But we live in a democracy, where we need to get along. Black-and-white absolutist thinking doesn't really help anyone. You may not think it's "simply a political view" in 2014, but many other people do. Fortunately, we live in a pluralistic society with freedom of expression where we're all allowed to have and share our views, which is the whole basis of democracy.

And this is very different from women's suffrage, because nobody's right to vote, or their participation in the democratic process, is being legally affected here. Other things are being affected, but not people's representation as citizens in a democracy.

I'll happily defend your right to anonymously spout homophobic nonsense on 4chan, but as soon as you attach your name (and a thousand bucks) to discriminating people based on their sexual orientation, I'll exercise my right to shun you for it.

That right is, presumably, something you revoke when joining a ‘open-minded and tolerant’ community -- something that both Mozilla and OkCupid asked their employees to do.

That’s why, to justify shunning from someone within that group, you need to qualify supporting Prop 8 as abhorrent: something outside of Free speech.

I’ve posted a few comments already, so I feel the need to clarify my position: I have an opinion; I never shared it with anyone, ever. What I know however, from knowing many people on any sides of however you want to split this, is best said here:

http://imgur.com/r/AdviceAnimals/YstKo08

Here is what this comes down to: is there an overall shift in societies sentiment on this issue towards tolerance and against discrimination? If yes, you don't want to be standing on the wrong side of history by publicly expressing your disagreement.

Lincoln was very much on the wrong side of history, and even in his time many abolitionists argued that it was horribly immoral to allow slavery where it existed, or to end slavery only in military-occupied areas of the Confederacy. Should we have shunned him then?

This is exactly why I don't like black/white mob rule, FWIW. Life's too complex to be reduced to a set of tripwires that define our behavior. Evolution has provided us all with the most advanced processing devices on this planet, we should all feel free to use them to examine a given case on its own merits.

As for history, it’s a forgiving mistress: always remember that the one absolute, un-impeachable moral hero of all modern history was an openly incestuous child molestor, and that all his friends and relatives begged him daily to stop.

Hard to find a good source, but here's something: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2521/did-mahatma-ga...

They are simply and clearly pointing out that he seeks "to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration" They don't want to associate with him, and they are recommending that other people avoid doing so.

OkCupid calling out a powerful person on his despicable behavior does not threaten democracy.

Democracy is not threatened in this debate -- however, consistency might not be on OkCupid’s side.

wikipedia> nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Equal protection has been used repeatedly in the courts as a way to show the clear and un-bar-able "right to contract" protecting companies and individuals right to make agreements and have them be enforced and recognized by the state.

looking at the nuts and bolts way that the state approaches "marriage" as a form of contract similar to a corporate merger: tax differences, medical rules regulations, inheritance, general ownership of property. Baring an entire group of people from this right to contract is very clearly an abridgment of those rights and the protections brought by that form of contract.

This is why this issue has made such clearer and easy headway in the courts where the rulings are based more clearly on the law it self and the precedent of situation.

your argument though well written is more of a red herring fallacy trying to distract from a very real issue that you paint as more serious to trivialize what is really an important issue in our system of governance.

The women's suffrage movement was more than just the right to vote it spoke to how we define equality in this country. And this modern incarnation of that same discussion (which has taken many shapes over the years color, disability, language) is similarly important though it may feel distant to YOU because it impacts a sub-segment of the population not as large as say 50%.

The fact is, people from all backgrounds and political viewpoints hold opinions which they view as absolute. Whether that's "being anti-gay is equivalent to being pro-slavery" or "abortion is murder", people are going to disagree even if they are both guided by the same fundamentally good goals.

All is not as it seems when you change the optics (edited, restored).

Gay people: We'd like to get married.

Government: Okay, here you go.

It's only because assholes go crazy about it that it's a problem.

Also, gay couples have been doing the "set up a bundle of contracts" thing for years. It's expensive and doesn't actually provide the same protections that marriage provides.

Some people justify their intervention in all these issues by claiming that the up-coming generations are everyone‘s future, and needs to be protected as such. Hence many laws to prevent them from harm, most of which I’m sure you adhere to.

The salient cases are often about disagreement about which is the greater harm: being Métis in a race-based, or living in a race-based society? Some (abortion) are about disagreements on what constitutes a child.

I don’t think that you, or rather some other people on the same side as you on such issues, choose to make themselves better persons by disparaging your opponents openly. Like you, they are worried, and inconsistent. And, if you step away from absolutes, they would agree with you on many actual cases. Cognitive dissonance (which, admittedly, happens more often among your opponents) is very painful, and you want to respect that to effectively make the world a better place.

All men are created equal, right?

Gay couples are disadvantaged at a federal level. Being able to vote doesn't change that.

Gay rights aren't abortion. Enough people believe it is exactly like every other precedent for civil rights, that you can't really seriously hold onto this argument anymore. Sorry. And absolutely nobody said it had to be about voting, so where did you pull that out of?

Heck, at the very least there are people who are anti-marriage (from a political POV), for whom it would be discriminatory to exclude gay marriage from that position.

You cite slavery. Was every single person who was against emancipation "pro-slavery"? Was there no room for nuance? I mean maybe some people really didn't like slavery, but hated the prospect of civil war even more.

So when someone is "anti-gay marriage", then yes they are taking a position that will harm gay folks. So yes, it is anti-gay.

A: You're against gay marriage? So you don't think gay partners should share the same legal status when making medical decisions, in property rights, or work benefits?

B: Wow, I never thought about it that way. No, I think they should share all of those benefits.

A: So you're for gay marriage?

B: No, I just think all of those rights should be granted outside of the marital context.

Once you limit the government's role to recognizing a contract, albeit one that's common and standardized, between two adults, marriage becomes the domain of the church. If your church wants to deny marriage to homosexuals, the first amendment gives them the right to do that.

I wrote a long rant about this a while back: http://tommorris.org/posts/2555

Easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys when you think in black and white, isn't it?

Yes! What other position could there be? You either think human beings can be owned as property or you don't.

I guess theoretically you could have favored some sort of gradual emancipation over immediate freedom, and there were some at the time who argued that freed slaves should have been returned to Africa.

But those are still just variations of an anti-slavery position.

You can't be against emancipation without being pro-slavery any more than you can be against animal cruelty but pro-dog fighting.

But to oppose a specific political position is much more nuanced. There were many people who opposed Obamacare on the grounds that it didn't go far enough. You couldn't automatically say they were against universal health care.

Many people oppose legislation that they would otherwise support because they are rolled up in an omnibus bill they can't support, or because the devil in the details would make it counterproductive to their cause.

That gay men and women weren't allowed to bring their partners into the country is another major one.

Edit: Thank you for the downvote whomever you were. Mission accomplished; you managed to hurt.

I just think people need to be more careful when they ascribe motives (being "anti-gay") to political views that might incidentally oppress people ("anti-gay marriage").

That kind of in-your-face aggression makes people defensive and withdrawn, rather than engaged and ready to be convinced.

It's like if someone is for strict crack cocaine punishments, and somebody just saying "well being blatantly racist toward African Americans is unacceptable". Maybe they just hadn't yet connected the dots from their political position to the incidental impact it has on people.

Being anti-gay marriage directly means "I want gay people to not have the following rights: x, y and z," and in that sense it is directly anti-gay.

It's not as severe as criminalizing being gay or even putting the death penalty on it, but it is definitely anti-gay.

P.S. I never meant to imply you were against gay marriage; was just pointing you to the most convincing argument.

> Being anti-gay marriage directly means "I want gay people to not have the following rights: x, y and z," and in that sense it is directly anti-gay.

It is more direct, but not absolutely direct. People get religious over the word "marriage", which shouldn't be surprising because in a lot of ways it's primarily a religious concept. A lot of them actually don't mind if gay people have rights x, y, and z. But by framing the whole conversation around "marriage", it bypasses the question of rights for a lot of people. It jumps right to challenging their long-held, internalized view of what the word "marriage" means.

And that might be an important thing to challenge! But for a lot of people it's a separate issue from the rights question.

That's actually how gay marriage was introduced in the Netherlands, through something called a 'cohabitation-agreement.'

The principle of it is wrong, but opponents don’t connect the dots.

Why are gay citizens equal enough to have equal tax laws but not equal marriage laws?

One is religious, and I doubt you’d sympathise with that; let’s just say an easy way out of that one would be to defining all civil unions as such, but it actually would miss some point.

Another one is biologic: heterosexual couples are expected to have children. Of course, that should mean that couples without shouldn’t benefit, but they might be considered saving money while planning, and there is the embarrassing debate about what to do with people marrying in their 40s… That goes against the increasingly visible case of gay couples adopting, or using donations/surrogates. But the idea is: that tax benefit and public recognition is a natalist argument.

That can seem meaningless to a liberal, but conservatives have a heighten sense of ‘purity’, and tend to vehemently refuse misappropriations or risk of ‘contamination’, sometimes beyond the scale of the real issue. Examples in the US include: ‘sacred’ money meant for church should not be taxed by secular government, or, benefits meant for people in need should not go to undeserving people; one should not indulge people who commit crimes; young impressionable teens should not frequent lost souls, etc.

And to be clear: yes, that should mean people shouldn’t marry after menopause -- rationalisation of that include continuity, traditions or even direct reference to Abraham and Sarah. Details are probably more individual.

What matters is that you understand there is a consistency to the over-all idea, in spite of the apparent contradictions, and you can’t move forward unless you make sense of it. It‘s the classic exercice in rhetoric of being able to convincingly prove the opposite of your position in order to be able to defend it.

Take my paternal grandparents. When my grandmother was still alive, the two of them happily lived together and cared for one another even though my grandfather was at that point experiencing the early onset of dementia.

When she died, my grandfather had to go into residential care, paid for partly by their pension, partly by my parents and uncles, and partly through the subsidy that the state provide for elderly people going into care homes.

The more people who are able to live together in a mutually caring relationship like a long-term marriage, the less people need to go into care homes meaning the less subsidy needs to go into that kind of care for the elderly.

Marriage has a societal benefit in promoting that kind of mutual care, regardless of the gender of the partners and regardless of whether you have kids (and, hell, same-sex couples can and do have kids, so that's a shit argument anyway).

Could you set up another system to provide that kind of benefit? Sure. But this is the system we have and it should be available to long-term gay couples as it is for straight couples.

Disclaimer: I'm single, so I'm not arguing for these benefits. That's just what I always thought the reason was.

Married couples in the US most get tax benefits to the extent to which they have a significant imbalance in income, and it seems to be a lot more connected to the idea of traditional division of labor (one partner working in the trade economy while the other provides in-home support for that partner) than children, per se.

They are tax benefits that directly subsidize children, but they aren't conditioned on marriage.

> I find it weird that this argument has so far been completely ignored by either side in the pro/anti-gay marriage discussion (at least as far as I've seen).

The idea that the civil benefits of marriage are inherently tied to the purpose of promoting reproduction are rather central arguments in the anti-same-sex-marriage camp; this was, in fact, the main argument for Prop. 8's constitutionality offered by its proponents.

My apologies then, I haven't followed the gay marriage discussion in general, only the discussion about Brendan Eich.

The injustice is simply in the sit-in-the-back-of-the-bus thing - that a lesbian couple should be stamped 'civil union' just so everybody knows they're not as good. Its Jim Crow all over again.

Also, we're talking about political speech from many years ago, for a cause that the majority of Californians passed -- and, lest we forget, President Obama, liberal hero he is, did not support gay marriage until 2012. Many, many religious conservatives (hundreds of millions of them, in fact) would argue against your conflation of anti-gay marriage with anti-gay. And just because you seem unable to fathom dissenting views on this issue doesn't mean they don't exist.

Reading your comment, the word 'witch hunt' comes to mind. Just because they wronged you doesn't mean you wrong them too.

There is a vast difference between feeling strongly about an individual who feels strongly against folks who are gay, and judging anyone and everyone based upon their political views.

The latter comes from a lack of empathy. One sees the label and stops seeing the person. That lack of empathy is exactly what drives hatred and bigotry.

I'm not saying doing so is hypocritical. For conflicts like this to come to an end, all parties need to connect to individuals rather than knee-jerk reacting.

Truth is that just because there are some parts of a religion that may support discrimination or other negative behavior, doesn't mean followers of that religion have to agree with that. Many people ignore the parts they don't agree with.

"Christianity" and "Judaism" are not monolithic institutions and substantial subsets of both tolerate (or actually accept, which isn't the same thing) homosexuality.

Religions do not tolerate or not-tolerate. Religions are social constructs that only appear to make choices, often when it is convenient for individuals. Individuals tolerate or not tolerate. There are plenty of devout, gay Christians and Jews. They might have a hard time with their faith and their community, but they are there.

The responsibility is on the individual; saying that "my religions says otherwise" is not impeccable.

Until nearly 100% of the population accepts it as a basic and obvious axiom, it does not even remotely have the same status as being pro-slavery or denying suffrage to women.

But it's pretty clear to those of us who have no dog in this fight that the anti-equality folks are on the wrong side of history. In 50 years, not allowing gays to marry will be more or less equivalent to the prohibitions against interracial marriage that once existed and are now, almost universally, recognized as being bigoted.

Go to any of the thousands of rural communities in the United States, especially in the midwest, and you will find many people who will strongly stand by their opinion that gay marriage should not be legal.

Just because you believe that gay rights are as fundamental as women's suffrage does not mean that, as a political issue, gay rights are as decided nationwide as women's suffrage.

Saying that gay rights aren't as fundamental of an issue because it's not as cut and dry today as women's suffrage and slavery are today is patently ridiculous. Those issues have had decades to pass from controversial to relatively settled to settled.

Age of an issue does not dictate importance.

That's really not what I wrote at all, though.

That's exactly what that part of your sentence says, unless I am reading this incorrectly.

X = "you believe that gay rights are as fundamental as women's suffrage"

Y = "gay rights are as decided nationwide as women's suffrage"

All I wrote is that X does not imply Y. You seen to be interpreting it, though, as (not Y) implies (not X), the contrapositive of which is X does imply Y, which is basically the opposite of what I meant.

> for those who are on the right side of the argument

In the US, women's suffrage and slavery do not ever need to be qualified by phrases like this. So really, the very way in which you had to phrase that sentence invalidates the point you're trying to make.

> (the one that will certainly be vindicated by history)

The most likely future political status of the issue is not the same as the present-day political status.

> The people who are in the right don't have to wait until the slow people catch up, in order to be right.

You do have to wait in order for it to be law. That's democracy.

It’s interesting to read again http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html .

As I indicated before, I find it so appalling that you see such views espoused by the 'liberal' party of the US.

> this freedom falls squarely within the preamble of the US Declaration of Independence

whether accurate or not, doesn't matter, because of the DOI isn't any sort of binding document. It can say that every man, woman and child deserve their own puppy, but that's not going to make it any more or less likely to happen.

The DoI does not say "everyone deserves a puppy". Give me a break and please take your straw man argument elsewhere.

- Sir Charles Napier

Unfortunately it didn't really turn out in this case...

We're currently in a transitional period as discrimination-against-people-based-on-sexual-orientation undergoes the same social transition that discrimination-against-people-based-on-skin-color underwent a few decades ago. When it's over, people won't think of it as a political thing anymore.

I've never been to Chic-fil-a because anything I purchase there is presumably having a portion donated to anti-gay legislation. I'm not comfortable with Orson Scott Card's activism (historically, though apparently he's reversed his position to more of a 'ehh, whatever') but I did purchase Shadow Complex. I've never used OKCupid, and if the company itself or major profit holders were donating large sums to anti-gay legislation, I would be comfortable personally boycotting them, as it were, but calling out individuals for their beliefs like this...I feel like it's going too far. As much as I support gay rights, I don't think being unable to get legally married is on the same level as human slavery or women's suffrage...

Because actual voting is essentially worthless now that our judicial elders have dictated that spending money is the same thing as speech. Money now buys elections, moreso than votes. So we're learning to vote with our dollars like the fat cats do.

I'm of the opinion that actions speak louder than words. The first time Eich tries to pull some shit, I'll change my mind. But until then, I'm willing to give him a fair shake

Perhaps you should change the title to IAC Employees... It's fine to point out that employees at their parent company made donations to these politicians, but I don't see any work done here to link the data with OkCupid employees.

The dates of many of those contributions are way before IAC bought OkCupid.

But really, you need to treat what OkCupid is doing as some pretty clever marketing that's gotten it lots of free advertising, and not some kind of moral statement.

If that is true, then that is as morally bankrupt as a company can get and I starting to believe I know who Bill Hicks was talking about.

I'm more curious about what the purpose of attempting to smear IAC and OkC is.

You may not remember that President Kennedy was accused of being "controlled" by the Vatican when he was elected because he was the first (and remains the only) Roman-Catholic president, and people were freaked out he'd take orders from the Pope. Turned out not to be the case.

  To address fears that his being Catholic would impact his decision-making,
  he famously told the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on
  September 12, 1960, "I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am
  the Democratic Party candidate for President who also happens to be
  a Catholic. I do not speak for my Church on public matters – and
  the Church does not speak for me."[46] Kennedy questioned rhetorically 
  whether one-quarter of Americans were relegated to second-class
  citizenship just because they were Catholic, and once stated that, 
  "No one asked me my religion [serving the Navy] in the South Pacific."[47]

We had such an arrangement here in Germany (then West-Germany) a few years back: When you wanted to become a civil servant beyond a certain pay-grade (if I remember correctly, it was the first "advanced" pay grade for schoolteachers) in the 70s, you could not be a member of certain political parties (KPD, the communist party for instance).

What if he donated to the NRA or a pro-GMO campaign for example? Would there be similar uproar? This is just mob rule.

* I'm making no statement as to whether I agree with either side.

More importantly IMHO, you could just as logically argue that any CEO who contributed to Republican campaigns is just as guilty as Eich for working to oppose gay marriage. Individual Republicans' opinions aside, the Republican Party is still running on an opposition platform as of April 2013 after all, and that party has done far more to hurt gay marriage rights than Prop. 8 by itself.

Eich is being crucified because he's a viable target, not because of any innate guilt that he alone is imbued with. I find that quite hypocritical.

Not really. I don't think there was a single Republican candidate that campaigned on the issue of gay marriage and nothing else. There is also a message of fiscal conservatism, pro-business stances, etc. etc.

Donating money to Prop 8 was a simple and straightforward move to try to block gay marriage, and absolutely nothing else.

That would imply that it would be acceptable to associate with dirty anti-gay marriage types if they were otherwise politically useful, would it not?

And if that's the case then I do not see how you could logically then "boycott Mozilla" as a consequence of Eich's appointment as CEO, since Mozilla actually does tons of good for people.

> Donating money to Prop 8 was a simple and straightforward move to try to block gay marriage, and absolutely nothing else.

Be that as it may, the vibe I'm getting from Eich's opponents is precisely that "you're either with us or against us". And moreover, that commingling good deeds with foul ones is no excuse. After all I would hope that it's only a very few that think "Mussolini made the trains run on time" was an excuse for all the rest.

Given that we're tying Eich to a stake here he must have done something really bad, and if it's that bad it's the kind of thing you don't outweigh just by going "Well I also voted against Obamacare!".

Again, no single political group has done more to oppress homosexuals from being able to marry than the GOP, however you dress it up. If opposing gay marriage is automatically a bad enough crime to warrant Eich's treatment then it should be bad enough irrespective of other, "nicer" opinions.

After all, Eich himself surely has "good" opinions we'd mostly agree with, would he not? He may even be on the whole good for the community, but no one has accorded him the opportunity of a trial or even thought very hard about whether his "goods" outweigh his "bad".

Except that no one is doing that. There's a pretty vast gulf between boycott and witch-burning.

If you don't think mine is the right comparison, that's fine, but if you're interested in understanding the other point of view as I assume you are, there it is.

There is a serious lack of empathy in the viewpoint the parent describes. The premise that "anyone who disagrees with x is motivated by fear and hate" is a very dangerous one.

(and in all of those cases, the death tolls are higher.)

It's easy for people (especially certain middle-to-high income bracket liberal demographics) to give a pass on hating NRA/rednecks/religious folks while at the same time remaining indignant about what is an issue effecting a small subset of the population.

Moreover, while there are very valid arguments to be made in support of gay rights (usually by way of personal liberty, freedom of association, privacy, etc.), you really need to be willing to apply them to folks you don't like.

Only if you rob it of all substance does it not necessarily imply an oppressive government.

To disagree with someone makes me the "thought police"? I just don't see how this applies at all.

EDIT: I am adding this as an afterthought but honestly to totally disregard the Orwellian connotation of the term "thought police" I think is a very liberal application of the term.

> "The term 'thought-police' does not necessarily have a government connotation."

If it is not government, then the party under discussion therefore must be a private individual or organization. I don't understand how this is anything like the commonly accepted understanding of "thought police". It is simply one private party critiquing the behavior (in this case, a monetary donation to support certain legislation) of another private party.

It is an inherent double standard.

Also: if Eich, rather than fund legislation which discriminates against gays, funded legislation that discriminated against, for example, black people, would you be confident that black people who worked for Mozilla would be working in a fair environment? Would another private organization, like OKCupid, be justified in questioning such an individual?

If this is to be branded the "thought police" then I worry about freedom of expression and our cultural mores, in general.

Also, "critique" is a rather kind way of putting it. It's more like doing everything possible to take his job away.

And that's the real problem. Trying to sabotage someone's career over a difference of political opinion is not a mature or effective way to advance your message. How would you like it if all your coworkers publicly petitioned for you to quit because it was discovered you were pro-choice (hypothetically)? There are people who think abortion is plain old murder. People like that will think a pro-choice stance is absolutely unacceptable, and they might even think an example should be made of anybody who supports such legislature.

Do you understand that he is CEO of a large company? Do you understand that LGBT individuals and their allies work for this company? Including its board of directors. Do you understand that they have already publicly spoken about the real consequences his appointment to CEO has on them?

Would I like it if people petitioned for me to quit? No. I can't imagine Eich is too pleased with this backlash. But that doesn't make LGBT individuals wrong in speaking out against promoting bigoted legislation. If you think "hurt feelings" is a good defense for Eich, how do you think his LGBT constituency feels? He materially invested in anti-gay legislation. These people spoke out against it.

I am just so floored by this type of reasoning you promote.

And "trying to sabotage someone's career" is like Dan Brown getting a bad book review. Like Brown, Eich has already made a successful career out of technology; nothing they say is going to limit his success in the field. It is an absolute fact that there are those of his constituency who feel specifically discriminated against. How is it not within their right (or other peoples' rights) to speak out publicly about this?

How is this even close to thought crime? It is a matter of private citizens/organizations; he contributed materially to anti-gay legislation (not simple thoughts); there is no governing body capable of actually punishing him.

Again, I am floored by the reasoning being promoted here.

Looking at their "Personals" portfolio[1] only, already gives a list of the following companies and brands:

  match.com
  chemistry.com
  meetic
  twoo
  tinder
  peoplemedia[2] including
    OurTime.com
    LDSplanet.com
    catholicpeoplemeet.com
    republicanpeoplemeet.com
    marriagemindedpeoplemeet.com

That's capitalism at work. Much like Axe/Lynx and Dove seem to sell different agendas yet still both add to Unilever's revenue.

[1] http://iac.com/brands?field_category__tid=22

[2] http://iac.com/brand/peoplemedia

Even more, considering Mozilla's a free software non-profit foundation. But if you're going to do it, why half-ass it? After all, Eich is the man. Go on and boycott JavaScript. A dedicated activist like Stallman would not persist merely because of convenience.

The only reason why Brendan Eich's contribution should be an issue is because he's now the CEO of Mozilla and people are afraid that his personal beliefs on the matter will affect Mozilla. But that worry is only justified when talking about the CEO (or I suppose the Director of Human Resources, or whatever the equivalent at Mozilla is).

And even that I think might be an overreaction. From everything Brendan Eich has said publicly, it appears that he wants to keep his personal beliefs private, and that he's committed to everything Mozilla stands for in his public role as CEO. So I'm not worried that he's going to turn Mozilla into a bad work environment for gay employees. My only real worry is that he will not be proactive about improving conditions or about supporting relevant community initiatives, but the same could be said of a CEO that has no opinion whatsoever on gay marriage.

In any case, OKCupid has taken public actions (e.g. their message to Firefox users) that indicate that, as a company, they come down in favor of gay marriage. The individual beliefs and actions of their rank & file employees should not matter in the slightest.

I don't think that's quite true. Rather, what it seems is that they're being opportunists by milking a controversy so as to make themselves appear as if they have the moral high ground.

Telling people to boycott a free software browser that has been the result of over a decade of labor by large numbers of contributors and has been responsible for many advancements in the web, over the actions of one person (even if the CEO), the reasons of which are still unclear, is not what I'd call supporting gay marriage.

There's plenty of other much better ways to express support. What's even more interesting is that they have selected Firefox as the product to boycott, and not the rest of the Mozilla Foundation's projects. I guess actually targeting the root cause (Eich, and consequently JavaScript) is too much to swallow.

> I guess actually targeting the root cause (Eich, and consequently JavaScript) is too much to swallow.

Firefox is probably the only thing they can target that makes sense. JavaScript is probably the only other Mozilla project that the majority of OKCupid visitors would even recognize, and most of them probably don't use JavaScript at all and have no way to boycott it (not to mention that it's pretty hard to boycott JavaScript anyway, because it's the assembly language of the web).

Also, the only indicating factor they have to decide if they should even show the message is that the user's browser is Firefox. Showing this message to everyone would definitely be too much.

Even if you frame this as a civil rights battle, you don't win civil rights battles that way. The black right to vote was not won by eliminating the KKK's right to free speech.

What proof do we have that his personal beliefs will affect Mozilla? Guilty until proven innocent I see.

This person donated money to a campaign to remove from them one of the basic civil rights of man, and they're understandably worried about what might happen because of that. Additionally, they're unhappy with having a person who has done so in such an important and visible position of something they love.

(Also, people desiring or acting to remove him from a position as CEO is not an issue of freedom of speech. There is no right to being a CEO.)

No, they aren't. Eich exercised his free speech, and advocated that other people exercise their right to vote in a particular way.

They are exercising their right to free speech, and advocating that other people exercise their right to free association in a particular way.

They don't like the way Eich exercised his right to free speech, or the action it advocated, but they don't argue that he should not have been permitted to exercise that right.

It has been like two weeks? I think we need to stop predicting. Since IAC is boycotting Mozilla Firefox browser by displaying message to Firefox user, will IAC now fire these employees? Will managers be forced to not to promote these employees? That would be against labor law but also hypocrite coming from the company that's blocking Mozilla Firefox, wouldn't it?

Let's stop the arguging. I can find someone among the gays who don't support abortion at all and if he or she is placed as CEO the pro-choice community will scream at him/her. This is now a never-ending drama.

As for IAC, I don't understand your comment at all. Why would IAC penalize employees whose personal beliefs disagree with this public action? There's absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe that a company requires all of its employees to hold the same beliefs that the company is publicly promoting.

You just made my point. Isn't a CEO also an employee? Just because he is the most powerful figure in the company doesn't mean he has to hold the same beliefs that the company is publicly promoting, which is equality and openness to all as a private citizen. He will have to hold the same belief as Mozilla as a CEO. Mozilla and its community accepts there are people who believe and disagree on marriage equality.

Huh? We don't need to stop predicting yet; it hasn't been long enough yet to draw any conclusions about how he's guiding Mozilla in regards to this issue.

Set a deadline. I'll give you a month to talk about this. Then? What's next? Exactly. It won't change anything. He's the CEO. He won't step down. Mozilla will continue to function. People will keep an eye on Mozilla. That's it. So tell me, what good is your prediction? More articles and speculations and rants and wars?

Why should you or anyone draw any conclusion? What conclusion? What good is your prediction to this non-stop no-win situation? Just as I said I can find a pro-life person to manage the company will receive the same doubt: what good is you or anyone continue to make "prediction"? If your prediction only causes more useless non-stop repeating arguments, that kind of prediction is just noise simply because nothing new will ever come out.

Obama was on record openly opposing gay marriage, explicitly stating "I am not in favor of gay marriage."[1]

As we all know, he's since changed his mind (which is good thing), but would the same logic apply to the Republicans on this list? If they changed their position, does it mean it's okay to have contributed to them why they opposed gay marriage?

[1] http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2008/11/obama-on-mtv-i/

Is the complaint here simply that these people failed to be single-issue voters?

The fact is, we can pull our support from people who we think are shitty if we want to in order to push progress forward to the kind of society we want to live it, specifically one where all Americans are treated equally under the law.

If it were up to me, I would completely eradicate the idea of marriage as a government institution, it doesn't belong in their hands in the first place. But I'm very much in the minority on that one.

Case in point: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/goldman-sachs-ceo-lloyd-blankfei...

It's a list of every OKCupid employee who donated to any Republican. Zero of them are donations to the Proposition 8 campaign.

Remember:

* Donating to take existing rights away from gay people = freedom of speech.

* Objecting to someone donating to take away existing rights from gay people = fascism.

http://iac.com/about/leadership

One group. One dream. To own a bunch of random websites, together.

edit: With the help of Chelsea Clinton and Michael Eisner!