I QUIT: Mozilla's anti-gay-marriage Brendan Eich leaps out of door

Being against gay marriage does not equate to being anti-gay

Most of the posters who were trying to push him out made this assumption, but it is rubbish.

I am not anti-gay, but I object to the butchering of the language in the name of "equality". I support the rights of gay people to fair treatment in terms of employment, tax, etc, and I would like to see civil partnership have full parity with marriage in its consequences.

I do not support the right of gay people to call themselves married, any more than I support their right to call themselves heterosexual.

It is possible that Mr Eich is a bigot, but his support for this organisation is not enough to prove it.

just a thought...

Surely Marriage is a religious institution, grounded in the faith of your choice, and entered into with the understanding and acceptance of the rules and tenets of belief that followers of that faith hold sacred?

A civil partnership is the state's way of providing a universally acceptible, equally financially, socially and legally binding civil contract, just without the requirement to leap through all the hoops associated with the religious doctrine

This gives the option to get hitched regardless if you are e.g. a pork eating Jew, an alcoholic Muslim or a homosexual Christian (to name but a few contrived examples...) thus lowering the potential moral/social dissonance

The average secular power is often relatively easily swayed by public opinion - I understand most religions are somewhat more set in their ways, and very often look askance at certain behaviours, social mores and beliefs and see them as taboo for their adherents

Are we now in danger of ditching homophobia for religious intolerance by the back door?

OK Cupid are hypocrites

They still use Javascript.

I embrace people that do not share my views.

Everyone has an equal opportunity to become unequal to someone or some organization. If you don’t like your boss talk with him/her. If you don’t share their views quit if it is a major issue to you. We all make choices. We all change in some way over time. My views have changed over the years. Mainly because I’m open minded and I’m willing to listen to all points of view. Should someone quit their job over something 10 years ago? From what I understand he wasn’t a new hire. We can live and work together and share different views. Maybe working in such an organization would help him over time understand how important equality is. Mozilla is the perfect place for him. I’m sure of one thing. He will be careful who he give his money to in the future.

I have friends and business customers that are far left and far right. Doesn’t mean I’m going to banish them if I don’t share their view. I use it as an opportunity to bring people together. A major problem is when the far right or left only talk to like minded people. We need to mix left and right as much as we can. In the end the world would be a better place. I embrace people that do not share my views.

Pushing people away only makes issues worse.

RE: Being against gay marriage does not equate to being anti-gay

Exactly.

It seems as though the gay community want to be able to get married to get access to the same benefits/tax breaks etc as heterosexual couples.

The issue I have with that is that those benefits are designed and geared towards making it easier to start a family, which is something that gay couples can't do because of er...science. Then there is a whole separate argument about the impact on children growing up with no male/female role model in the household, and then going out into a world filled with both men/women and having only experience with one gender.

So the gay community are essentially demanding something which wasn't designed for them. I am fully aware that heterosexual couples who don't have kids can do this too, but that's more of a bug in the system.

I'm not religious and don't object to homosexuality in any way, but gay people getting married is like deaf people buying iPods.

I guess my point is that there is a legitimate debate to be had about gay marriage which has nothing to do with homosexuality, which any reasonable person would agree is completely fine.

The gay community try to side-step this debate by portraying anybody who tries to start it as bigoted/homophobic etc, and persecuting them until they shut up.

It is written; so therefore it shall be? We are the chosen people; such a wicked fantasy.

The Bible & Torah should be banned!

Here are several really loving excerpts from the Torah; the first five books of the Old Testament in the bible -- perhaps read to the congregation on Friday night at a synagogue or a Sunday morning church in the meadow.

1. Kill any friends or family that worship a god that is different than your own. Deuteronomy 13:6-10

2. Kill all the inhabitants of any city where you find people that worship differently than you. Deuteronomy 13:12-16

3. Kill everyone who has religious views that are different than your own. Deuteronomy 17:2-7.

Rabbinical / Priestly rules:

Leviticus 21:17-18 … “No one who is blind or lame or has a defect or any blemish may approach to offer the bread of his God.”

Leviticus 18:22 … “You are not to go to bed with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination ….”

Rabbis; the pope and churches fully aware that Leviticus 18:22 applies to rabbis and priests … refuse to remove this stigma maliciously persecuting gays. Kids are being bullied into suicide …!

@ Nomnomnom

For what it's worth, I'm sure "Omnomnom-ism" is a fine, upstanding and inclusive religion

What I was endeavouring to suggest, however, was that a good many other religious institutions aren't so inclusive and some even define themselves by what they allow or expect their adherents to do or ways in which they are expected to behave

You or I may not agree with them, but as such we are not forced by secular legistlation to think/behave accordingly

What we appear to have here is a small group using secular pressure to pick and choose which bits of any given established religion they wish to adopt without the inconvenient bits that say they should think/behave accordingly, rather than, as I suspect you have sensibly done, creating a religion of their own that fits what they want and believe in, and doesn't fly in the face of the majority of other adherents who are not like-minded

Is calling a bigot a bigot, being a bigot?

Surely shareholders wouldn't appreciate product boycotts and talent exodus.

A very sad day for Mozilla, the web, and Javascript

We are not really talking about "the CEO of Mozilla" in my opinion, we are talking about the most brilliant person, whom invented Javascript, and because there was nobody else "capable and willing" to take the CEO position, he assumed it..

Brendan has done more to help this world than most will ever know. He has some personal opinions that don't fit perfectly with his corporation's PR releases. So what?

Mark my words, this is a very sad day for the future of Mozilla, the web and Javascript as a language.

And it's a very big mistake to cave to this pressure, and I doubt he was the person that caved.

My sincerest appologies, "they do not know what they do".

picked the wrong mafia to mess with

shoulda just been against free speech and privacy, two actual constitutional amendments. then he'd have been ignored by the manufactured outrage.

make up some "new" right to sell politicians who actively curtail the first 5 or so amendments, and everything's golden.

Nevermind that your "new" right disappears at the next politicians' whims and you can't do squat since you sold every right that would have allowed effective redress.

oxymoron

many prop 8 fans are against gay marriage solely because if it is gay then it isn't marriage

it's nothing about rights but about controlling language because then you control talking and thought. it is not evolution of language but engineering of language

i'm not against legal recognition of gay unions with the same rights as marriage.

but I am against being made to call it marriage

can I work for Mozilla or am i a bigot?

Seven pages (and counting)

This sure did stir up a hornets nest. One way or another people DO have opinions and will express them.

cf. "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

Tough.

This tweet kills fascists (sic).

http://www.wired.com/tag/brendan-eich/

Eich and his gay lover Orson Scott Card card weep together.

=(

Many of the comments here makes me sad, and a bit embarrassed to be part of humanity.

You better hope your future kids wont find out what kind of person you used to be.

That someone got (subtly) forced out of his job/position not for his competence or lack of, but because of what beliefs he espouses is beyond the pale...

What amazes me is that the same lobby crying intolerance and throwing stones at the man are themselves (by logic reasoning) intolerant, since they can't accept the fact that he doesn't share their view. Tolerance goes both ways not just one.

Guess it's time for the devs to say fork it (bad pun) and head off to some new place more concerned about their products than what some lobby thinks of them.

Mozilla, a place where everyone's views are welcome, unless your views are different than ours (or some lobby, or some flavour of the week PC'ness, or anything not related to web browsers).

Message for Mozilla users acessing OkCupid?

From the BBC - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26868536

Mozilla users acessing OkCupid....

"Hello there, Mozilla Firefox user. Pardon this interruption of your OkCupid experience.

"Mozilla's new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples. We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid."

If this is true...?

What do you think of Brendan now?

I see people as peers, not identical to me but close enough. I believe we can, we must, have have our opinions, and I believe we can, me must, disagree with everyone else. But there is a "red line" we shall never cross, we cannot bully other people.

Democratic rights and freedom of association

I realise I'm coming to this party very late, but I feel the need to add my thoughts.

The word bigot has been thrown around a bit too lightly on this thread. It suggests that people who do not support gay marriage are driven by thoughtless intolerance. I think it's more accurate to see this as a clash of cultures, each of which has a different intellectual heritage. Indeed, if you are someone who is truly tolerant, you will recognise the strengths and weaknesses of both the pro- and anti- arguments.

There is a line of thought that it's OK for Eich to hold an opinion, but not to act on it. I must disagree. Eich's actions were entirely legal and democratic. Eich pledged some money to a cause which was being openly and democratically debated. That cause was eventually defeated. That seems to me to be free speech and democracy in action.

It's only because of such free speech that LGBT people have won various freedoms and rights in recent years. If in the 1950s a CEO had argued for gay rights, would it have been acceptable for traditionalists to have that CEO ousted? Anyone who supports the ousting of Eich is effectively arguing against the right of minorities to engage in democratic debate. Is that really what anyone wants?

I agree that people have the right to judge Eich in any way they wish, and have the right to boycott companies for any reason. However, his ousting strikes me as being needlessly vindictive. The pro gay marriage lobby won. Why not just celebrate that and move on? Why this need to persecute and punish those who have a different view?

Ultimately though I don't think this is a question about Mozilla's relationship with its customers, but instead about the relationship between Mozilla and its employees (in this case, Eich). Employees should have a right to a private life. If an employee complies with their company's policies when at work, then anything that they do in their personal life should be irrelevant: any beliefs they hold, any opinions they express, any actions they take. Otherwise, there is a creeping totalitarianism at play, where employees must never express any opinion which contradicts (now or in the future) their employer's position.

Mozilla should have responded to these criticisms by issuing a short statement that the CEO's private opinions are his own concern.

I think there is a broader question about the extent to which companies are getting involved in social and political issues which may put them at odds with their own employees. Perhaps they should just focus on delivering great products and services and leave the politics at the door?