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Mozilla's Gay-Marriage Litmus Test Violates Liberal Values

theatlantic.com

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Re: Mozilla's Gay-Marriage Litmus Test Violates Liberal Values

#11

Post by gcp »

mikeash wrote: post #6

Here's one thing I've been unable to understand throughout this whole controversy: What are we supposed to do about it? As far as I can tell, this was a completely grassroots thing with no organization, no central control, nothing. It just spontaneously happened . Now, I don't know how important this whole thing is. To me, it looks like an awful lot of fuss over a very little thing. But let's say that it is, in fact,…

I think that's a good point. Realistically, once the cat was out of the bag and the initial PR response from Mozilla failed to connect, the matter was realistically out of their hands. They could've encouraged Eich to stay and weather the storm, ensuring that the controversy kept going and Mozilla itself remained in the background of the gay marriage question, or they could've let him do what he did, and now endure the controversy from the other side.

Re: Mozilla's Gay-Marriage Litmus Test Violates Liberal Values

#14

Post by slantyyz »

tiles wrote: post #2

The strangest omission from articles like these is the effect that it had on people inside Mozilla, many of whom spoke out. You can exclude every reaction given by people on Twitter, HN, and personal blogs—and Eich stepping down as CEO still seems like the likely outcome.

>> many of whom spoke out

Curious -- Does anyone know how many Mozilla employees spoke out?

I only saw the first few articles referring to tweets by a small number of Mozilla's 600+ employees, but I haven't been following this story as closely as others.

Re: Mozilla's Gay-Marriage Litmus Test Violates Liberal Values

#15

Post by programminggeek »

Between the way our industry has handled this latest thing with Mozilla and the way that related issues like gender inequality is handled at various conferences, I am finding myself less and less wanting to be involved with the community at large. It feels more and more like if you disagree with what a very vocal minority believes, you are going to be ostracized to the point that you could lose your job.

I have a family to take care of so losing my job would be a pretty big deal. I don't doubt that many of the other people that get caught up in these incidents are in a similar situation.

So, every time I consider speaking my mind publicly or even being involved in a public tech conference as an attendee, I think twice and am starting to just avoid them altogether.

It's sort of a shame because even local conferences are getting besieged by self-righteous people who are hell bent on righting some unintentional "mistake" by the people who work very hard to put them on in the first place. I find what our industry's community is starting to be something I don't much want to be associated with.

Re: Mozilla's Gay-Marriage Litmus Test Violates Liberal Values

#16

Post by gcp »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #9

I've watched this from the sidelines, and I read the mozillazine blog site at least daily. There was plenty of support for Eich within Mozilla, and many gay employees blogged their support for him too. I read mozilla's statement of "we let you down and should have been better" as referring not to promoting Eich, but that they let the internet infection fester and didn't attempt to lance it immediately. If my read is…

I agree. Though you could argue that the internal support for him also wasn't strong enough that he stayed on. Silent majority?

Re: Mozilla's Gay-Marriage Litmus Test Violates Liberal Values

#17

Post by mikeash »

sliverstorm wrote: post #10
mikeash wrote: post #6

Here's one thing I've been unable to understand throughout this whole controversy: What are we supposed to do about it? As far as I can tell, this was a completely grassroots thing with no organization, no central control, nothing. It just spontaneously happened . Now, I don't know how important this whole thing is. To me, it looks like an awful lot of fuss over a very little thing. But let's say that it is, in fact,…

The main thing that needs to be done, is the public needs to learn & adjust its behavior. This is a sociopolitical problem, and I think it needs to be fixed by those means. Either through adjusting norms of socially accepted behavior (i.e. don't crucify someone for what they did 10 years ago) or through strong leadership from political figures/groups.

OK, and how do you do that exactly?

Clearly calling people out publicly is not allowed. What's the proper approach for changing the public's behavior?

Re: Mozilla's Gay-Marriage Litmus Test Violates Liberal Values

#18

Post by gcp »

slantyyz wrote: post #14
tiles wrote: post #2

The strangest omission from articles like these is the effect that it had on people inside Mozilla, many of whom spoke out. You can exclude every reaction given by people on Twitter, HN, and personal blogs—and Eich stepping down as CEO still seems like the likely outcome.

>> many of whom spoke out Curious -- Does anyone know how many Mozilla employees spoke out? I only saw the first few articles referring to tweets by a small number of Mozilla's 600+ employees, but I haven't been following this story as closely as others.

planet.mozilla.org has a blogroll.

Re: Mozilla's Gay-Marriage Litmus Test Violates Liberal Values

#19

Post by briantakita »

Crito wrote: post #5

Utter bullocks. Would we entertain this idea that the tolerant must tolerate intolerance if Prop 8 was about race, rather than gender? Of course not. Nobody pretends that we must not speak ill of racists; certainly nobody pretends that speaking ill of racists makes you just as bad as racists. It is apparent to me that we as a society still have a lot of ground to cover when it comes to the appreciation of the importa…

That was 6 years ago. The majority of Californians supported Prop 8 at that time. Even Barack Obama opposed gay marriage back then. Why aren't we raising the pitchforks against Obama?

People change.

This is a witch hunt from an action that someone did a long time ago. He didn't even do anything wrong. He just supported a mainstream proposition. He is on the wrong side of history, at that time, sure. But it doesn't deserve such a reaction. This mob justice is scary.

---

Edit: Censoring me with downvotes only proves how extreme things have become. My reasoning is rational.

Re: Mozilla's Gay-Marriage Litmus Test Violates Liberal Values

#20

Post by benched »

crazygringo wrote: post #4

You know, the flagging here on HN is starting to get annoying. 30 min ago this was on the front page, now it's at position #91: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7533055 Probably because there are 22 comments for 26 points, which is triggering something (or people are flagging it). Everyone clearly wants to talk about this -- it's getting really annoying that it has to keep jumping threads because of whatever HN's…

It's been annoying for months, at least. I've noticed it more and more - at least once every couple of days, I'll experience the phenomenon which I'm sure most here are by now familiar with: I go to read the article, go back to find the discussion, and it's gone. Oh, this again. Of course with this Eich affair, it has been so much worse.

I'm beyond annoyed at this point. It's hard for me to imagine how people think forcing stories off the front page left and right are really, significantly making the site better.

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