This is incredibly misleading way of putting it. He left because he had no other choice, and an organized personal destruction campaign against him was what did not leave him this choice. Of course, you can claim this campaign was result of his actions, and it is true, that this campaign was triggered by his actions and wouldn't happen if he did not donate to what he donated. However, this campaign was not an inevitable consequence of his actions - it was a voluntary act of his political opponents, in order to send a message to him and his supporters and achieve political goals. It's like if somebody says something you don't like to you and you beat him up, the beating is a consequence of the saying, but it doesn't remove the blame of the beating from you, and you can't just say "he's in hospital because he couldn't deal with consequences of his actions". No, he's in hospital because somebody beat him up. And Eich left because of the campaign against him, despite no proof that his opinions have ever interfered with his professional judgement or that he ever did anything inappropriate. Except for expressing a private opinion.

I just want to be sure I understand your calibration settings. If you think a prop on banning interracial marriage should be just as acceptable as what you seem to be saying for prop8, then I'm done discussing this with you.

In other words, how do you know views you hold today won't be considered the vilest bigotry in 30 years? Is your moral compass so special, that you would have fought for interracial marriage, even if you were born a white in the southern US in the 1800's?

It did among the society composed of Mozilla supporters. This idea that society is not people you interact and work with (and in this case, even direct) but the random populace in your general geographic area was wrong before the Internet, and it's completely wrong today.

If he didn't realize that, I'd say his out of touch with the people he was supposed to work with.

Is your moral compass so special, that you would have fought for interracial marriage, even if you were born a white in the southern US in the 1800's?

What's with this topic and strawmen? Nobody demanded he fought for gay rights. Most people don't fight for gay rights, and you don't see them get criticized (in this community). Just not to invest his time and money to fight against it.

Regardless of either his ousting was justified or not (personally, I'm conflicted), most arguments here are terrible.

People who oppose gay marriage typically believe it would hurt "society" at large -- do you really want to say he should have taken an action (or inaction) he believed would generally hurt everyone in his political jurisdiction (which the vote was in), so that he could help his Mozillian sub-society? (The typical proponent response would be that it doesn't hurt anyone, but that's the crux of where people disagree.) What other areas does this reasoning extend to? Maybe I'm making a straw man here, but how is this sub-society argument different than "The majority of my employees are white people or supporters of white people, so I should vote and campaign to support white people even though I believe it would hurt others"?

For what it's worth, Mozilla reportedly offer healthcare benefits to same-sex couples[0], and I've read several reports that Brendan personally treated gay employees equitably. I recognize the difficulty of reconciling all this, the near-hypocrisy of campaigning to ban legal unions of people you're cordial with at work, but I can't find a way to support the idea that he should be accountable to them for his legal participation in a process that transcends Mozilla. Or if so, why to them instead of his (potential) gay neighbors, or any Mozillians that supported the same cause? Obviously there's no legal way to enforce that either way, so I guess I'm thinking of the ideal way people would self-police.

> Nobody demanded he fought for gay rights.

I didn't mean to imply that. Make it "Can you be sure you wouldn't have opposed interracial marriage with your time and/or money?", since that's the more apt analogy people are using. I'll grant you it may be an unobjective argument, but the point is to reflect on how the popular morality is a moving target.

> Most people don't fight for gay rights, and you don't see them get criticized

Well, I'm loath to even suggest this level of enforcement, but the cognitive dissonance here bothers me a bit. So Eich could have been aware there was a threat of oppression to his employees etc., to "strip them of their rights" (quasi-quote), and done absolutely nothing to help them, because you know, there's TV to watch and frivolities to buy instead, and that's totally OK? Come on -- it's either such a righteous cause/travesty of justice that even inaction is intolerable; or it's just a societal rift that will take a few decades to achieve consensus on, and shouldn't be punished any more than being discovered to be a card-carrying Republican or Democrat. I don't know, am I crazy here? My cynical feeling is that few would support such an extreme position, because secretly we are all at least silent witnesses, if not enablers, to bits of injustice everywhere. It's just that most of us aren't publicly accountable to internet hordes, and/or people buy excuses like "At least I wasn't actively fighting for <cause they believe is evil>!"

[0] https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2014/03/29/on-mozillas-suppo...

I don't know. All I said was, "society" can't be reduced to people living in a geographical area. The person who made a societal argument wasn't me, it was you.

People who oppose gay marriage typically believe it would hurt "society" at large -- do you really want to say he should have taken an action (or inaction) he believed would generally hurt everyone in his political jurisdiction (which the vote was in), so that he could help his Mozillian sub-society?

I don't know. All I meant was what I said - his vote can't be explained away just by saying "well, it's a product of the society he lived in". Nothing more.

So Eich could have been aware there was a threat of oppression to his employees etc., to "strip them of their rights" (quasi-quote), and done absolutely nothing to help them, because you know, there's TV to watch and frivolities to buy instead, and that's totally OK? Come on -- it's either such a righteous cause/travesty of justice that even inaction is intolerable; or it's just a societal rift that will take a few decades to achieve consensus on, and shouldn't be punished any more than being discovered to be a card-carrying Republican or Democrat.

People here seem to have their mind so formatted in a us-vs-them mentality that they automatically assume everyone who disagrees with a particular argument is a strong supporter of the opposite position. This is not the case.

I never said he should or not be tolerated. I didn't say I agree with what happened.

All I said was that factually, people who are simply inactive on the issue don't get called out, so it's incorrect to assume Eich was being demanded to act in support of gay marriage.

EDIT: Damn my poor English :|

Oops, the comments about inactivity weren't based on any assumptions about your position on whether he "deserved it" or whatever. For lack of a better place, I'll elaborate, but again I'm not talking about you. :) I'm wondering why so many other people can accept neutrality from anyone, when they simultaneously talk about how absolutely evil it was that people were actually stripped of existing rights (since gay marriage was legal in California before Prop 8.) I don't think it's fair to elevate it almost to the degree of re-enslaving Africans or something, and then not hold anyone accountable who did nothing. If it's not so evil that inaction is acceptable, than don't hammer so hard on anyone who took a legal action you didn't like.

I'm not saying he should be constrained; what I'm saying is that he's not "a white in the southern US in the 1800's". He's not a man who hasn't been exposed to different viewpoints or who needs a "special moral compass".

One of the societies he belongs to values and promotes gay marriage rights, so the choice he made was his own, and not a result of being immersed in a myopic society like the "southern US in the 1800's".

Oops, the comments about inactivity weren't based on any assumptions about your position on whether he "deserved it" or whatever. For lack of a better place, I'll elaborate, but again I'm not talking about you.

Fair enough, sorry for that, I was reacting as much to your comment as to the downvotes, which was unfair.

I don't think it's fair to elevate it almost to the degree of re-enslaving Africans or something, and then not hold anyone accountable who did nothing.

Point taken, but let me ask you: there are people being enslaved / trafficked in the world right now. Do you do much about it? I know I don't. Does it make me an hypocrite? Yes, probably. Does it mean I'm wrong to denounce people who actively support human trafficking? I don't think so.

(To everyone) By the way, I'm NOT saying that banning gay marriage is enslaving people! I'm just using the analogy put forth.

If you're a liberal : please explain why Mozillans don't have the right to their own political opinion, right to do whatever they want with their money, ...

If I ever met anyone who expressed this opinion to me, you or anyone else, I'd do the very best I can to remove them from my presence, company, sabotage their career, whatever I can.

And I'll feel as smug about it as you. I'm defending freedom and democracy by doing that.

If you want to make me into the enemy, go ahead, but you're the Quixote here.

Perhaps this takes this whole discussion to another level. Where does humanity's moral compass come from and how do we justify it as something worthy of being followed & upheld?

Ah, the classic argument: if we can't have perfect right now, then we obviously can't work toward the good.

I would strongly oppose such a measure. But I would certainly respect the rights of others to support the opposing side and vote their conscience, and when the vote was over I would not go scouring donation records to figure out whom I should fire or force out of their jobs.

No such right exists in this context. A proposition to ban interracial marriage has nothing to do with people's consciences and everything to do with the letter of the law, where marriage is an established legal construct to which access is guaranteed under the 14th amendment. Voting to have rights stripped from other citizens for arbitrary reasons is not a protected freedom and such a proposition is patently unconstitutional on its face. You don't need to be impartial here.

Sure they do. Free speech applies even if what you defend is illegal or unconstitutional. Brandenburg v. Ohio made it very explicit.

Besides, while it may seem weird to Americans, constitutions do change. Ours is not yet 40 years old, and already we're speaking about changing it.

All countries have some level of acceptable political intimidation; that you think otherwise just means your views are sufficiently mainstream. Try embracing more fringe ideologies in a public way.

I suggest supporting and donating to Wahhabist movements and seeing how it goes for you.

[1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_for_Neighbourly_Love,_F...

Every single day, there is an employee going to work in a hostile environment, shunned by co-workers or left to sit in an empty room with no work to perform. Eventually they'll be forced to resign in order to save their own sanity.