OkCupid urges users to abandon Firefox

At thin majority and this is a weak argument anyway.

Yeah, unfortunately.

Is Firefox a local project? It is a project used by the industrialized world, and by some of the non industrialized world. More than 47% of voters in California voted against this bill. Deep pocketed people like Eich were able to get that thin majority, by getting every hayseed in the central valley, north coast and Orange county out to the polls.

A thin majority of one state in fifty of one country isn't much of a norm to deviate from.

I say his beliefs are hateful because I believe it is hateful to say that different regulations should be applied to people based on how they were born, or how they choose to behave when that behavior is a personal decision not affecting others.

There are exceptions here and there, such as helmet and seatbelt laws, but I'm really talking about lifestyle choices.

Elton John is mega-rich and is not a US Citizen, as well as surely having very well paid lawyers, so does not have the concerns that others have. Furthermore, many churches are accepting of LGBTQ folks and will perform marriages, including one in SF where a friend of mine used to be a pastor.

Rights are not about not upsetting people. If noone did anything that upset people, it would also be illegal to marry interracially. A lot of people alive today have a problem with that, and the government said: too fucking bad, kiddo.

Also what about Brian Sewell, a well-known British art critic, writer and broadcaster? Can a gay person be a homophobe?

"Why then do they and lesbians demand the right to marry? Indeed, how many of us have made that demand? One in 20? One in 10? Most of us... have not pleaded for gay marriage. But every minority has within it a core of single-issue politicians and protesters who are never satisfied and always ask for more, and homosexuals, both male and female, are no exception.

...

As the procreation of children is hardly the remit of the homosexual and I have never encountered one (other than a priest) who sought a remedy against fornication, and the civil partnership caters for the mutual society and comfort, why one earth have we had all this ballyhoo about gay marriage?

Since the institution of civil partnerships there has been no impediment to their celebration with a party as extravagant as any wedding, but not all homosexuals are so exhibitionist. Most of us are content with what we now have within the law, and are happy to respect the deeply-held belief of sincere, thoughtful and informed Christians for whom marriage is the one sacrament in which we cannot share.

We have wasted our resources on the wrong campaign – the battle still to be won is against prejudice, the most insidious of enemies."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10729717/Brian-Sewe...

Elton John was criticizing a marketing decision made by advocates of gay rights. He wasn't actively donating money to suppress those rights.

This may benefit from some context:

- Civil Partnership was permitted in the UK from 2004.

At that time, it was felt by many gay community leaders that this was a great breakthrough and a legal equivalence to marriage represented equality for gay people in the eyes of the law. Until 2010, gay rights campaigners Stonewall UK declined to campaign for gay marriage.

Civil partnership was seen as a good way to introduce legal equality without wrangling with the church over the use of the word 'marriage'.

This seems to be what Elton John is saying: civil partnership is a great step, and legally what's needed without also dealing with the issue of the word "marriage" at the same time.

However, over time, the gay community made it clear that they felt that this equality-with-a-different-name is not real equality.

- Gay marriage has now been legal in the UK for the last three days.

Elton John was one of the first public names to announce his intention to marry, and the article linked is about his advocacy.

It's not really possible from this quote to say that Elton John was particularly against marriage, even if he didn't personally want to get married at that time. I respectfully suggest that it was the Huffington Post trying to create a story.

On the point about a person's beliefs changing over time, Brendan Eich is free to make a statement to clarify his reason for making a public donation and update us on his current beliefs, if he chooses. His previous statement on this issue expressed no sense of regret.

The fact that it's realistically possible to boycott (i.e. not use) Firefox, but boycotting Javascript is - essentially - impossible. Sure, you can disable it in your browser, but that's nowhere near an outright boycott.

(BTW, this is just one difference, one that I haven't seen anyone else pointing out, whilst other, just as good - if not better - differences have been identified in this very post)

So I'm downvoted to hell, but what about my question?

It's easy to do a boycott that doesn't hurt you. Everybody can live without Firefox.

So why not get serious about this and show people that you are willing to make an actual sacrifice as a stand against his position?

Maybe that would be inconvenient?

Hey, I would totally be in for a boycott of Javascript. Let's do this.

The point of a boycott is to pressure some company or person to change. Boycotting Javascript is too abstract to be valuable. Javascript can't fire him, to cite the obvious example.

JavaScript is something he produced, think of it as a work of art. The language itself doesn't portray his personal beliefs on topics other than language design. Putting him in charge of people who lifestyle he is not accepting of is different. It will influence the choices he makes in dealing with people and in how the organization behaves.

If the language had something like logging levels which were labeled by derogatory terms for a subset of people that'd be another issue but it doesn't.

Imagine if Ted Bundy had created a cure for cancer. Would you want to boycott it? Would you put him in charge of people? Now admittedly Bundy might be a bigger danger to a specific subset of people than Eich but Eich is still a danger in some way to a subset of people.

Boycotting FireFox isn't about the product, it is about sending a message to the organization that puts him in a position of power over people.

A boycott is meant to inconvenience the target of the boycott. If your goal is to nudge the Mozilla Corp into action, Firefox downloads is really the way to do it, as that's pretty much their sole source of revenue.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation

You seem sincere, so here's an honest answer.

What you're missing is the nature of the job of CEO, especially in Silicon Valley. It's not a job where you bury your head down and get the work done, a huge part of the job is being the public face of the company.

The Mozilla Corp. has decided that their public face should be someone who is opposed to equal rights for gays. That's completely different than having a racist working as a programmer or in the mail room or even as CTO.

Boycotting javascript would be silly. Nobody is trying to say that everything Eich has touched now has cooties and we should stay away from it. However, it's perfectly reasonable to ask what kind of company Mozilla wants to be when they decide they want Eich as their public representative.

Have you ever tried to program in JavaScript? It doesn't have classes but the syntax looks similar: this is actually a pointer to that.

null == false // false

!null // true

He should be exiled for inventing JS.

</joke?

It is about gay rights. It's about human rights in general.

By giving some people less rights because of their skin color, you are treating them as sub-human. Somehow not deserving of the same human rights us Straight/White/Males are entitled to.

By giving some people less rights because of their gender, you are treating them as sub-human. Somehow not deserving of the same human rights us Straight/White/Males are entitled to.

By giving some people less rights because of their sexuality, you are treating them as sub-human. Somehow not deserving of the same human rights us Straight/White/Males are entitled to.

It's really all the same very basic case of denying some people the rights and freedoms that the majority of us take for granted.

There is no such thing as Straight/White/Male privilege. There is just Gay/Black/Female disadvantage. The rights I have, I take for granted - They are the norm. When certain segments of society are denied the exact same rights as I have, they are disadvantaged.

There is a lot more to the rights gained from marriage than just "legal obligation".

The previous poster was talking about racism, not slavery. Slavery was not a thing in this country 50 years ago. You're making a much bigger leap than you think the previous poster did.

>You should take the moral high ground and send him a personal communication detailing how his donation has caused harm.

I think there is far to much 'walking on eggshells' these days in regards to rights being infringed.

>from ignorance and his religion instead of bigotry or hate

I am not one of the fedora-tippers, and I have no problem with individual faith, but it's been my experience that organized religion (of any sort) tends to discourage critical thinking and encourage ignorance. A byproduct of this is prejudice which leads to the dark side.

I don't believe you can quite so easily separate religion from discrimination.

> You don't know Brendan, I don't know Brendan, nobody in previous threads comparing him to fucking racists or the Nazis knows Brendan.

I know Brendan. I met him on a number of occasions while working at Mozilla and interacted with him on many more. I think the comparison to racism is completely valid. I don't think he's a bad guy (he was always quite cordial with me) but his actions caused harm to a large number of people; I don't think that's okay.

Opposing gay marriage [1] is a sign of bigotry and hate, by that fact alone. It's akin to excusing white supremacists in the 1950's for segregating blacks and whites and underfunding black schools because their opinions were religiously motivated (and most claimed a religion as one of the reasons--children of Ham, and all that) and because they ignorantly believed blacks were inherently intellectually inferior. Nope, no hate or bigotry at all there.

[1] With a sliver of a possible out if you support ending all legal recognition of marriage.

Is a racist hateful? My grandmother was a racist and was a really good/kind women who dedicated much of her life to helping others (including people of color). She didn't treat other races hatefully, but she did have warped beliefs about other races- "stemming from ignorance and her religion instead of bigotry or hate" (your words).

I didn't compare him to nazis, skinheads, or other violent/hateful racists. You shouldn't equate racism with hate.

In short, I think it's a fair comparison. Right now, I don't think he's a hateful person though more information could change my mind.

Please stop being an apologist for bigots. Racists and homophobes and misogynists and nazis are all cut from the same cloth, and they all support each other, so attacking the root cause of their hate is fighting them all. And asking people to stop being "unfair" to them is asking people to treat them all fairly, which they don't deserve, because they acted unfairly first.

The Paradox of Tolerance is a resolved philosophical debate, so the idea that it's ironic or wrong to be intolerant of intolerance is an unoriginal and misguided idea. Philosopher Karl Popper asserted, in The Open Society and Its Enemies Vol. 1, that we are warranted in refusing to tolerate intolerance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

I do know Brendan, since the time I interviewed with him at Netscape in the 90's, and I know people who work with him and know him much better than I do, who say he has a lot of insane hateful beliefs that he doesn't like to share with people (except by paying money to other people to fund making TV commercials demonizing gays, destroying existing gay married families, and preventing future ones until the Supreme Court stepped in, of course), and that he refuses to change or justify his unjust beliefs.

Mozilla has tried to recruit me on numerous occasions, and I've turned them down because of Brendan, sending them and Brendan my explanation of why, but I've never heard anything back from Brendan or Mozilla about it. And I'm not the only person who refuses to work with Mozilla because of Brendan, so he's already harmed the Mozilla project as well as the people he hates.

So I DID tell him how his donation has caused harm, both to me and my friends, and the Mozilla project, and he ignored it. Now what do you suggest?

----

There remains an huge elephant in the room, Brendan, which causes your message of inclusivity to fall flat.

"I'm sorry." "I was wrong." These are the words abusers never say; you want our forgiveness without actually promising to stop harming people, or explaining what was going through your head when you DID harm people before.

You're not sorry. You refuse to mention you were wrong, and apologize for the tangible harm you caused. You skirt around the well known fact that you donated money to destroy the existing and potential marriages of gay families. Everyone knows that. It's on the record.

Your verbal gymnastics to avoid addressing that fact overshadowed your message. Why didn't you mention that YOU PERSONALLY are the cause of people mistrusting Mozilla's commitment to equality, and explain WHAT you did and WHY you did it, as you have always refused to do.

If you learned anything, and changed your bigoted beliefs, then you should ADMIT to making a mistake, EXPLAIN why you made it, and APOLOGIZE for the harm you caused.

But no, you're still an abuser, because:

You refuse to admit you were wrong.

You refuse to explain what the fuck you were thinking when you donated money to support Proposition 8.

You refuse to explain why you intended and succeeded in destroying the existing and potential marriages of gay families.

You refuse to explain what you learned from being wrong, so other bigots like yourself can learn from your mistakes, and hopefully change their ways.

Brendan: You are a bigot, and an abuser. Not just because of your beliefs, which you have kept to yourself because they are so unjustifiable that you are ashamed to discuss them, but because of your ACTIONS, which tangibly contributed to the success of Proposition 8, thus destroying the existing gay marriages in California and preventing others. That was your intent, and that was the result of your actions, so you deserve credit for destroying those marriages, and you should be ashamed of yourself.

The Supreme Court finally ruled that Proposition 8 was wrong. Can you finally admit that YOU were wrong?

But I am sure you won't, because as a religious bigot, you think you're better than everyone else, and that you have a right to tell other people how to live their lives.

You've so much as proven that with your latest cowardly statement, a non-apology apology, which dances around the fact that you did what you did, that brought shame to the company that you direct, and blatantly avoids saying you're sorry and that you're wrong.

This is how your non-apology apology sounds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ocv5WdBmSok

Note: nobody could tolerate Shockley and his story is not a success story. His sharp, unsympathetic and impractical opinions were mirrored directly in this management style. The style lacked pragmatic approaches to problem solving:

While Shockley had received a Nobel Prize in Physics and was an experienced researcher and teacher, his managing of the group created harsh working conditions.He chose a strategy for circuit design that failed and created an intolerable working atmosphere. The group of PhD graduates hired demanded that Shockley be replaced. When their demands were rebuffed, they realized they had to leave. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight

However, as is often overlooked, this isn't purely a debate about one's personal ethics and morals; marriage extends into the legal domain, and brings with it a plethora of complex legal ramifications. So, in fact, preventing marriage does impact an individual's rights.

I would also point out that “politically correct” is about as dismissive a term as can be found today.

Cultural attitudes may shift, and at some point a marginalized concept dismissed as “politically correct” becomes simply “correct.”

People, also, used to define marriage as being between two people of the same race. Let us dispense of this tangent once and for all: Marriage is a civil right. It is the cornerstone of this civil rights movement, as it was to the last one, and the one before that, and all the ones that haven't happened yet. The cry "marriage for all" is not politically correct; we would like it to become politically correct -- what a milestone that would be. We aren't shaming Eich because he's politically incorrect. We are shaming him because he chose to join a long line of people who have circumscribed marriage in the name of tradition or fear or ignorance. People who use their money and resources taking something that requires nothing of them to give. People who have been proven wrong, time and time again. People who we, regretfully, did not shame at the time.

Here's an idea. What if Eich had donated to a cause which stated the idea that marriage could only be between two white people. Sounds nonsensical but what if instead of it being based around sexual orientation, it was based around race?

The idea of racial equality has been around a lot longer and is more generally accepted than gay marriage rights (which only recently have begun to gain wider acceptance) so I imagine more people would be on the “he should resign” side in such a case.

When I first heard about this issue I didn’t think it was a big deal as long as his personal views did not influence his professional behaviour and ethics. But as some people have pointed out, he is the public face of an organisation that touts openness and inclusiveness as values. Furthermore, if I was gay I’m sure I’d feel more strongly about this, in the same way that someone who is non-white (or in the marginalised race) would feel strongly if the issue was around race as I've described above.

Finally, to people calling for him to apologise….him coming out with an apology to pacify everyone wouldn’t mean that he has changed his mind. It could just mean him saying what he needs to say to be able to get on with things while still harbouring the same thoughts and ideas within. Ask any politician.

I like your call to civility. Your questions seem like they could lead to an interesting conversation in the midst of all this, so I'll bite.

What are the reasons you believe what you do? Interesting question. "What I believe" is a rather broad category, and it would take a long time to answer all of that. Let's see what the other answers provoke and come back to this one. --Well, I think I've usually included that in my answers.

What is the evidence that homosexuality is an in-born quality as opposed to a choice? How strong is it? There is my personal experience that I started being attracted to humans of one sex without consciously deciding to. I gather that this is a common experience for people of all sexual orientations, and I haven't heard of exceptions. There is also the logical consideration that if anyone was facing serious negative consequences for being gay and negligible benefits, and he could easily turn straight, then he would probably do it; I don't have the literature in my hands, but my impression is that if you look, say, a few decades in the past, you can find a fair number of gay people who (a) faced physical abuse and ostracism, (b) were very distressed by all this, (c) were not getting emotional support from the gay community because it didn't really exist yet, (d) could not plausibly be argued to have martyr complexes, and yet didn't "just stop being gay". Seems like strong evidence, though the underlying mechanism remains obscure.

That said, though, whether it's a choice is really moot in my opinion, and in fact something of a distraction. Orson Scott Card, a believing Mormon, wrote an entire essay where he starts from the premise that homosexual behavior is immoral, because his religion says so, and criticizes those who protest that the desire for it is innate: just because people have innate urges to do many other kinds of immoral behavior (including violence) doesn't make them moral. A fine argument if you agree with the premise, which his critics obviously do not. Since the entire point of contention is a matter of faith for him, it seems there is little to discuss with him, and the resulting debate is just awkward and embarrassing for all involved.

People have exclusive rights to their own bodies; they can form whatever voluntary sexual, emotional, financial, or other kinds of relationships, as far as I'm concerned; I would oppose anyone who would try to intervene by force, and would be wary of those who try to use shaming and other forms of social power to discourage it. Why people want what they want doesn't enter into this.

What about concerns that gay people are promiscuous, spreading AIDS and other STD's? I don't think promiscuity is a problem if you're careful not to spread disease; let us use the term "recklessly promiscuous". Let's see. I think the statistics on that are indeed discouraging. What could contribute to this? I've heard anal sex is like the most reliable way to transmit HIV; that could be a factor. Next, I've heard of gay bathhouses where men basically recklessly have sex with each other; what I've heard could be exaggerated, but I think they've probably existed to some extent; that would certainly explain a lot of early spread of AIDS among gay men.

Why would gay men in particular do such a thing? Well, perhaps part of it has to do with the average behavior of males; there are reasons to think they would evolve a strategy of promiscuous mating to maximize offspring, and I think young men have a reputation for being reckless. Then there is another effect: When something is made illegal but some people do it anyway, it gets pushed underground; necessarily it all happens outside the eyes of the law, and for all who participate the barrier to entry for other kinds of illegality is reduced. When drugs and prostitution are illegal, you get toxic impurities, dangerous back-alley negotiation, gang violence, pimps, and disease; when they are legal, you get careful manufacturing, department stores, and weekly STD tests. To the extent that gay prostitution and bathhouses are illegal (and I imagine social stigma can have some of the same effects as legal punishments), it is unsurprising that they lack high health standards.

Anyway, what about those concerns? The situation is unfortunate. The solution is libertarianism--legalizing prostitution--and to make people in general more prosperous, so they can satisfy their urges less recklessly.

Is a gay household an unhealthy environment for children? Inherently? I doubt it. The kids won't have parental role models for heterosexual adults of either sex. I'm not sure if that's a problem, though; homosexual role models might do fine, the one deficiency they seem likely to have (not having children) is by assumption out of the picture. Kids might find role models in the adults they meet or those they read about; it seems certainly not a worse problem than that faced by, say, single parents, or families with other problems. And note that it's entirely possible for a peaceful single-parent family to be better than a dysfunctional "traditional" family: there are a hundred ways families can be great or screwed up, and if "gay parents" is a factor, I would guess it's a small one, almost certainly smaller than "divorce".

To what extent is homosexuality associated with crimes like rape and pedophilia? I haven't heard anything about this. If there's a small link, my first guess is to attribute it to social deviancy: if you're already stigmatized and pushed into association with other stigmatized people, the barrier to entry for other kinds of deviant behavior, some of which may be criminal, is reduced. Then it's plausible that pedophiles attracted to kids of the same sex are more likely to be gay. If there is a significant link that has nothing to do with the above, I'd be somewhat interested to see it.

("Somewhat interested": if so, so what? Let's suppose childhood abuse of various sorts, the same kind that often causes people to become violent criminals, also often causes people to become gay, and therefore we observe a significant association. What then? Is the solution to outlaw gay behavior? [You bring this up in a "pro" vs "anti" gay rights debate, so I can only assume.] That seems mind-bogglingly stupid and counterproductive. Solution would obviously then be to try to reduce childhood abuse.)

Why is homosexuality traditionally considered morally wrong (e.g. Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible), a symbol of decline (e.g. the late Roman Empire), and even outlawed? If the millenia-old traditional viewpoint was wrong, why did it last so long? I'm not so sure this "tradition" is universal. Observe the Greeks, particularly those of Socrates's time. From what I've heard, pederasty was considered great, and openly indulged in by many men who were considered great. I think they're not the only culture that was like this, although they probably are outnumbered by gay-hostile cultures.

The examples you cite appear to all come from Judaism and Christianity. Being a band of people who had to work hard to make their way, the Jews could easily see homosexual behavior (which cannot lead to children) as unproductive; the story of Onan is an injunction against refusing to father children when God willed it; an injunction against a non-reproductive lifestyle (ignoring adoption and reproduction-outside-marriage) seems not much of a stretch. So there's a possible religion-based reason. Next, I could make up reasons to do with masculinity: let's say a strong man is dominant, can only express sexuality through dominance, and it's impossible for both men in a relationship to be dominant over each other. Therefore in gay relationships, at least one man is weak, and is a safe target for bullying. (As a matter of fact, I've heard that in some cases of male-on-male rape, the "top" isn't considered gay, but the "bottom" is a gay sissy, despite the irony. The point, of course, is that the weak one is to be bullied.) The crowd gets habituated to bullying gays, and this can become enshrined in law.

As for being a symbol of decline: Well, if any behavior X is frowned upon and outlawed, and then society becomes chaotic and the law becomes weak to the point where people engage in X with impunity, then X can become a symbol of the decline, even if X is harmless or mildly beneficial. It might suggest these people have a good reason for frowning upon X, but I have examined that elsewhere.

Were the anti-gay-rights people always wrong, or has technology changed the picture (e.g. maybe STD's are now less serious due to inventions like condoms and antibiotics)? Or STD tests and general knowledge. Um... is it permissible to outlaw a behavior because many people are doing it recklessly and infecting others? How about outlawing infecting others? I guess it's usually too much to expect that kind of precision from the law. But AIDS is a very recent development; I haven't heard of homosexuality being associated with disease before the modern era. If it is, I'd refer to my previous comments on illegality, prostitution, and health standards.

Why do so many pro-gay-rights people try to advance their agenda by calling names and boycotting organizations, instead of simply patiently explaining their side of the story? I'd guess that they enjoy siccing the power of an angry mob on people, especially if they think they're justified in doing so. This may also be how they gain status in their social group.

Please rephrase that. Whilst I entirely agree with your sentiment about equality, your implication that those of us in a loving relationship who choose not to marry aren't realising the 'full potential of our relationship' is pretty hurtful. It's precisely this kind of attitude that makes me so reluctant to get married myself.

What you get down is really a question about what marriage is about. Is marriage about giving government benefits (property transfer benefits, tax treatment changes, certain treatment under health insurance regulations, adoption miscellaneous other things) to two people who like each other a lot? Or is it about giving government benefits to people who might found a family with children and things (notwithstanding the fact that not every heterosexual couple actually does or plans to do this?)

That's the real question here. This issue isn't about hate and dehumanization -- I mean, there's way too much hate and dehumanization, certainly, but not enough to drive electoral victories we've seen. The question is just an extension of the social upheaval of the sexual revolution of the 1960s. The real remarkable thing is that it's been simmering for so long without coming to the forefront yet. Probably many people thought that it was substantially settled, on account of this quiet, but it looks more like the two camps just quietly went their separate ways.

This is also why religious groups outside of Westboro mostly talk about focusing on the family and the social problems associated with single-parent households and divorce. (If you are not a member of these groups or do not have friends and family who are members of these groups, you are probably unaware of what this advocacy looks like. See also: the entire public policy of the Catholic church on this matter.)

FYI: This is how you can have an eminently nice person with nothing but respect for the intrinsic human rights and dignity of homosexuals, but who still votes for Prop 8 or Amendment 1 or a similar measure.

And you know what? What goes on between two people in private of their bedroom is nobody's business. What benefits the government makes available to people, through spending the public purse or giving people tax breaks or mandating certain sorts of treatment... that kind of is peoples' business. It's a public-policy question, and structuring public policy one way or another impacts society in several ways - including, in some jurisdictions, making your ability to operate as a business contingent on you performing some services that you might not want to perform (cf. New Mexico photography etc etc).

(Postscript. No particular stance for or against Proposition 8, or for or against Amendment 1, or any other public policy recommendation, is hereby endorsed. The following ideas are hereby endorsed: Gay people are human beings and deserve a substantially identical set of human rights and dignity as any other human being is entitled to receive. People who treat them otherwise may be some sort or another of monster. The extent to which these rights overlap with public policy in the matter of issuing marriages is controversial. Voters who support Amendment 1 or Prop 8, electorally or fiscally, are not monsters for doing so. Pluralism is good and it would be great if we all had some way to get along. Maybe we can start with more understanding.)

(Post-postscript. Added adoption to the list of misc. benefits as it is of special relevance as a way for a married gay couple to raise children.)

But they still wouldn't be illegal. No one would go to jail for being married.

They just wouldn't be recognized by the state. That is way different than what OKCupid is trying to say.

His $1,000 didn't do that, a majority of voters did.

Then I'd say you either don't know how tragic the situation in Uganda is, or you have no sense of proportion.

This link works for me. Thanks!

It's definitely an example of hypocrisy. To put it in prison terms, OKC is pursuing punishment rather than rehabilitation. If you're really about bringing people together and love, then you should be promoting trying to change peoples' minds to make them more inclusive, not blocking them altogether. Being hateful back at them simply reinforces their beliefs, and gives them a martyrdom story to pass on to like-minded people: "they say they're for love, but declared me an enemy and wished me failure". Making enemies of demographic groups divides people, pretty much by definition.

Have you ever seen anyone suggesting anything remotely contrary, or are you just setting up the mother of all strawmen?

> Real time updates (for instance, in IM) wouldn't be possible

If we're going back in time, you can get this via Flash.

The IM case can be done without JS, actually, using chunked encoding [1]. This is similar to the MIME multipart/x-mixed-replace technique [2] that was used for "streaming" webcams in the late 90s.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunked_transfer_encoding [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIME#Mixed-Replace

I have never in my life been asked if I was gay before any business transaction.

I will spare a thought! However, I will request that we could consider whether this marginalization and inconvenience is in fact effectively remedied by seeking systematic vengeance upon all people who oppose government recognition of these marriages...

Obviously.

I obviously wasn't clear enough - it's not about the contribution it's about leadership.

Brendan was an employee of Mozilla when he made his Prop 8 contribution - that's fine, that's his right and as you point out people are entitled to their own personal beliefs.

The issue is who a company/foundation/organization decides to be it's leader and the values that leader will exert upon the company/foundation/organization and the products it produces.

To be clear, my beef isn't with Brendan Eich (although I'd disagree with him if I met him), it's with Mozilla for selecting him to become CEO.

I think that is not how this is working out. Go to Google News, enter "eich" and see how much coverage this is getting in the international mainstream press.

There are plenty of companies I boycot and avoid patronizing based on concerns I have with their owners, executive leadership or company's position on issues important to me.

I don't think that is that uncommon, actually.

Two of the three resignations were planned beforehand and were not related to the CEO choice (see the update at the bottom of http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/03/three-mozilla-board-...).

Nevertheless, I'd suggest that being able to walk and chew gum is something a CEO needs.

I think stupidity is a sufficient explanation.

"I'm envisioning the board standing around with glassy stares, 'I have no idea how this could have happened. We totally vetted his geek cred.'" - rone

Is it right to not employ someone because of their legally held beliefs with regard to sexual behaviour?

Is HN [amongst others] calling for all people who disagree with legislation on homosexual relationships being called marriage to forfeit their rights to employment; or perhaps all those that consider homosexual sexual activity to be wrong? That seems like the logical conclusion here.

Is this going to be continued with all beliefs - ousting those that disprove of drunkennes or drug taking or polygamy or adultery?

Why should a company pry in to an employee's private beliefs and associations in the way you're suggesting?

I know. But, y'know, "I've tried to take away your rights and I refuse to talk about it, but hey! I promise I won't do it again, baby!" isn't playing out too well in practice.

I disagree. There are actions which should be applied to oppressors and not the oppressed. Publicly embarrassing bigots is necessary to show that such beliefs will not be socially accepted; public embarrassment of minority groups is hatred.

Just a disclaimer: I fully support discrimination against bigots such as refusal of service.

"you gotta be tolerant of the intolerant" is a really shitty argument.

He materially supported a campaign to deny rights to a subset of the population. That action, not belief.

That's a ridiculous generalisation; the status of homosexuality and Islamic law is far more nuanced than that. Not only is there not a single death penalty for being gay across the entire Muslim world, the legal status of homosexuality differs greatly. Of course, that is not to say that many of those countries don't exhibit abhorrent views, but the same goes for many Christian communities too.

I would warrant that a larger proportion of HN's audience feels some kind of connection with the technology world than they do with that of Islam, and it feels more reasonable to clear your own back yard out first before complaining about the state of your neighbour's.

Sorry. I wasn't talking about this.

I was talking about the invitation to pitch in how to solve the general problem of hateful comments. Which I think shouldn't be discussed here, because it's not only a problem of this specific submission.

Sorry if I misunderstood this invitation.

The problem with asking people to downvote is that some will downvote opinions they disagree with. What's your definition of "unthoughtful"?

> Edited for clarity.

I prefer the original, overtly aggressive and unapologetically abusive version. At least with that we know where we stand.

My interpretation of what honksillet said was that OKCupid asking users not to use Firefox is petulant and abrasive. If I am incorrect, I'll retract my statement [honksillet: reply to me if this is the case].

OKCupid's business revolves around personal relationships. Some of those relationships are same sex relationships. To OKC, this issue is important to them. Let's not confuse meaningful concern with rhetoric.

How is this any different then when same sex couples boycotted businesses in California where the owner donated to Prop 8 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_8_(2008)]?

Absolutely fair point.

I would be interested to hear from the LGTB community within Mozilla as to where the consensus is on this move.

As an international viewer, this is difficult to understand.

Employment discrimination on the grounds of sexuality is illegal here. By saying that they offer healthcare equally to gay employees[0], Mozilla seem to be doing what would here be considered a minimum.

Is that really considered good in the US? To me personally, this comes across as a very weak statement that actually makes me more concerned. It sort of reads like: gay employees are treated equally here, but we were aware that this is not legally required, so we had to think about it and now we're make a big deal out of our decision. It reads like a homophobic CEO approved the message.

Furthermore, there is a body of employees reporting discomfort and distress at having Eich as CEO, e.g. [1],[2], and you can start a reasonable link chain from those if you're interested to read more.

[0] https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2014/03/mozilla-statement-on-...

[1] http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2014/03/28/Mozilla-employees-...

[2] http://incisive.nu/2014/thinking-about-mozilla/

But it's not possible. Every company is lead by scumbags, your only choice is which scumbag's product you buy.

This entire situation reminds me of this scene from 30 Rock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm3TepXcD8A

Wow! I am speechless...

Why is this downvoted? Choosing where you spend your money based on moral beliefs isn't wrong...

Previously he was CTO of the same tech company - not exactly a minor CxO position with few people looking to him.

Never understood this "face of company" stuff Americans are so obsessed with... if he wouldn't have took that job, but kept working on a similarly influential position as he did up till date, no one would be making these "boycott Mozilla" self-advertisements, just as they didn't do anything alike before, right? Does all this mean that people care more about someone's three titular letters instead of his behaviour and actions in his position?

if anything, mitchell is the face of the company, not the CEO. The CEO is the executive officer. Before that, he was CTO. Not exactly a nobody.

The board has final say on everything, and mitchell seems to be the most active board member. I also tend to personally align with her opinions, I think she's great.

Iceweasel is Firefox with the branding changed. It's otherwise identical.

I disagree. I think people can replace JavaScript simply because of Brendan Eich. I can see it happening easily.

The point is to make a statement and educate users. Not cut off your nose to spite your face.

There is no requirement that legal marriage between a man and a woman involve child-raising. There is no requirement that legal marriage between a man and a woman involve love or sex.

If Albert, Barbara, and Charles go to San Francisco City Hall in 2008, and Albert says "I want to marry Charles", he's told no. If he says "I want to marry Barbara", he's told yes. The state knows nothing about their sex life or feelings about children. What is the rationale?

Silly axioms are usually included when someone says something isn't rational. Given modern human rights, there's no way to arrive at a no homo-marriage stance.

Your example statement isn't useful either, as plenty of same-sex couples are unable to create children. By the same logic, infertile people should also be excluded. If that was the point (marriage only for people seeking to reproduce), at least it'd be consistent.

Excluding poly-amorous people from marriage is a mean, anti-human thing, too.

>So are you saying if a CEO of a company believed euthanasia to be wrong you'd stop using that companies products?

It's more than just believing, it'd have to be that the CEO had performed actions to directly oppose euthanasia. And I generally don't boycott something unless I think using the product will directly contribute to hurting something and there's a reasonable alternative. For instance, buying a music CD directly gives money to a company that will lobby for DRM, against privacy, and for longer copyright. Whereas using FireFox is unlikely to directly help anti-gay campaigners. (I still hope there's backlash against FF and Eich, because screw his Prop8 stuff, and screw JS - but that's more of a "I just wanna see things burn" perspective.)

Seriously? That's your dividing line?

Incidentally, you mentioned threats to Eich above; I haven't personally seen any but I don't support threats of violence to him. I don't even have particularly strong feelings one way or the other about boycotting Mozilla. Mostly we're having a conversation here.

I do feel it's perfectly reasonable to point fingers of shame towards Eich for his donations and weaseling, and at Mozilla for elevating Eich.