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Mozilla employees tell Brendan Eich he needs to “step down”

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Re: Mozilla employees tell Brendan Eich he needs to “step down”

#121

Post by wpietri »

sergiosgc wrote: post #83
stormcrowsx wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eich was actively trying to stop what many people think should be a human right. He should face flak, and get a hard time over it, they should threaten his position. Even if they don't get him out of CEO it will make the next idiot that's high up in a company think twice before donating to stop human rights.

(touching this issue with all due care as not to call in the activists; read all the way through before replying) Redefinition of marriage is not a human right, sorry. I can't decide I'd like to marry my work and have society accept that as marriage. Marriage has a definition, that up until now hasn't included gay couples. Changing that is not trivial, is not a law of nature and is not supportable on human rights gro…

Ah, separate but equal. Why didn't anybody think of that?

Oh wait, they did: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separate_but_equal

Re: Mozilla employees tell Brendan Eich he needs to “step down”

#122

Post by gjm11 »

drone wrote: post #107
intortus wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a huge difference between holding general religious beliefs and contributing financially to a political movement specifically pursuing institutional discrimination of a large class of Americans. I'm a little troubled by the chilling effects that career and public opinion can have on political expression, but it's hard to generate sympathy for blatantly unconstitutional, horrendously discriminatory forms of po…

The Catholic Church works very hard to supress gay marriage everywhere in the world, and has done a lot more harm to our society than Prop 8 ever would have. The Catholic Church is supported by tithes from their members, which are generally required. By this same logic, should they not be arguing for the firing of every Catholic employee, who ostensibly spend 10% of their income received from the company to the same…

1. The Roman Catholic Church does not require tithes from its members. I'm not sure any part of it ever has.

2. No one is saying that every employee who does as Eich did should be fired. Some people are saying that someone who has done as Eich did shouldn't be CEO of Mozilla.

Re: Mozilla employees tell Brendan Eich he needs to “step down”

#123

Post by Mikeb85 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #118
Mikeb85 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Marriage has always been about community and religion, in many countries people never bother registering it with the government. In some countries like Canada, common-law partners get the same benefits as married partners. Personally, I'd be all for doing away with the entire government institution of marriage, and simply have 'civil unions' for all, with each community and religion being able to decide for them…

> Marriage has always been about community and religion, in many countries people never bother registering it with the government. At least in Europe, that's pretty much backwards -- marriage has always been about property, and, it was fairly late that the Church even got involved at all, and the Church getting deeply involved in governing marriage was largely a trend that happened as the Church deepened its involvem…

Yes I forgot. For some cultures in some time periods women were property that was traded from father to husband, in exchange for goods, and marriage was the contract that finalized the transfer of property. Especially for the higher classes that had a significant amount of property.

In some religions at least marriage signified a bond between two people, and not merely a transfer of property. My views are shaped somewhat by the fact that in Orthodox Christianity (the type I'm most familiar with), marriage isn't a transfer of property, and the bride isn't 'given' from father to husband. It's an equal arrangement. Whereas in Islam and 'western' Christianity the bride is 'given', much like property.

Re: Mozilla employees tell Brendan Eich he needs to “step down”

#124

Post by peterwwillis »

[deleted] wrote: post #92
brandon272 wrote: post #37

I have a huge level of mental conflict on this issue! I am a supporter of equal rights and gay marriage. When I see comparisons made to other civil rights issues (i.e. "Would we accept this guy as CEO if he thought interracial marriage was wrong?" or "Would we accept this guy as CEO if he thought women deserved less pay?") it seems like a no brainer to me that, no, a person who held those views would never be tolerat…

[deleted]

Punishing someone for their beliefs is never a good move.

Re: Mozilla employees tell Brendan Eich he needs to “step down”

#125

Post by DerpDerpDerp »

intortus wrote: post #25
mikestew wrote: post #8

Just the CEO? Who else shall we burn at the stake? Mary, the office manager, goes to church every Sunday. How did she vote? John over in mobile dev is a devout Muslim, I'll bet he doesn't take kindly to such things as gay marriage. Time to start scanning through those campaign contribution records for Prop 8 and seeing if a JOIN on the employee database gives us any results. I've always held to the idea that my job i…

There's a huge difference between holding general religious beliefs and contributing financially to a political movement specifically pursuing institutional discrimination of a large class of Americans. I'm a little troubled by the chilling effects that career and public opinion can have on political expression, but it's hard to generate sympathy for blatantly unconstitutional, horrendously discriminatory forms of po…

You're wrong on two points:

a) Contributing financially to many religious institutions is explicitly financing groups who opposed gay marriage, and is an activity than many religious people undertake.

b) Advocating for something that in some views is unconstitutional is a constitutionally protected activity. The practice itself may be unconstitutional (I certainly think so), however, the political advocacy itself is not.

Re: Mozilla employees tell Brendan Eich he needs to “step down”

#126

Post by m0a0t0 »

hkphooey wrote: post #90
m0a0t0 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So preventing equality is not bigotry then? I would argue that calling out something like that is noble, not fascist. Labelling the people who criticised Eich as fascists is as bad as calling him one for his beliefs.

Does Eich refuse to work with gay people? Is he suddenly firing people because of their sexual orientation or political beliefs? No. So who is the fascist? Looks like the mob who demand he resign or be fired because they don't like his views. BTW: Marriage equality? So why doesn't the campaign include polygamous families? They exist, they have kids, they even have TV shows, and there has been a cultural history of po…

But he did give money that denied people's rights, so by your (weird, wrong and stupid definition) of fascist he is one. There is no mob, there are a few people and the "demand" is worded rather weakly. I would have expected a bit more of your fascists to be honest.

Re: Mozilla employees tell Brendan Eich he needs to “step down”

#127

Post by wpietri »

DerpDerpDerp wrote: post #104
Jormundir wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call it a witch hunt. Now every Mozilla employee's work is contributing to Eich's paycheck. The paycheck with which he will (has) donate(d) to oppose gay marriage. If I was a Mozilla employee, this is not something I would want to be contributing to. This argument can obviously be applied to any employee in the company, but it's severely exacerbated when it's applied to the CEO, who's getting a huge payche…

Do you support employees being fired for supporting gay marriage then? I don't see any difference in the two positions (both are using their paychecks to advanced a political cause), except that you personally agree with one position and not the other.

The difference is that only one of those positions in a boss is threatening. Take interracial marriage as a parallel. If you are in a mixed-race marriage and your boss has tried to prevent interracial marriage, you could reasonably feel threatened. Whereas if your boss supports equality, you won't worry whether you are in a same-race or mixed-race marriage.

Re: Mozilla employees tell Brendan Eich he needs to “step down”

#128

Post by figglesonrails »

DerpDerpDerp wrote: post #104
Jormundir wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call it a witch hunt. Now every Mozilla employee's work is contributing to Eich's paycheck. The paycheck with which he will (has) donate(d) to oppose gay marriage. If I was a Mozilla employee, this is not something I would want to be contributing to. This argument can obviously be applied to any employee in the company, but it's severely exacerbated when it's applied to the CEO, who's getting a huge payche…

Do you support employees being fired for supporting gay marriage then? I don't see any difference in the two positions (both are using their paychecks to advanced a political cause), except that you personally agree with one position and not the other.

I wish I could give this post 10 upvotes. There is a reason that the US has employment laws [Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Section 703(a)(1) & (2)] related to discrimination -- and its to stop precisely these sorts of questions from ever being questions in the first place.

Re: Mozilla employees tell Brendan Eich he needs to “step down”

#129

Post by npizzolato »

angersock wrote: post #38
davidgerard wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>when there is no documented instance of him ever disparaging or otherwise harming LGBTQ employees or community members. Except the bit where he contributed $1000 to a campaign to vilify them and take away their rights.

Here's the proposition's full text: http://www.ag.ca.gov/cms_pdfs/initiatives/i737_07-0068_Initi... It hardly vilifies anyone--it's pretty stupidly worded as is ("marriage"? What is that? How does it compare with "civil union"?) Look, did you vote for Obama or Bush? Then you too have actively vilified people and acted to take away their rights. We can't punish people for participating in our form of government, even…

The difference between voting for Prop 8 and voting for Obama or Bush is that voting for a political candidate is a much more complicated affair. Obama and Bush have opinions about many issues, and it's impossible to find a political candidate that agrees with you on every issue. So you necessarily must make compromises.

But Prop 8 is much more simple. Here is the full text:

>SECTION I. Title >This measure shall be known and may be cited as the "California Marriage Protection Act." >SECTION 2. Article I. Section 7.5 is added to the California >Constitution. to read: >Sec. 7.5. Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or >recognized in California.

Voting on that measure is a very simple decision: you either agree with that one point or you disagree with it. So yes, it is possible to create a much better opinion of a person's view on a particular matter who votes one way or another on Prop 8 than on which candidate they vote for.

Re: Mozilla employees tell Brendan Eich he needs to “step down”

#130

Post by drone »

gjm11 wrote: post #122
drone wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Catholic Church works very hard to supress gay marriage everywhere in the world, and has done a lot more harm to our society than Prop 8 ever would have. The Catholic Church is supported by tithes from their members, which are generally required. By this same logic, should they not be arguing for the firing of every Catholic employee, who ostensibly spend 10% of their income received from the company to the same…

1. The Roman Catholic Church does not require tithes from its members. I'm not sure any part of it ever has. 2. No one is saying that every employee who does as Eich did should be fired. Some people are saying that someone who has done as Eich did shouldn't be CEO of Mozilla .

So, a Catholic who actively tithes, should not be allowed to be CEO of Mozilla? What about a Lutheran that actively tithes? Both of these organizations work directly to prevent gay marriage, and that money goes to amplifying that cause.
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