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OKCupid Warns Off Mozilla Firefox Users Over Gay Rights
PortWineBoy writes: "The Beeb is reporting that OkCupid is prompting Mozilla Firefox users to switch browsers over Brendan Eich's support of Prop 8 in California in 2008. Users are met with a message stating that OKCupid would prefer no one access their site with Mozilla software. Eich is the new CEO of Mozilla."
And Facebook didn't make the Oculus Rift, Apple didn't create AAC, etc.
Haters gotta hate.
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In this case at least, it is due to the new CEO not adhering to 'live and let live'. Gay rights activists rarely care about people's personal religious beliefs, it is when they put resources into having those beliefs enshrined in law and thus using state power to force their religion on others that people get annoyed.
I'm fully in support of gay marriage, and have been to a few same-sex ceremonies for friends.
But in no way do I support the demonization or boycott of people just because they have a different opinion of something than I do. To me that's a for of bigotry itself, and why would I want to be bigoted?
I'm pretty sure that there are almost no two people on earth who have the same opinion on every single subject. If we go down this road of shunning those who think differently, we all wind up as islands - and not the fun kind with umbrellas in in drinks, for we will have shunned all of the umbrella makers...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So we're politicizing browser selection now? This amounts to dragging end users into a political dispute that they have nothing to do with. Is this really a road we want to go down? How long before people start blocking IE because they don't like Microsoft's business tactics, or before Apple starts blocking Google Chrome users with a message complaining about alleged patent infringement?
Once this Pandora's box is open, it will be impossible to close. This time it may be aimed at Brendan Eich for the heinous crime of holding onto outdated views of gay marriage a whole two years longer than President Obama, but next time it could be anyone.
There's an important point that I think is often lost in these discussions. Orthodox Christian theology maintains several points: (1) Homosexuality is a sin, (2) unrepentant sin goes hand-in-hand with alienation from God, and (3) alienation from God leads to both unhappiness in this present life and a missed opportunity for happiness after death.
Based on that set of axioms, it can be completely loving to encourage someone to repent of his sins and choose to follow Jesus. Practicing homosexuality is a sign that someone isn't doing that. It would therefore be unloving or even hateful to affirm homosexual relations.
Now I'm sure 90% of the Slashdot crowd disagrees with those axioms. And it's certainly the case that a person can proclaim to be Christian but actually hate gay people. But there are some Christians for whom that's not the case, and I don't think any of us knows Mozilla's CEO well enough to guess in which group he sits.
Religious belief is one thing, forcing that belief upon other by supporting (or not) a policy change that would ostracize a non trivial part of the population is another.
If the torch & pitchfork crowds are going after this dude now because he supported CA Prop 8, shouldn't they also call for a boycott of the state of California? You know, since a majority of their voters voted for the infamous Proposition 8 and passed it. I would say that voting for it counts as supporting it, right?
People's attitudes on this are extremely hypocritical. We rail against hatred and discrimination, and yet here we are with a "BURN THE HEATHENS!" mob mentality the second we find out about someone donating a relatively measly $1000 to Prop8. With the way some people are acting, you would think we just discovered that the guy was a raging pedophile. Did he really give out anywhere near the amount of damage that he and Mozilla are now receiving? Is this how we win the battle against discrimination? By replacing one form of irrational hatred and bias with another? We may view it as poetic justice, but it's hypocrisy; plain and simple. People love to hate. The only thing that ever changes is who the current easy target is. Plenty of CEOs are vile, unscrupulous pigs who cheat on their wives and sexually harass female employees, but you won't see this sort of backlash against them because it isn't the current political hot topic.
It's not about beliefs here. It's about what he tried to do because of them. I can assume you would have no problem working for a Christian, but how might you feel about one who was actively campaigning to make Sunday church attendance mandatory for everyone? Would you care to support his endeavor even indirectly?
Because tolerance of intolerance is intolerance. I don't understand why you Republicans can't comprehend that. In other to be tolerant, you must be extremely intolerant of things that aren't tolerant.
Only if you have no belief whatsoever in the power of your own example and your own message. In that case, I suppose you would want to use some form of coercion.
But then, I question your true motives for believing what you believe. Is it to join the majority and avoid the shame and invective of being accused of intolerance? Or is it because you truly believe that tolerance is superior? If the latter, why not act like it's superior and let it stand on its own merits? Why not show everyone a shining, pure, hypocrisy-free example of what real tolerance is?
See, what many of you really want is is to issue righteous judgment against those who disagree with you. You think the fact that you are right excuses this desire. You still haven't performed the introspection and the difficult internal work of overcoming and transforming your own hatred. You think espousing the correct doctrine makes you superior, but you did not eliminate your own hatred at all. You merely found a socially acceptable way to channel it. This still fails to reduce the amount of hatred in the world. Hating evil does not make you good, no matter how desperately you want to feel self-righteous.
The failure to comprehend this is not because it is so difficult to understand. It's really simple, in fact. No, the failure to understand this is the same failing behind most of the vices that remain today: it raises too many difficult and uncomfortable questions concerning who you really are and why you believe what you believe. It's so much easier to find something external to yourself to hate. Isn't it?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Slavery was the status quo. Perhaps you want to defend that.
There's nothing wrong with not tolerating bigotry. If someone believes something stupid or morally objectionable and spends money trying to deprive a group of people of their rights because of their sexuality, it's perfectly fine to criticise them.
The key difference is that gay people can't help being gay, any more than black people can help being black or women can help being women. They guy's view is something he decided on himself, something he could easily change, something he chooses to believe.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You confuse freedom of opinion with freedom from consequences.
The first is impossible to take away. The latter is impossible to grant.
So really your argument makes no sense at all.