't really change how I lean on the question of how I feel about gay rights: Why do so many pro-gay-rights people try to advance their agenda by calling names and boycotting organizations, instead of simply patiently explaining their side of the story?

I like your call to civility. Your questions seem like they could lead to an interesting conversation in the midst of all this, so I'll bite.

What are the reasons you believe what you do? Interesting question. "What I believe" is a rather broad category, and it would take a long time to answer all of that. Let's see what the other answers provoke and come back to this one. --Well, I think I've usually included that in my answers.

What is the evidence that homosexuality is an in-born quality as opposed to a choice? How strong is it? There is my personal experience that I started being attracted to humans of one sex without consciously deciding to. I gather that this is a common experience for people of all sexual orientations, and I haven't heard of exceptions. There is also the logical consideration that if anyone was facing serious negative consequences for being gay and negligible benefits, and he could easily turn straight, then he would probably do it; I don't have the literature in my hands, but my impression is that if you look, say, a few decades in the past, you can find a fair number of gay people who (a) faced physical abuse and ostracism, (b) were very distressed by all this, (c) were not getting emotional support from the gay community because it didn't really exist yet, (d) could not plausibly be argued to have martyr complexes, and yet didn't "just stop being gay". Seems like strong evidence, though the underlying mechanism remains obscure.

That said, though, whether it's a choice is really moot in my opinion, and in fact something of a distraction. Orson Scott Card, a believing Mormon, wrote an entire essay where he starts from the premise that homosexual behavior is immoral, because his religion says so, and criticizes those who protest that the desire for it is innate: just because people have innate urges to do many other kinds of immoral behavior (including violence) doesn't make them moral. A fine argument if you agree with the premise, which his critics obviously do not. Since the entire point of contention is a matter of faith for him, it seems there is little to discuss with him, and the resulting debate is just awkward and embarrassing for all involved.

People have exclusive rights to their own bodies; they can form whatever voluntary sexual, emotional, financial, or other kinds of relationships, as far as I'm concerned; I would oppose anyone who would try to intervene by force, and would be wary of those who try to use shaming and other forms of social power to discourage it. Why people want what they want doesn't enter into this.

What about concerns that gay people are promiscuous, spreading AIDS and other STD's? I don't think promiscuity is a problem if you're careful not to spread disease; let us use the term "recklessly promiscuous". Let's see. I think the statistics on that are indeed discouraging. What could contribute to this? I've heard anal sex is like the most reliable way to transmit HIV; that could be a factor. Next, I've heard of gay bathhouses where men basically recklessly have sex with each other; what I've heard could be exaggerated, but I think they've probably existed to some extent; that would certainly explain a lot of early spread of AIDS among gay men.

Why would gay men in particular do such a thing? Well, perhaps part of it has to do with the average behavior of males; there are reasons to think they would evolve a strategy of promiscuous mating to maximize offspring, and I think young men have a reputation for being reckless. Then there is another effect: When something is made illegal but some people do it anyway, it gets pushed underground; necessarily it all happens outside the eyes of the law, and for all who participate the barrier to entry for other kinds of illegality is reduced. When drugs and prostitution are illegal, you get toxic impurities, dangerous back-alley negotiation, gang violence, pimps, and disease; when they are legal, you get careful manufacturing, department stores, and weekly STD tests. To the extent that gay prostitution and bathhouses are illegal (and I imagine social stigma can have some of the same effects as legal punishments), it is unsurprising that they lack high health standards.

Anyway, what about those concerns? The situation is unfortunate. The solution is libertarianism--legalizing prostitution--and to make people in general more prosperous, so they can satisfy their urges less recklessly.

Is a gay household an unhealthy environment for children? Inherently? I doubt it. The kids won't have parental role models for heterosexual adults of either sex. I'm not sure if that's a problem, though; homosexual role models might do fine, the one deficiency they seem likely to have (not having children) is by assumption out of the picture. Kids might find role models in the adults they meet or those they read about; it seems certainly not a worse problem than that faced by, say, single parents, or families with other problems. And note that it's entirely possible for a peaceful single-parent family to be better than a dysfunctional "traditional" family: there are a hundred ways families can be great or screwed up, and if "gay parents" is a factor, I would guess it's a small one, almost certainly smaller than "divorce".

To what extent is homosexuality associated with crimes like rape and pedophilia? I haven't heard anything about this. If there's a small link, my first guess is to attribute it to social deviancy: if you're already stigmatized and pushed into association with other stigmatized people, the barrier to entry for other kinds of deviant behavior, some of which may be criminal, is reduced. Then it's plausible that pedophiles attracted to kids of the same sex are more likely to be gay. If there is a significant link that has nothing to do with the above, I'd be somewhat interested to see it.

("Somewhat interested": if so, so what? Let's suppose childhood abuse of various sorts, the same kind that often causes people to become violent criminals, also often causes people to become gay, and therefore we observe a significant association. What then? Is the solution to outlaw gay behavior? [You bring this up in a "pro" vs "anti" gay rights debate, so I can only assume.] That seems mind-bogglingly stupid and counterproductive. Solution would obviously then be to try to reduce childhood abuse.)

Why is homosexuality traditionally considered morally wrong (e.g. Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible), a symbol of decline (e.g. the late Roman Empire), and even outlawed? If the millenia-old traditional viewpoint was wrong, why did it last so long? I'm not so sure this "tradition" is universal. Observe the Greeks, particularly those of Socrates's time. From what I've heard, pederasty was considered great, and openly indulged in by many men who were considered great. I think they're not the only culture that was like this, although they probably are outnumbered by gay-hostile cultures.

The examples you cite appear to all come from Judaism and Christianity. Being a band of people who had to work hard to make their way, the Jews could easily see homosexual behavior (which cannot lead to children) as unproductive; the story of Onan is an injunction against refusing to father children when God willed it; an injunction against a non-reproductive lifestyle (ignoring adoption and reproduction-outside-marriage) seems not much of a stretch. So there's a possible religion-based reason. Next, I could make up reasons to do with masculinity: let's say a strong man is dominant, can only express sexuality through dominance, and it's impossible for both men in a relationship to be dominant over each other. Therefore in gay relationships, at least one man is weak, and is a safe target for bullying. (As a matter of fact, I've heard that in some cases of male-on-male rape, the "top" isn't considered gay, but the "bottom" is a gay sissy, despite the irony. The point, of course, is that the weak one is to be bullied.) The crowd gets habituated to bullying gays, and this can become enshrined in law.

As for being a symbol of decline: Well, if any behavior X is frowned upon and outlawed, and then society becomes chaotic and the law becomes weak to the point where people engage in X with impunity, then X can become a symbol of the decline, even if X is harmless or mildly beneficial. It might suggest these people have a good reason for frowning upon X, but I have examined that elsewhere.

Were the anti-gay-rights people always wrong, or has technology changed the picture (e.g. maybe STD's are now less serious due to inventions like condoms and antibiotics)? Or STD tests and general knowledge. Um... is it permissible to outlaw a behavior because many people are doing it recklessly and infecting others? How about outlawing infecting others? I guess it's usually too much to expect that kind of precision from the law. But AIDS is a very recent development; I haven't heard of homosexuality being associated with disease before the modern era. If it is, I'd refer to my previous comments on illegality, prostitution, and health standards.

Why do so many pro-gay-rights people try to advance their agenda by calling names and boycotting organizations, instead of simply patiently explaining their side of the story? I'd guess that they enjoy siccing the power of an angry mob on people, especially if they think they're justified in doing so. This may also be how they gain status in their social group.

This is not about gay rights. This is about the married couple privileges being extended to gay couples.

Comparing this to the right of all humans to be treated like humans regardless of their skin color is downright outrageous.

Before you accuse me of something, I'm against any interference in the institution of marriage by states or churches. I'm also against tax/property/inheritance/pension/insurance privileges for married couples.

It is about gay rights. It's about human rights in general.

By giving some people less rights because of their skin color, you are treating them as sub-human. Somehow not deserving of the same human rights us Straight/White/Males are entitled to.

By giving some people less rights because of their gender, you are treating them as sub-human. Somehow not deserving of the same human rights us Straight/White/Males are entitled to.

By giving some people less rights because of their sexuality, you are treating them as sub-human. Somehow not deserving of the same human rights us Straight/White/Males are entitled to.

It's really all the same very basic case of denying some people the rights and freedoms that the majority of us take for granted.

There is no such thing as Straight/White/Male privilege. There is just Gay/Black/Female disadvantage. The rights I have, I take for granted - They are the norm. When certain segments of society are denied the exact same rights as I have, they are disadvantaged.

There's a pretty big difference between being forced into labor for the rest of your life and being separated from your family so that you can work for a large plantation owner who isn't afraid to whip, kill, torture or humiliate you and not being able to get a certificate saying you are legally obligated to someone.

What I'm excited for is the day when being anti-soda is no longer socially acceptable. There's already a movement against it and slavery was once socially acceptable so it has to happen, right?

The previous poster was talking about racism, not slavery. Slavery was not a thing in this country 50 years ago. You're making a much bigger leap than you think the previous poster did.

There is a lot more to the rights gained from marriage than just "legal obligation".