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The Hypocrisy Of Sam Yagan and OkCupid

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Re: The Hypocrisy Of Sam Yagan and OkCupid

#81

The difference between these cases is that Mr. Yagan donated to a Congressperson's election fund, while Mr. Eich gave directly to supporters of a cause many find abhorrent. The degree of separation is important: although Rep. Cannon was anti-gay-marriage, we don't know whether that was the motivating factor for Mr. Yagan's donation. It could have been for some other reason: perhaps Mr. Cannon helped him or his compan…

You're downlplaying the fact that he donated to an openly anti-gay, pro-PATRIOT ACT congressperson. If you didn't look at the link provided with the original article, showing how he's historically voted (and still continues to vote), you should probably do so. Cannon's record is pretty clear and unwavering.

I would be hard-pressed to think of a way in which donation to a staunch anti-personal-liberty candidate would be preferable to their electoral opposition. Usually, you see a Republican (like Cannon) up against a Democrat. Perhaps you could provide us with a scenario in which his opponent was so horrible that voting for Cannon was the lesser of two evils? Perhaps he was running against Senator Palpatine?

It also seems you are trying to dismiss the voting record with a stance that Politicians change their stances depending on how the wind blows. If so, perhaps you could explain why voting for someone whose vote is up for sale is any better than being a publicly anti-gay congressperson?

Re: The Hypocrisy Of Sam Yagan and OkCupid

#82
Yagan's personal views don't really matter. In fact, Eich's views don't matter either because in politics, perception is reality.

Yagan contributed to the growing perception that holding anti-gay opinions is socially unacceptable, something that the gay rights movement has been trying to achieve for decades. Regardless of his personal views, past actions or other motives, it helped.

Eich could have easily saved himself. The key problem was the perception of an anti-gay CEO of Mozilla, and this could have been fixed in the same way that all public figures handle shifting public sentiment: with a statement about how his views have "evolved", he realizes now how wrong he was, apologizing for the hurt he caused and so on. Clearly he chose not to do that.

Re: The Hypocrisy Of Sam Yagan and OkCupid

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There already was a suitable band-aid, it was called domestic partnerships, and had the full legal rights of marriage in California. Co-opting the word marriage in law, rather than asking for it to be removed was actively choosing to force religions to accept your personal beliefs. That's bullying. -- That said, I generally fall much closer on the scale to you than to the supporters of prop 8, but you have to be able…

Ah yes, "separate but equal". Where have I heard this before... >actively choosing to force religions to accept your personal beliefs. Nonsense. Churches do not have a monopoly on the word or the concept of matrimony. If there was any consistency in religious beliefs whatsoever, there would be infinitely more backlash at the Vegas drive through chapels than two people wanting to live their lives together in peace.

And my response to the separate but equal argument is literally sitting in my comment above, and part of my argument, remove rights from the word marriage. There is ONLY civil unions. There is no separation.

You yourself claimed that appropriating the word marriage was a band-aid, and yet you ignore that a band-aid was in place, and a much more rational argument would have been to remove rights associated with marriage.

Instead you continue to argue that codifying your beliefs into law was correct, even while you denounce the other side for trying to do that.

Come back when you can intelligently make an argument that is internally consistent. I have to agree with the others commenting on your posts, you have some serious cognitive dissonance.

Re: The Hypocrisy Of Sam Yagan and OkCupid

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It creates a hostile environment where your opinion can cost you your job. It would probably already cost you your job to publicly declare (let alone financially support) similar non-equality views of both blacks and women. Why is this so much worse? Oh no, one more particular flavor of bigotry becomes socially unacceptable. However will I cope. >Also, what does firing Eich achieve for the gay rights movement? An ob…

Eich said he supported equality. He supported taking care of domestic partners. If you have issue with his "support" then have a respectful dialog. If he is wrong, then that will become obvious. Instead, the movement acted like a bully & does not have the moral high ground anymore. You are conflating the state not recognizing gay marriage with a human rights issue. Not everyone agrees. Besides, the notion of marriage…

>Eich said he supported equality.

His actions show otherwise.

I've said this before here, but I have much less problem with the (small) donation (to a failed cause) than I do his subsequent behavior.

His subsequent hypocrisy proves beyond any reasonable doubt that those views are still very personal and very real to him, regardless of what comes out of his mouth.

One does not abdicate a CEO position, something of great prestige, power, and compensation, on a lark. He was asked, multiple times by multiple people what his true thoughts were and declined to elaborate. He could have just (heartfeltly) apologized. He could have just thrown another $1000 at GLAAD/HRC/etc.

>You are conflating the state not recognizing gay marriage with a human rights issue. Not everyone agrees.

The same could be said of women's suffrage or the equlaity of blacks. The fact that it's a state issue does not preclude it being a human rights issue.

I have skin in this game. I see the behavior of people like Eich as a personal affront to me and people close to me. A proclamation that people like me should remain second class citizens because of some outmoded religious belief.

> However, ostracizing supports makes the ostracizers act like bullies.

Again, how is this any different from publicly announcing your support of some other anti-equality group? How well do you think a CEO would do if it came out that they were donators to Stormfront? I keep hearing this "bullies" line but it doesn't add up.

Re: The Hypocrisy Of Sam Yagan and OkCupid

#86
post #63

So, bottom line: Eich was forced out by an astroturf campaign led by professional boycotters (waving the gay rights flag this time) and sleazy opportunists/publicity addicts like Yagan. If Eich is a homophobe, I would like to replace the rest of the world's homophobes with him. While he may have disagreed in private, his public persona was inclusive and friendly. There are multiple testominies from people that never…

Yes, the world would be a better place if all anti-equality people had donated $1000 to fund constitutional amendments preventing gay marriage. Please. You can't pretend to be a good citizen for equality while donating $1000 to a cause whose only purpose is anti-equality. And look, he could of just apologized and he would have been fine. He didn't. That is why I find this backlash backlash to be just "mob justice" th…

What a fantastic strawman you've constructed! Give me a minute to marvel at it. You do excellent work.

Okay, now that the dazzle has worn off, perhaps you could tell me when I said that Anti-gay activists donating money to fund constitutional amendments would be a good thing? because I really don't remember saying that.

However, I agree with your second paragraph. You can't be a good citizen for equality while donating money to a cause that is anti-equality. I appreciate your condemnation of Sam Yagan for doing exactly that.

Re: The Hypocrisy Of Sam Yagan and OkCupid

#87

This is about as non as non-stories get. For one, there's about 27 universes worth of difference from supporting a specific law which does a specific thing, and supporting a politician who has different positions on different laws. Maybe the other positions he has took priority over marriage equality? For instance: five years ago, coming out of the economic mess, I'd have prioritized economic recovery (so, someone wh…

But if you are checking if a person if qualified to be CEO, wouldn't their domain knowledge and ability to lead be better qualities to prioritize than their stance on gay marriage -- especially if their personal views have not been shown to affect how they intend to lead?

Absolutely. However, Eich's behavior after the donation came out revealed a crucial flaw in his ability to handle public relations. Even if this kerfluffle had been about something that isn't so contentious, it's been proven that he cannot handle criticism - something a CEO, the public face of a company, has as one of their primary job duties.

It also reveals a pretty massive conflict of interest wrt. his personal views on equality and Mozilla's views on equality. If it were any other corporation it may be different, but Mozilla's kind of famous for this.

Re: The Hypocrisy Of Sam Yagan and OkCupid

#88
post #47

What is regrettable in all this is that no one seems to consider the possibility that people may have nuanced views about gay marriage. According to the mob you're either a saint or a bigot, and thus Eich's value as a human being was supposedly entirely determined by this one opinion he voiced in 2008. I'm staunchly in favor of gay marriage, which I consider to be a no-brainer -- but it seems to me the motivations of…

> For example, there are people who have nothing against homosexuality but are attached to the symbolic value of 'marriage' as a Christian institution Yes, they were also attached to its symbolic value when they used it to condemn miscegenation. Given atheist, muslims, jews or hindus can get married, and so can blacks, browns, reds, yellows and whites (with one another too, which once upon a time was against "the sym…

It has nothing to do both "separate but equal" if the only difference is the legal term used ("marriage" for heterosexual couple, "civil union" for homosexual couple) and not the rights associated with it.

Separate but equal was about physical segregation of minorities, not just about using different legal terms for the same thing. And, by the way, something that a ton of people don't know about the separate but equal doctrine (because it doesn't appear to be taught in American public schools): It actually refers to the government's legal authority to mandate that privately owned businesses provide separate nut equal facilities for blacks. That's a lot different than the usual portrayal of Brown vs. BoE, as the government stepping in an conquering private racism.

Re: The Hypocrisy Of Sam Yagan and OkCupid

#89
post #16

No, it's not "exactly the same." I don't think anyone really benefited from this entire shit show, but stop trying to excuse and water down what Prop 8 supporters did. Giving money to a bad politician is not the same as giving money to support a war of pure bigotry and hatred against gay people. Perhaps you weren't there in 2008, or perhaps you weren't a target. But the Yes on Prop 8 campaign deployed deeply disturbi…

Is it really so hard for you to imagine that not everyone comes from the same background and upbringing? Moreover, is it so hard to believe that not everyone who supported prop8 was a gay-hating bigot who wants to see them all burn in hell or whatever?

With every political standpoint, there is a spectrum of supporters who support the cause - for varying reasons and varying intensity. It's very important to keep this in mind especially with issues like prop8 where the anti-prop8 branded the prop8 supporters as a whole as gay-hating bigots.

Here's the problem: we don't know where Eich fell on the spectrum. We don't know if he hated gays or if he was brought up in a traditional household where marriage is a religious ceremony rather than a love-based ceremony.

Hell, I recall some prop8 supporters whose only problem with gay marriage was that it uses the word "marriage", they were people who wanted civil unions to offer the same legal protections/rules as marriage, but wanted to keep marriage as man+woman so the concept of a marriage ceremony still had the same religious significance as it did before.

My whole point here is that we have no idea why Eich supported prop 8. There's a whole rainbow of possible reasons, many of them which are not quite as damning as people make out. Since we never heard the other side of the story, this whole fiasco looks like nothing more than a huge joke, but is actually a scary reminder of how passionate and defensive people can get over social issues.

Re: The Hypocrisy Of Sam Yagan and OkCupid

#90
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other side of this coin is that marriage has religious significance to many people, and by forcing the definition to change, pro-gay rights groups are also codifying personal belief into law. Both sides fucked it up. The only proper response should have been to remove all legal rights associated with marriage, and force all couples to get a civil union. Tax that instead. Churches are welcome to marry people all t…

Sorry, but I find it incredulous that the only reason that some folks are unwilling to give LGBT folks the right to marry is because of what the state happens to call the practice.

I think the issue is that as long as the state endows rights to religious practice (marriage) there is a problem.

If the state only gave rights and taxed civil unions, the churches cannot, by definition, control if other people get married. All they'd need to do is find a church willing to marry them, or start their own.

To quote from another of my posts: --- I think once the legal implications are removed, churches would lose their control over the word by default. It doesn't have meaning outside of the church at that point, and the government "shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" So if gay people wanted to get married, no one could stop them.

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