Or, you know, put them in the closet, which is where this whole mess began oh so long ago. [quote=“redesigned, post:146, topic:27668”]
the real question is what side you are voicing for why?
[/quote]
I am going to assume that is rhetorical.
I can only speak for myself, but it appears that no one here is supporting his views, but from what I see the apologists (me included I guess) are doing is seeing that, if we are monster hunting that we best be careful lest we ourselves become monsters (which is really what the phrase ‘witch hunt’ is about). I think we also want to make sure that we are defining ‘monster’ well. Hate, rage, anger, and prejudice got prop 8 voted in, lets let them die with prop 8 as well.
To characterize Eich’s position in this election as disgusting is shameful in itself. I’m a fervent supporter of gay rights and have been for years. My wife, a devout catholic, is not. Is she disgusting? Is Pope Francis disgusting?
The post didn’t characterize Eich as disgusting. The post characterized Eich’s position as disgusting. Bigotry is disgusting. If you want to sugar-coat bigotry, go ahead, but I’ll consider that disgusting as well. And, as far as I can tell, your wife and the pope weren’t mentioned in the post.
Would re-education camps fix this problem?
Your inane hyperbole aside… Will keeping all our mouths shut about bigotry fix the problem? Shall we just curl up in a ball and wish it away?
I’m so very glad Martin Luther King did that. His “I curl up in a ball” speech he performed secretly in his closet did wonders for civil rights.
Note, please, the extraordinary speed with which this advance in human rights has overtaken the United States; indeed the world.
Extraordinary speed? Overtaken the USA and the world? You may not feel that way if you were LGBT or were friends with any of the LGBT community and observed their suffering firsthand. For someone who claims to be a “fervent” supporter of gay rights, you seem incredibly sheltered from the troubling realities that LGBT people face today.
Prop 8 took place SIX years ago
Yes, he supported a bigoted attack on the civil rights of Americans back in the “olden days” of 2008 while he was still at a young and impressionable age of 47 years old.
And no matter what: firing someone from a job for taking a position in a public election is just wrong.
Well, fortunately that didn’t happen to the precious bigot. What happened (in a nutshell) is people exercised their free speech rights and asked the bigot to step down and he eventually resigned.
Americans exercised their free speech rights to ask a bigot who is against civil rights to step down. That’s what happened.
Groupthink is a bad thing, even in support of a good thing.
So nasty solidarity is evil even when it’s good. Got it.
i’d put forth that one cannot equate/conflate the actual denial of civil liberties (marriage), with being disapproving of an openly bigoted opinion about what freedoms other people should have. no one is denying these people the right to their opinions, likewise that same right extends to everyone else’s opinion that said opinions are distasteful. controversial opinions have been the impetus for many ceo’s resigning, this isn’t anything new or specific to this issue, nor does it negate his right to his opinion, rather it is a consequence of him having the right to exercise his freedom to that opinion.
a parallel example, very few people condone slavery or racism today, do we worry that white supremacists feel public disdain when they voice their opinions?
Actually it is the only meaningful question to ask oneself in an ex post facto conversation such as this one.
I can agree that it is always better to lead change by example and the sentiments behind this statement. All he is facing is public disdain of his viewpoint, in the past, for better or worse, more drastic measures were needed to push forward human liberties, so i guess we are fortunate that things are so civil around pushing forward this collective change.
actually it is quite common if those interests run counter to the interests of the position, which they do in this case. especially with figurehead positions such as ceo. i don’t think this would be an issue if he was a technology consultant or cto, as he wouldn’t represent the driving vision of the company. i could be wrong, but that is my take for whatever it is worth. and he resigned because he felt he could no longer effectively lead the company. “I have decided to resign as CEO effective today, and leave Mozilla. Our mission is bigger than any one of us, and under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader.”
woah, slow down before you go full godwin and re-education camps. first off pope francsis has openly stated: “the Catholic Church should not dismiss gay marriage”. so he is a pretty open minded pope and a breath of fresh air for the catholic church, they’ve come a long way since he became pope. maybe you should have a discussion with your wife explaining how she wouldn’t want other people infringing on her freedoms, and likewise she should not want to infringe on other peoples, to try and engender some empathy and understanding through education on the subject. she isn’t disgusting, she just needs help understanding why denying civil liberties to any group of people is inherently wrong. walk a mile in another’s shoes, etc. she has a right to her opinion, even if it is publicly distasteful. heck she has the right to be racist if she were to choose to be so, but that doesn’t mean she has the right to take away anyone’s freedoms or liberties because of those opinions, that is the line you don’t want to cross and the line that eich’s money directly funded the crossing of…he funded a proposition that tried to directly take away a groups civil liberties, not cool.
bingo. crucial difference. it also didn’t try to take away his rights to his position, another crucial distinction. it exercised the right to voice an opinion about an opinion that he had a right to voice.
I lol’ed. Let me go back to sleep, i was having a great dream that all men were equal. ZZZzzzz.
Yes, expressing support for the likes of the KKK and the Nazis would now earn well-justified ostracism. But it’s been a generation, maybe two, since that was not so.
What’s happening here is that people are being asked to abase themselves in public self-criticism sessions due to views that were considered mainstream (Barack Obama publicly opposed SSM in 2008) less than a decade ago.
But now you’re getting into “you can hold the view, you just can’t contribute to it” territory. So, is that the test–as long as you keep quiet, you can think what you want?
Digging up a 2008 contribution, in an “evolving” time when even Obama didn’t support Gay Marriage, seems too much of a witch hunt for my tastes. Rationalizing it by saying, well,yeah, but given the opportunity he chose to keep his views private and didn’t RECANT! seems to even drop the pretense of the contribution being the issue, and puts us squarely back into insisting he holds the correct opinion privately. It’s easy when it’s views we hold, but I sure wouldn’t like it if the shoe was on the other foot, and suddenly I was expected to recant my pro-gay marriage views and explain my private contributions to support gay rights issues.
At the same time, when he was the same age, then-Senator Obama was on record as saying the exact same thing. I think a Senator’s opinion might have just a little more pull than a $1000 cheque to a political campaign. Yet people accepted his “I have evolved” explanation without batting an eyelid. Why? I myself am pro-SSM. I have this weird idea that if someone doesn’t support equal rights for Americans, they probably shouldn’t be called ‘liberal’ so I’d really like to know why one opinion is okay and the other, isn’t. EDIT: Accidentally repeated a word accidentally.
And the way they do it is to “legally enshrine the less than personhood of a specific group of people based on a factor they cannot control”…i.e., women.
I dunno about this. It seems to me this is a bit of an over reaction. As long as his personal views didn’t effect Mozilla, I guess I don’t see the big deal.
If you dig deep enough you will find something you don’t like about just about anyone. Racists, misogynists, bigots, drunks, wife beaters, puppy kickers, bad drivers, people who put mayonnaise on french fries, and just good ol’ assholes - they are all out there. If you stopped using products because someone worked for the company whose views you don’t agree with - well - you will lead a very sparse lifestyle.
ETA - I do something similar separating the art from the artists. So I can enjoy a Michael Jackson song even though he probably messed around with kids, or a Mark Wahlberg film, even though he’s a racist asshole who beat some one so bad he blinded him.
Yeah, that’s how reality works. We use Newton’s physics but not his alchemy. We listen to Wagner’s music but not his writings on Jews. We enjoy Jefferson’s declaration that all men are equal but not his idea that breeding slaves is a good way to earn money. I don’t believe you honestly consider that wrong for a second.
That’s not an unreasonable question, but it does miss an important point. In saying he has evolved Obama may or may not have spoken honestly, but it is more or less an assurance that he’s not going to take further steps against gay marriage. So whether we like him for it or not, in practice it’s one less person to worry about on that issue. Eich could have given similar assurances, but I don’t see that he did.
Now, because apparently I was somehow too subtle with thisabove…
Taking actions against the rights of other people is not just a question of a view.
Taking actions against the rights of other people is not just a question of an opinion or doctrine.
Taking actions against the rights of other people is not just a question of a way of thinking.
Taking actions against the rights of other people is not just a question of personal views, and incidentally it does affect Mozilla because he would not just be working for it but leading it, and has admitted it means he doesn’t really fit with their mission. That’s the point.
So many people here are still pretending that making an actual effort to limit the rights of other people is nothing more than an unpopular thing in his head, which is only true if you are willing to completely forget about those people and the harm he was trying to do to them. So much sympathy for the one man without even acknowledging there are others who would be his victims. It’s stomach-turning.
Edit: and in reply, more discussion of this as if it were about any employee with any unpopular opinion. What do you think it says nobody is willing to defend what this really was, a leader who had taken actions to hurt people that were contrary to his organization’s mission? Anyone who cares enough about those people to even admit that much?
[quote=“chenille, post:165, topic:27668”]
Taking <i>actions</i> against the rights of other people is not just a question of personal views, and incidentally it does affect Mozilla because he would not just be working for it but leading it, and has admitted it means he doesn’t really fit with their mission. That’s the point.[/quote]
How exactly would anything he would do at Mozilla directly affect gays or anyone else negatively? Redesign firefox with a horrible, color clashing skin? Redirect people to “pray away the gay” camps when they search for gay porn?
This is a political issue. Giving money to support a political bill is a bit different than dedicating your life to march around with anti-gay signs like Phelps. Shit, the guy is a millionaire, and he gave $1000? He doesn’t seem very passionate about the issue. I wonder if he did so from pressure/request of political allies.
What if he gave money to an anti/pro-gun group? Anti/pro-abortion group? You may not agree with his position on those two things either, but it shouldn’t get in the way of him doing his job.
Expect someone to challenge the disclosure requirements soon arguing a “chilling effect” on political participation as people self-censor themselves for fear they will someday lose a job. The current majority on the Supreme Court will likely be sympathetic and voila we get a constitutional right to make anonymous political donations. Maybe we haven’t thought this thing through.
Especially when those folks who have worked with him, queer or otherwise, have seen such a lack of homophobia or similar views from him that they’ve never had a reason to complain except for the public disclosures of political contributions.
Whatever his views are, besides supporting political causes of his choice, he keeps them to himself.
Sure, giving money to anti-gay causes is…anti-gay. That said, lots of people at Mozilla (and Google and Apple and Facebook, etc) have all sorts of right wing or otherwise socially unacceptable viewpoints. Because CEO is such a spokesperson position, I can see why people who not want him in it (heck, I didn’t care for it either) but once he was hired, being forced out by a public inquisition is a bit extreme and doesn’t speak well for people either.
