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Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO

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Re: Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO

#761

Post by ScottBurson »

gfodor wrote: post #572
amadeus wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, you're just wrong. There is no language in prop 8 that has to do with the concept of civil unions. All it DID do was define marriage as being between a man and a woman. Any debate about marriage and a government's role in it is sidestepping the issue. It's a civil rights issue, and he chose to put money in an attempt to create discrimination for a certain kind of people. There's no excuse, he doesn't deserve d…

If you are someone who believes gay people should be allowed to form civil unions, but are offended by the idea that those unions be called marriages, supporting prop 8 is consistent with those views even though it doesn't mention civil unions. I have no idea why Brendan donated $1,000 to support prop 8, and I'd be skeptical that he'd do so if he didn't actually have much stronger beliefs than the civil unions point.…

> If you are someone who believes gay people should be allowed to form civil unions, but are offended [emphasis added] by the idea that those unions be called marriages

... then you still see gay people as fundamentally different from and less than straight people.

There's no way out of this.

EDITED to add: Also, what's happening to Eich isn't happening just because he made that donation.

As furious as I was about Prop. 8, I could understand someone supporting it in 2008 just because gay marriage was a new and strange issue to them at that time. What I have more of a problem with is someone who has spent the intervening 5+ years working shoulder-to-shoulder with gay people in an atmosphere in which acceptance of them was espoused and apparently practiced, and in a world in which gay marriage was being debated vigorously and often, and yet has not reconsidered his beliefs. That, I think, really says something about who they are.

All that said, I don't really feel I have standing to object to his being CEO of Mozilla. I think what this comes down to is that many Mozilla employees felt they couldn't work for him.

Re: Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO

#762

Post by bane »

cookiecaper wrote: post #730
thrownaway2424 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Support for Prop 8 has a huge age gradient, as does anti-homosexuality in general. Support for Prop 8 falls by about 0.75% per year Ages 18-24 voted overwhelmingly against it. 65+ voted overwhelmingly for it. Old people hate gays. Young people don't. Support for Prop 8 among young people in the SF Bay Area is negligible. These are the people Eich was supposed to lead as CEO of Mozilla. You can't lead people who think…

The problem is that support for Prop 8 has been misrepresented as "hate" of gays, and that gullible young people have been tricked to support the gay agenda in the first place, and also to believe anyone who disagrees with that agenda is a "reprehensible bigot". If "gay rights" are really so self-evident, let's confront the haters and explain in a clear, concise manner why their beliefs are invalid. The thing is that…

> let's confront the haters and explain in a clear, concise manner why their beliefs are invalid.

It's actually pretty easy. Any number of court opinions on the issue are readily available and generally easy to read. These represent the best-of arguments from both sides.

Once the issue was raised as a legal issue, it became subject to constitutional scrutiny and the U.S. Constitution simply doesn't allow for that kind of discrimination and the kinds of argument used in support of.

Re: Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO

#763

Post by pcvarmint »

dopamean wrote: post #131
DangerousPie wrote: post #45

I am a strong supporter of gay marriage, but I have to say that I find this very unfortunate and worrying. Apparently many Mozilla supporters seem to think it is okay to bully a qualified person out of his job only for his political views, even if they had absolutely no effect on his qualification or his actions on the job. I can't help but feel like this campaign has done a lot more harm to him than his $1000 donati…

I generally agree with you but I think the problem here is that being against gay marriage is more than just a "political view." Being for low taxes is a political view. Being for smaller government is a political view. Believing a certain group of people don't deserve to live their lives like other simply because of who they love is not a political view. It reads as extremely hateful and that makes people uncomforta…

The problem is that the state has granted privileges to married people.

If the state treated everyone equally without regard to marital status, then gays and straights could marry privately and it wouldn't become an issue. It's an issue because married gays want the same marriage privileges as straight couples.

We need to separate marriage and state. Except for enforcing contracts that the married parties sign themselves, the state should not get involved and grant special privileges to those who are married, such as tax deductions.

I'm for consensual gay marriage. I'm against state-approved or state-disapproved marriage, whether it bans consensual relationships or rewards or punishes marriage with privileges.

Even consensual polygamy should be none of the state's business.

Re: Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO

#764

Post by wpietri »

cookiecaper wrote: post #730
thrownaway2424 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Support for Prop 8 has a huge age gradient, as does anti-homosexuality in general. Support for Prop 8 falls by about 0.75% per year Ages 18-24 voted overwhelmingly against it. 65+ voted overwhelmingly for it. Old people hate gays. Young people don't. Support for Prop 8 among young people in the SF Bay Area is negligible. These are the people Eich was supposed to lead as CEO of Mozilla. You can't lead people who think…

The problem is that support for Prop 8 has been misrepresented as "hate" of gays, and that gullible young people have been tricked to support the gay agenda in the first place, and also to believe anyone who disagrees with that agenda is a "reprehensible bigot". If "gay rights" are really so self-evident, let's confront the haters and explain in a clear, concise manner why their beliefs are invalid. The thing is that…

Trying to strip civil rights from people for no rational reason may, for some individuals, may not be motivated by hate. But if you're on the receiving end of it, I'm not sure it makes much of a difference.

It would be great if you could solve civil rights problems by patiently explaining obvious facts to people. But that's not how it works. If you think you can do better than current gay rights activists (who have many approaches besides the ones you acknowledge), you should demonstrate your solution.

Re: Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO

#765

Post by hackuser »

iamthepieman wrote: post #19

Is there anything besides his donation to the Prop 8 effort that led to the controversy and him stepping down?

You would have to ask someone at Mozilla, but his handling of the situation got very poor results. They didn't anticipate it, didn't have a plan (AFIACT), and didn't manage it well once the crisis began.

It hurt Mozilla's image and created a distraction from Mozilla's mission among employees and the public. Everyone is discussing Eich and politics; few are discussing FirefoxOS and other initiatives.

Part of the CEO's job is to manage all that.

Re: Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO

#767

Post by ralfd »

tdicola wrote: post #587
DangerousPie wrote: post #45

I am a strong supporter of gay marriage, but I have to say that I find this very unfortunate and worrying. Apparently many Mozilla supporters seem to think it is okay to bully a qualified person out of his job only for his political views, even if they had absolutely no effect on his qualification or his actions on the job. I can't help but feel like this campaign has done a lot more harm to him than his $1000 donati…

I don't agree that he was bullied out of his position. He held a belief that wasn't in line with what the Mozilla organization believes is in their best interests. The most logical thing would be for him to not represent the company as the CEO anymore. It's no different than if he believed Firefox should be a closed source shrink-wrapped product or other view that is contrary to Mozilla's mission. edit: The statement…

What if he was once donating to an anti-gun campaign and the NRA advocating its members to replace Firefox as browsers (or vice versa)? This is a witch hunt.

Re: Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO

#768

Post by sitkack »

kybernetikos wrote: post #485
gfodor wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I support legalizing gay marriage. But two things, first, supporting prop 8 does not mean you "believe a certain group of people don't deserve to live their lives like others." It means you don't believe that the government should recognize same sex marriages as marriages. There are a large gradient of views here, and on one extreme are the bigots who hate homosexuals and on the other there are people who simply have…

> on one extreme are the bigots who hate homosexuals and on the other there are people who simply have hangups about the word "marriage" vs "civil unions." As someone who is entirely unconvinced about the need for the government to recognise any kind of marriage at all, my view could also be characterised as anti-gay marriage, but without the context to do so would be misleading.

Marriages are just contracts, governments should treat them as such. Having a special case is just stupid.

Re: Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO

#769

Post by wpietri »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #447
peteretep wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does that make them all homophobes? What's your alternative explanation?

My explanation? That they were in favor of what the Proposition actually was, i.e. insertion of the following language into the state constitution: "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California" I don't think a supporter of such a clause is automatically a "homophobe". It might just be that the proponents did not wish to make same-sex marriage an institutional reality. That's not an in…

The notion that gay people are lesser and should only get the rights of the majority if allowed by their straight betters sounds like homophobia to me. If we look at equivalent historical limitations on interracial marriage (or earlier, black marriage), you'd have a hard time convincing me they weren't racist.

Before Prop 8, couples could get married. After, only straight couples could get married. The effect of Prop 8 was to actively discriminate against gay people, so if people supporting it meant to do something else, they weren't paying attention. I'd rather that Eich have been a homophobe, because that's something he can get over. And I hope he does.

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