In the same line, Brendan Eich. I completely disagree with his views on marriage of homosexuals, but disagree that it led him to have to quit his position at Mozilla Foundation.
That's why CEOs often have such generous compensation packages in the event of involuntary termination.
It's worth noting that many of the objections are about private information being misused. Eich was actually outed from a donor list that was leaked. There's a lot of parallels here if the concern is about "doxxing" activities.
I also have a really hard time with the "but CEOs are different argument". So could being a Democrat in a red state be a liability? Republican in a blue state? Evangelical in a secular area? Atheist in a religious one? Scientologists? Mormons?
In other words, are we saying that only certain kinds of people can be CEOs?
In short, yes.
There are plenty of rational people out there who don't care what someone does in their private life as long as it doesn't have a readily apparent effect on business. It's a shame that all people cannot be like this, because there are others who take a hard line stance against certain private matter that someone else may hold. That is, the fact that a CEO is a Dom in a D/s relationship will resonate so negatively with some people that is can adversely impact business.
Do you remember the Cheerios commercial[0] with the interracial family? People have much bigger skeletons in their closets, and from a business standpoint, that's a liability. It's not right. It's not fair. But it's reality.
[0]: http://www.today.com/news/cheerios-ad-mixed-race-family-draw...
My question was about how much we cater to others' intolerance. It seems backward to me that we throw up our hands and accept that we'll, say, never have a fat president again because people just don't respect fat people. Or that a major political party should never nominate an out atheist because they are not electable (a self-fulfilling prophecy).
The silver lining to the Trump candidacy, I think, is that there is more tolerance of unconventional leadership than we have suspected. I swore up and down that Trump was unelectable.
In Eich's case, it wasn't a private matter. He used his money and influence to attempt to enforce his religious views on people who do not subscribe to his religion. When you are involving the government in public enforcement of your personal views, they are not personal any longer.
Saying "this is too important for privacy to apply" affects more issues than just politics advocacy.
In this situation, people apparently are applying the template: "When you X, it's no longer personal anymore".
If not, why not?
But yes, it was a big black mark against them and they, too, received lots of public pressure to change their public policy on the matter. And eventually, they did. Eich refused to even say he wouldn't make such a donation again, much less apologize for the harm he caused.
Most observers believe that the passage of Proposition 8 in California had far more to do with black churches turning out for Barack Obama than it did with contributions from people like Eich.
Edit: updating with citation.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11...
70% of black voters supported Proposition 8, which means that they were against gay marriage.
I don't think that Mozilla was faced with that dichotomy, and the fact that Eich was relatively quickly and easily replaced backs that up.
Should officials be cajoling or forcing people to "convert" (not every religion has conversion as such)? Nope.
Can we divorce all laws from any metaphysical worldview? No. That's not possible. We presume certain things matter, like human lives, freedom of conscience, truth, the health of the planet, etc. Banning murder assumes that the Flying Spaghetti Monster does not exist and/or does not require human sacrifice to get into heaven. I can't come up with the right adjective, but that's imposing an (a)theological position on constituents. It's obviously the right position, too.
Point being, even the idea of "inalienable rights" is an (a)theological position. Some people think rights are given by God or the nature of humanity. Others think laws are given by the people and groups that can enforce them.
The goal isn't to have agnostic laws. That's literally impossible. The goal is to find a just baseline worldview we can all compromise on and have tolerant laws that follow from that.
Ah, I was mistaken on that detail. Apologies. Apparently I've read some poorly researched sources on the subject.
There was a lawsuit about whether it should be made public and a judge ruled that it should be. So "leaked" is inaccurate, though there was and is disagreement about whether the information should be public.
I've come across people who believed that the state should not be involved in marriage. They viewed extending marriage to gay couples as just making a bad situation worse, by getting the state involved in even more relationships.
Yes, he has.
Do you have a religious reason for putting words in my mouth on hacker news? That would explain things about as well as your false assertion about me!
To save anyone interested in what I've written some site-specific searching, start here and follow the links I left in this comment:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13411986
Searching for coldpie and my name will return lots of tediously similar comments from him inveighing against me based on ill will and little else. I'll spare you all those search results :-|.
> In other words, are we saying that only certain kinds of people can be CEOs?
Yes. When you're the leader and figure head of an org your views and opinions are seen as representing that org. If you're anti-gay marriage it's seen as if you may treat gay employees negatively. That's bad for hiring and bad for public opinion.
And, yes, as it turns out, historically, we've only ever permitted certain kinds of people to be CEOs. They are also not chosen--or removed--democratically. But this is way off-topic.
If we cannot support and debate "wrong" ideas, then we're not very open in my opinion.
The shift was from "we can treat people equally while keeping marriage heterosexual" to "gay marriage is an inalienable human right". Nobody was advocating for oppressing people in their minds.
All of which begs the question of whether removing a CEO on the losing side of such a debate is tantamount to the imposition of a liberal orthodoxy.
Equality of what?
Marriage is not based in physics or biology. It's a made up concept, actually concepts, plural. There are countries where it means one man + a limited number of women, there are countries where it means one man + as many women as he can afford (and can afford taking care of all the kids), there are countries where it means one man + one woman, and now there are countries where it means 2 adult homo sapiens regardless of sex. There are countries where it can only be between adults, there are countries where legal children can become a legal adults by getting married. etc...
Shouldn't equality include polyamorists? Why isn't it? What about minors who have the legal right to have sex, can they get married? Actually, what about kids who are legally entitled to own stuff, forget about sex? etc.... As far as I am concerned, marriage is just a legal contract that regulates what is owned by the different parties, and as such, none of the setup described here should be excluded. It does get a little bit more complicated when it comes to succession of active assets, for example polyamorists could daisy chain over time and earn retirements for somebody who was part of that chain and died hundred years ago, so there would be some tweaks to be done there, but that shouldn't be a blocker.
Now do you still think "gay marriage" (as opposed to other forms) wasn't just a trendy idea? Are you ok with polyamorist marriages? If not, even though that this is your personal opinion, should you be pushed out of your job because of it?
As for polygamy, that's not quite got the same status, no. And the UN Human Rights ctte has called for it to be outlawed, as it already is in many US states, because it violates the dignity of women in particular. So I think that is vastly more complicated and legally murky area than two-party adult marriage.
Regardless, I fail to see how the extended riff on edge cases and the revelation that marriage isn't a physical or biological construct has anything at all to do with its trendiness.
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat...
Are you just making stuff up for fun on HN, or do you have inside information ("They didn't say...; he just couldn't be allowed...") that no one but board members and a few other principals could know for certain?
There was no "leak" or "outing." Campaign contributions are public information. I just pulled up his donation (to Prop 8 and a Lt Gov campaign) here.
http://dbsearch.ss.ca.gov/ContributorSearch.aspx
I'd link directly but the form uses POST so there's no unique URL for his contributions.
You can always start your own company if you want to be CEO.
In fact, that's what Eich has done - he's a startup founder nowadays.
We've all heard of sore losers but those people were sore winners.