Ed Morrissey:
What makes the case of Brendan Eich — the co-founder of Mozilla, and the company’s momentary CEO — so remarkable is not just that he was compelled to step down for his views on gay marriage; it’s the long reach of his modest foray into activism. Eich donated $1,000 to the Proposition 8 campaign in California in 2008, which sought to enshrine the traditional definition of marriage into the state’s constitution.
For that single political act he faced the fury of the mob, which in demanding Eich’s ouster has abandoned all pretense of tolerance to enforce its version of groupthink.
The California referendum was controversial from the moment it began, but it was no fringe effort. It won 52 percent of the vote in the same election that Barack Obama won California by a 61-37 margin over John McCain. At the time, Californians believed that they had settled the issue, at least for one election cycle. Then the Supreme Court overturned Proposition 8 five years later, seemingly settling the issue once and for all.
Or so we thought. Eich served as chief technological officer of Mozilla from 2005 forward, a key leadership position befitting his standing at the company he helped create (he was the inventor of the now-indispensable JavaScript programming language that runs interactive sites). When the donation came to light in 2012, Eich took some flak, but the company’s board apparently assumed that Eich’s track record of non-discrimination — not to mention the private nature of his activism — meant that it wasn’t a problem.
But this time around, Mozilla was not so forgiving, unleashing a wave of controversy. Within days, Eich had to resign his position. His replacement, Mitchell Baker, offered a ridiculously Orwellian statement on Eich’s departure while trying to claim that Mozilla’s board had nothing to do with it:
Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard.
Our organizational culture reflects diversity and inclusiveness. We welcome contributions from everyone regardless of age, culture, ethnicity, gender, gender-identity, language, race, sexual orientation, geographical location and religious views. Mozilla supports equality for all. [Mozilla]
Conformity Is Diversity! Equality For All…Who Agree With Us! Needless to say, it is impossible to claim support for free speech, diversity, and inclusiveness while enabling a witch hunt that drives out supposed heretics. For a company whose products claim to serve an open-web philosophy, that statement is especially egregious. It stands the concepts of tolerance and diversity on their head.
To be sure, this is not a First Amendment issue, in either speech or religious expression. Mozilla is not a government entity. Employment at Mozilla is not a right to be claimed, but a practical arrangement for mutual benefit. It’s not a legal issue either, since Eich didn’t exactly get fired, even if he left under duress. Furthermore, as some have argued, Mozilla’s board does have a fiduciary responsibility to shield its investors from unnecessary risk, and having a lightning rod for a CEO certainly qualified as one of those risks. (Even if its actions ended up creating much more risk in the long run for the company’s prospects; Mozilla’s feedback site has been dominated by angry messages over the Eich affair.)
There are, what?, about 1% or 2% non-heterosexuals in the USA?
So, Mozilla got scared of a vocal minority and thus alienated a vast majority.
Even those who felt, in the recent past, that social issues ought not to be politicized and were therefore OK with gays marrying if they would just keep their sex in their bedrooms are polarizing against the hypocritical words and actions at Mozilla.
Has Mozilla lost enough business to be hurt by it?
Time will tell.
But when Code Pink went to Egypt to teach community organizing to Muslims they learned a few things, too.
Like how Muslims feign outrage at the littlest thing and usually end up winning.
But Muslims will kill you.
And, Mozilla is going to learn that gays won’t follow through like that.
Pretty soon these little tin tigers are going to be laughed at rather than cowered from.
(Remember Code Pink’s founder got arrested this last time she tried to enter Egypt.)
The crocodile might eat you last, but it will eat you.
Gays just don’t have that killer follow-through.
One estimate puts gay folks around 4 million. The U.S. population is around 317 million at this time, so that puts the gay percentage of America somewhere around 1.2 %. Someone can correct me if my math is wrong.
But the percentage of gay folks isn’t really the issue. They’re using this issue as a rallying point for the rest of the Collective. Think about how many white drones blather on about imaginary white privilege, and say other things as though they themselves aren’t white.
The goal behind this is to create a kind of politically untouchable class. Right now, any criticism of socialist or Marxist policy pursuits by any elected or appointed official that happens to be black, elicits shrieks of racism accusations. The Collective continues this, because they’ve learned that right leaning folks behave like shrinking violets under these accusations. So they put African American men and women who will pursue socialist and Marxist policies on the front lines of the political battlefield. Then, when anyone criticizes them for the communist nature of their policy pursuits, they just cry racism.
This is why when black conservative intellectuals like Thomas Sowell, Herman Cain, Ben Carson, Allen West, etc., speak up, they receive horrendous treatment from the Collective. The Collective can’t afford to have African Americans thinking outside of accepted dictates, because it undermines the larger effort, and gives the right the same sort of political weapon.
The Collective is attempting to force gay folks into this same mono-thought mold.
@Nanny G: What about those “radical gays” that o5 warns us about? Or the “LSD induced fascist mob” that Kraken proclaims is running our beloved country.
As if worrying about Obama’s “civilian security defense force” wasn’t enough.
Lord have mercy.
@RICH WHEELER:
What’s wrong with worrying about Obama’s civilian national security force?
Kraken
he is a high rank officer and explained what was going on,
under our nose secretly, and he was so surprise to realize the people didn”t know,
and yes i believed him, he was telling the truth,
it brought back a story about the UN world order taking over easy because that government IS
in their pocket, and open door event so fast that the people did not see it done until afterward,
and why no, they are at the door waiting for the moment and all the weapons are ready to actionate on the people resisting, those who are smart enough to know what is going on, and want to save AMERICA with their lives,
THEY ARE THE PILLARS OF AMERICA, AND ARE IN READYNESS,
ALL THE TIME, and the people must join them if they call,
it’s their lives which depend on it,