It wasn’t OKCupid that forced him out. That’s just one web site. Before OKCupid ever did anything, half of the Mozilla board had resigned, and there was intense fighting going on inside the organization. A CEO that controversial within his own organization can’t lead.
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Uhm, no. There was not “fighting going on inside the organization.” Evidence please? You’re spouting BS FUD which I know to be FUD and which you can’t prove otherwise.
The story about the board has been corrected. Out of the three resignations, two had been in the pipe for as soon as a new CEO started, whomever it was. They weren’t reactions to his appointment. No one seems to be commenting on the fact that a new board member also started in the last two weeks, Katharina Borchert, the head of Spiegel Online.
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Yes, I’m sure not one person with decision-making responsibilities at Opera has anti-gay rights views.
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In the USA their is an effort to protect people from judgement based on race, color, sexual orientation, and for some reason religious views.
To me this is bizarre, I can’t choose my sexual orientation, nor can I choose the color of my skin. I can however choose my religious views.
What is also bizarre to me is the idea that people are capable of compartmentalizing their attitudes such that their chosen private prejudices wouldn’t effect their decisions in the work environment.
Given all that is known about the psychology of human behavior and prejudice it is simply ignorant to pretend one can privately harbor a prejudice and it won’t effect how they make decisions in their public life.
Any organization you do business with is an amalgam of the the persons involved. It’s perfectly reasonable to assume that appointing a person with known prejudice towards equal rights for LGBT persons, might lead to less than equal treatment for LGBT persons.
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Do you know of any or should I just not use anything in case a bigot is involved in the decision making?
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His life was turned upside down because he supported a legal effort to exclude GLBT people from a basic legal right.
Don’t mistake the symptoms for the cause.
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( @albill : You’re right of course; I don’t think he should have said it if he didn’t mean it. I just wish he could have said it and meant it. I’m bemoaning fate and speculating on how it came to pass at the same time. )
Though boys throw stones at frogs in sport, yet the frogs do not die in sport but in earnest. – Plutarch
To those treating advocating discrimination as a matter of opinion – like preferring chocale to vanilla, or Kirk to Picard, or even advocating equality – please consider it a little more carefully. Support for gay rights might be a matter of opinion to you, but for some people Proposition 8 was a serious attempt to upset their position in the world.
Eich’s donation was not just a personal thought, but an action that could have harmed real people. If you feel bad for the upset to his life, do you feel bad for them? Because those potential victims don’t exist in the case of someone who lost their job for promoting equality; the form is similar but the content is not.
And while that might not make a difference in his business ability, Mozilla purports itself to be more than that; it’s an organization whose manifesto all about enriching a public resource for everyone. I think it’s pretty clear his action was at odds with what they stand for, and they’ve agreed.
I’m a bit sorry for Eich if he has tried to correct his mistake since. I give some kudos to him for stepping aside, and to Mozilla staff for a proper apology and reaffirming their principles.
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What views will be mandatory for Mozilla’s next CEO?
For example, does the new CEO need to be 100% pro-abortion?
Must he or she believe that the Rosenbergs were innocent?
What about raising CAFE fuel standards for cars and trucks?
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His life was turned upside down for expressing his views on a subject. One of the ideas that this country was founded on (or so we have been led to believe) was people being able to express themselves. Yes, he sided with something that at the moment is social suicide. Does that mean that he deserves the world turning against him for expressing his views? Has it really come to the point where expressing a view contrary to the masses, regardless of the subject, is subject to immediate repression/backlash/ostracizing?
In our schools today, we have a huge campaign against bullying. Why do the adults in the world not look to this campaign and take note? Bullying and belittling the decisions of people anywhere is not going to make a positive difference in the world. It will only succeed in dividing and tearing down.
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The Mozilla manifesto is available here. It doesn’t explicitly say anything about not discriminating against gay people, but if you would be honest for a moment, you can probably see why it is against what they stand for. In contrast to your crack about views on fuel economy, which is not nearly the same as donating money to support discrimination.
Donating money to an attempt to upset other people’s lives is not the same as expressing a view. How is this so hard to understand?
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I think attempting to legally enshrine the less than personhood of a specific group of people based on a factor they cannot control is the very epitome of bullying.
Standing up to people who think it is ok to discriminate based on sexual orientation on the other hand I would not consider bullying.
Do we need to tolerate his views? Perhaps as far as the law is concerned, but as far as public discourse goes, he is reaping what he sewed. There is nothing wrong with vociferously informing a bigot you don’t approve of their bigotry.
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I would say ‘never underestimate people’s ability to contradict themselves.’ In fact I would argue that contradiction is humanity’s forte.
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I don’t think he should have been forced to resign. Rather, I think he should have had his marriage placed in a state of legal limbo for a number of years. That would have been more just.
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There’s a disappointing number of apologists posting on this.
We can’t make him change his mind. We can stop using his product though, which was what OKCupid encouraged. I fail to see how this is ‘bullying’ or any rubbish like that.
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But here’s the thing, why would Mozilla want to apologize? I’m not saying they shouldn’t but if this guy stepped down on his own which is what we all are led to believe, then how can they apologize? How can you believe they are actually remorseful if they never did anything to “correct” the perceived situation?
Seems to me like many people are judging Mozilla for what the CEO did, which isn’t totally unfair, but it certainly isn’t a ringing endorsement by Mozilla for anti gay sentiments either. (I would hope but I seem to be wrong)
So yeah, I’m glad he stepped down of his own free will, yet it seems to me that apologizing comes from a PR stance, rather than a sense of wrongdoing, and this means, that the apology really can’t be sincere, can it?
Feel free to label me as too cynical, it just seems that all of this is done out of fear of being perceived to be in the wrong without much thought for what is really good.
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That was very measured and polite. Kudos.
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He PAID MONEY to support significant bullying against a group of people. He’s not the victim here.
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Yeah, I agree.
Obviously, supporting an open internet should always take second base to the absolute right to equal access for LGB individuals to form very specific social contracts with each other in the exact same manner as non-LGB individuals with each other, even if said social contracts typically apply sex based outcomes.
Anyone opposing such efforts, by any scale or spectrum, should be righteously flogged, then tarred and feathered, for all homophobic rights haters to see. All hail the gay closed internet overlords!
