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The Excuses for Purging Brendan Eich Are the Old Excuses for Firing Gays

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Re: The Excuses for Purging Brendan Eich Are the Old Excuses for Firing Gays

#41

Post by dllthomas »

doe88 wrote: post #22

From the start I was unconfortable with the idea of firing or demoting someone who had worked 15+ years in an organization without any related issues raised before. And now I'm appalled by all these justifications while nobody seems to really discuss the huge technical loss. Maybe it's my engineering side speaking but I'm outraged to see such a great engineer forced to leave by people who in the end for the most part…

Doesn't placing "such a great engineer" in a CEO role already mean he's not being applied to engineering tasks?

Re: The Excuses for Purging Brendan Eich Are the Old Excuses for Firing Gays

#42

Post by differentView »

stcredzero wrote: post #17
aneisf wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intolerance of an intolerance is not equatable with the original intolerance.

Isn't that, "Two wrongs make a right?" In any case, it is still an intolerance. It's very dangerous ground to label political donation as "intolerance." It's inimical to civic and democratic political processes in a free society. In fact, I would label it as intolerant. If a person is taking actions that are nonviolent and legal, and they do not advocate the active destruction of our system of self governance, they s…

> While it was done legally, the actions that got Brendan Eich fired for a donation he made six years ago strike me as the actions of "sore winners." Brendan Eich's behavior, while a PR disaster at the end, consisted of running a company with policies friendly to homosexual relationships.

Why the attempt to make it sound like this was ancient history? The donation was made six years ago because that's when California's Proposition 8 happened.

Also, wouldn't a company with policies friendly to homosexual relationships be more likely to have a higher percentage of people who support such policies and not want a CEO that could potentially change those policies?

Re: The Excuses for Purging Brendan Eich Are the Old Excuses for Firing Gays

#43

Post by stcredzero »

koenigdavidmj wrote: post #12

The lesson Mozilla learned here is that the angry Internet mob can get whatever it wants. It doesn't really matter which side of history the mob is on. The lesson that other boards learned with this is not 'hire socially-conscious people', but 'keep your head down and maintain the status quo'. Fifty years ago a similar uproar would have developed if a company hired a black CEO. The press release announcing his remova…

The lesson Mozilla learned here is that the angry Internet mob can get whatever it wants.

The typical angry Internet mob is, frankly, stupid, ill informed, incapable of clear thought, not sophisticated enough to appreciate detail and nuance, and unable to comprehend that principles of justice and tolerance apply evenly to all. The typical angry Internet mob has most of the disgusting qualities of the people who bullied me in school. It's just that now, they label themselves as "geeks" and "nerds."

The Japanese have a saying that it's only through suffering that one truly comes to understand kindness. Many geeks and nerds used to value principles and a sense of scientific/technical rigor and honor, which they deeply understood because they knew firsthand what it means to be subject to the power of groups lacking such principles.

There's a famous Feynmann story about how he discovered that Brazilian science students were able to recite the book-knowledge about the polarization of light but were unable to apply the basic physics to actual examples. The typical Bay Area 20-something Computer Science/Programmer geek will now stare at you blankly when you mention "frequency response." (or even prejudicially flip the idiot bit on you because you said something "audiophile" sounding) However, almost all of them will tell you enthusiastically about studying Fourier Transforms.

Re: The Excuses for Purging Brendan Eich Are the Old Excuses for Firing Gays

#44

Post by eropple »

stcredzero wrote: post #17
aneisf wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intolerance of an intolerance is not equatable with the original intolerance.

Isn't that, "Two wrongs make a right?" In any case, it is still an intolerance. It's very dangerous ground to label political donation as "intolerance." It's inimical to civic and democratic political processes in a free society. In fact, I would label it as intolerant. If a person is taking actions that are nonviolent and legal, and they do not advocate the active destruction of our system of self governance, they s…

This "coexistence" mischaracterization is silly. His right to coexist is not in question. But we are under no obligation to patronize an organization that puts people whose worldviews are at odds with ours in ways that damage people we care about. I feel no ethical compulsion to associate with or enrich (because his salary's paid for by my eyeballs if I use Firefox) people who want to hurt people I love. He's welcome to sell his services to people who don't care about that, but I won't buy.

Re: The Excuses for Purging Brendan Eich Are the Old Excuses for Firing Gays

#45

Post by dllthomas »

chc wrote: post #32
aneisf wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intolerance of an intolerance is not equatable with the original intolerance.

This isn't intolerance of intolerance. It's punishment for a small donation six years ago. If Eich were running around being a dick to gay Mozilla employees, nobody would disagree with firing him. But he's not. People are attacking him for his political sympathies, not for being intolerant. (In fact, Eich's behavior at Mozilla was exemplary. I have never heard of any instances where he had trouble tolerating gays or…

Those raising a stink assert that "political sympathy" (to the extent of taking action to support it) with a proposal to strip rights from a portion of the population is intolerance of that subpopulation. And certainly it's the case that one needn't be intolerant in every possible way to be intolerant.

Re: The Excuses for Purging Brendan Eich Are the Old Excuses for Firing Gays

#46

Post by differentView »

news_to_me wrote: post #38
differentView wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe gay people being allowed to marry negatively affect you? If so, how?

No, but neither can I see how Eich, in this particular context, was negatively affecting anyone at Mozilla. Folks were uncomfortable with a private choice he made, just like some people are uncomfortable that some gay people choose to get married.

Eich is one of those people. So much so that he put money into supporting a law that actively banned same-sex marriage. Mozilla is a company that is friendly to same-sex marriage, if people don't want that changed, they shouldn't support a CEO that could change that.

Re: The Excuses for Purging Brendan Eich Are the Old Excuses for Firing Gays

#47

Post by dragonwriter »

lexcorvus wrote: post #35

I'm sure many supporters of Brendan Eich's ouster are completely sincere, but it's difficult to explain the intensity of their feelings on this issue. It can't be as simple as "civil rights" and "marriage equality"; for example, (first) cousin marriage is important to many groups—indeed, in Islam cousin marriage is not only allowed, it's often preferred [1]—but it is illegal in most states [2]. And yet, I rarely see…

> I'm sure many supporters of Brendan Eich's ouster are completely sincere

What "ouster"?

> It can't be as simple as "civil rights" and "marriage equality"

Even ignoring the questionable use of "ouster", yes, it can.

> for example, (first) cousin marriage is important to many groups [...]. And yet, I rarely see advocates of "marriage equality" get all lathered up over this issue.

So, what? Opponents of interracial marriage bans in the 1950s-1960s didn't get "lathered up" over cousin marriage bans, or same sex marriage bans, either. That doesn't mean that opposition to interracial marriage bans wasn't all about civil rights and equality.

> Are advocates of "marriage equality" in favor of legalizing cousin marriage?

Some probably are, some probably are not. As with most political issues, position on this issue doesn't absolutely determine position on any other issue.

> If not, why not?

Conceptually, regulating new legal family relationships on the basis of existing family relationships is different than doing so based on some other non-family status, so there is no real reason why positions on these should be expected to correlate.

> If so, why have they not worked harder to achieve it?

This is the "why aren't advocates of 'X' spending equal effort on every other analogous issue" argument, which ignores that actually effecting change often requires serial focus, rather than parallel effort.

> I see no way to resolve this paradox from within the context of progressive ideology

And yet, as noted above, I see several that fit quite well in that framework. Maybe what you fail to see says more about what you want to see than about what actually is there?

Re: The Excuses for Purging Brendan Eich Are the Old Excuses for Firing Gays

#48

Post by stcredzero »

devindotcom wrote: post #37
koenigdavidmj wrote: post #12

The lesson Mozilla learned here is that the angry Internet mob can get whatever it wants. It doesn't really matter which side of history the mob is on. The lesson that other boards learned with this is not 'hire socially-conscious people', but 'keep your head down and maintain the status quo'. Fifty years ago a similar uproar would have developed if a company hired a black CEO. The press release announcing his remova…

I don't understand why the "angry internet mob" is any different from thousands of people boycotting a company for unfair labor practices, or doing a sit-in somewhere, or picketing? How is the internet mob different from these other forms of nonviolent political activism?

It's worthy activism to repeal unjust laws, or help to pass other laws to protect people's rights. It's something else to merely attack the people you don't like, no matter how noble your justification is.

A more accurate description of this action would be as a boycott of a company with fair labor practices, for an exercise of free speech the CEO made 6 years ago. Does that even make sense? It sounds like a gratuitous witch-hunt to me.

If one's activism is going to further the notion of tolerance and social justice, then it had better hew to the principles of tolerance and social justice. Merely resembling other civil rights actions on the surface is just "Cargo Cult Activism."

Re: The Excuses for Purging Brendan Eich Are the Old Excuses for Firing Gays

#49

Post by chc »

dllthomas wrote: post #45
chc wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't intolerance of intolerance. It's punishment for a small donation six years ago. If Eich were running around being a dick to gay Mozilla employees, nobody would disagree with firing him. But he's not. People are attacking him for his political sympathies, not for being intolerant. (In fact, Eich's behavior at Mozilla was exemplary. I have never heard of any instances where he had trouble tolerating gays or…

Those raising a stink assert that "political sympathy" (to the extent of taking action to support it) with a proposal to strip rights from a portion of the population is intolerance of that subpopulation. And certainly it's the case that one needn't be intolerant in every possible way to be intolerant.

I am somewhat sympathetic to that view, but that was a long time ago. If he has been 100% tolerant for almost six years now, this action seems more like a very belated punishment for past intolerance than an attempt to force him to be tolerant, which he was already doing.

Re: The Excuses for Purging Brendan Eich Are the Old Excuses for Firing Gays

#50

Post by dllthomas »

stcredzero wrote: post #17
aneisf wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intolerance of an intolerance is not equatable with the original intolerance.

Isn't that, "Two wrongs make a right?" In any case, it is still an intolerance. It's very dangerous ground to label political donation as "intolerance." It's inimical to civic and democratic political processes in a free society. In fact, I would label it as intolerant. If a person is taking actions that are nonviolent and legal, and they do not advocate the active destruction of our system of self governance, they s…

Political positions involve decisions about how we use violence to structure society. Such positions can clearly be intolerant, and taking actions to support clearly intolerant positions seems like it should carry the adjective as well. Someone who donated in support of a proposition to kill all the Jews is probably rightly labelled antisemitic, even if they are always polite face-to-face. And yes, surely, such a proposition wouldn't be constitutional - but neither was Prop 8. Is this the same degree as that? No, of course not. But there's a problem with your framework and I don't see a trivial solution.
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