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Mozilla CEO Firestorm Likely Violated California Law
theodp (442580) writes "While the rise and fall of Brendan Eich at Mozilla sparked a debate over how to properly strike a balance between an employee's political free speech and his employer's desire to communicate a particular corporate 'culture,' notes Brian Van Vleck at the California Workforce Resource Blog, the California Labor Code has already resolved this debate. 'Under California law,' Van Vleck explains, 'it is blatantly illegal to fire an employee because he has donated money to a political campaign. This rule is clearly set forth in Labor Code sections 1101-1102.' Section 1102 begins, 'No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity.' Corporate Counsel's Marlisse Silver Sweeney adds, 'Mozilla is adamant that the board did not force Eich to resign, and asked him to stay on in another role. It also says that although some employees tweeted for his resignation, support for his leadership was expressed by a larger group of employees. And this is all a good thing for the company from a legal standpoint.' As Eich stepped down, Re/code reported that Mozilla Executive Chairwoman Mitchell Baker said Eich's ability to lead the company had been badly damaged by the continued scrutiny over the hot-button issue. 'It's clear that Brendan cannot lead Mozilla in this setting,' Baker was quoted as saying. 'I think there has been pressure from all sides, of course, but this is Brendan's decision. Given the circumstances, this is not surprising.' Van Vleck offers these closing words of advice, 'To the extent employers want to follow in Mozilla's footsteps by policing their employees' politics in the interests of 'culture,' 'inclusiveness,' or corporate branding, they should be aware that their efforts will violate California law.'"
He fucking resigned.
I may not agree with Brendan's position, but it is a scary precedent to get rid of people based on their personal beliefs and political activities.
--MyLongNickName
that protect ceo's and c-levels. the game is already stacked in their favor from the start. they can get away, almost literally, with murder in the US system. the world's tiniest violin is now playing for the poor little ceo's who didn't get everything they wanted.
its usually the other way around. you have to tip-toe around the c-levels so you don't offend them, lest you get handed your walking papers. they can hire and fire pretty much without challenge.
besides all that, though, he was not fired. he was asked to step down from the public and a percentage of the employees. no one in the company forced him to leave. there was no illegal act here.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Don't say anything about the gays. Don't say anything about the blacks.
Those two groups are so virulently nasty about anyone who "goes against them" that it's absolutely sickening.
You're better off kicking a puppy and being filmed doing so.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Mozilla *fired* Eich? First, he still works there. Second, he stepped down from his CEO position of his own free will. Third, it may be illegal for an *employer* to fire an employee in certain ways but (setting aside all the public pressure) even equating peer pressure of subordinate colleagues within a company with the company ("corporate person"?) acting as an firing employer seems extremely tenuous. Being a CEO, he'd have to fire himself to violate the law, wouldn't he?
Ezekiel 23:20
If employers were allowed to fire people simply because they "didn't wanted them around" do you think we would end up in a good society?
Welcome to California, land of nutballs and lunatics. This law is untenable on its face. Companies must be able to hire and fire whomever they wish.
How do you color the whole issue as him only resigning, when three board members quit over his presence there. That's a lot of pressure from the company.
It looks an awful lot like coercion...
But, isn't it up for him to sue if he feels he did not resign voluntarily? It seems like he probably would not do so.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The crux of the issue is that social attitudes are in flux on this matter. If you don't give people leeway to change, they will likely harden their positions.
And if you give some people leeway to change (eg- Obama, Hilary) and deny leeway to others (Brendan Eich) you are being blatantly partisan and unfair.
In California employers can fire people because "didn't wanted them around". They just can't fire an employee solely because he is a member of the Nazi party.
Had he donated $1000 to pro-gay organization and was fired - there would be wide action in his support....
But he donated to the wrong organization so he "resigned" - after external and internal pressure...
It sickens me... there is no more free speach... and some people clearly can be discriminated because of their political views...
Those laws are only supposed top protect those that hold the same opinion as myself, because I'm perfect and the opinions I hold are truth incarnate. People that don't share every single one of my opinions should never be allowed to work because they're wrong thus bigots thus evil.
There's so much wrong with your post that I think you don't know anything about the case in question OR how reality works. First off, Eich didn't "spout out", he stayed quiet. Prop 8's detractors simply hunted him down on the list of people who donated to Prop 8. Then he stepped down rather then pretending he was suddenly converted to the cause. HUGE difference.
Secondly, are you REALLY asking people to shut up about their political opinions or suffer penalty? That's like telling gay supporters of a decade or two ago to shut up if they don't want to be persecuted. You're basically trying to have it both ways while hiding behind pretty-sounding words to justify it. Which is disturbing to say the least.
Finally, yes, actually *firing* a person for making a donation to a cause you don't like is not something you can claim as the moral high ground. It may disgust you and I that Eich supported a cause we don't believe in, but get some damn perspective before you turn into the bigots you despise. Fighting for tolerance on one hand, while finding every excuse to be intolerant to your opponents on the other, is disgusting.
But don't you see where that path leads? If a company can fire anyone they want, then what prevents them from firing people based on their race, or their sexual preference, or political party? You have to draw the line somewhere. Just because you don't agree with his stance on gay marriage, does not make him a bad person. He was instrumental in creating the internet as it exists today. I'm not saying his viewpoint should be overlooked, but it should not affect how he does his job. If he can do the job and do it well without his personal politics impacting his work, then why should a company have the right to fire him just because he sees things differently than they do? I'm tired of everyone calling him a bigot because he donated to Prop 8. I don't agree with his stance on gay marriage, but part of what our country was founded on was the premise that everyone is entitled to their opinion. Free speech and all that. The fact that people came out in droves to demonize someone actually hurts the LGBT community. It makes it seem like anyone that doesn't agree with us is wrong. That's not how things work in the real world. People have opinions and you have to respect them.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. - Grouch Marx
GLBT organizations have a perfect right to express their opinions, and even to use political and economic pressure to achieve their desired ends. The Mozilla foundation acted correctly in not bowing directly to this pressure. Mr. Eich acted both correctly and even (some might say) with noble altruism in resigning.
Understand the causes of actions - if you insist on placing blame, place it where it belongs. Mr. Eich was forced out by the GLBT community over his support for a bill which directly contradicted their political agenda. Their actions were within what is considered to be acceptable, and resulted in Mr. Eich sustaining a personal loss for his open support of a bill he obviously believes in. I don't think anybody here behaved badly or did anything wrong; but I believe that all involved should now be judged by their actions and their roles in this drama.
As it stands, I think he probably had a moderate chance of succeeding in a legal suit. At the very least he could of sued Mozilla over some workplace harassment law (not providing a safe workplace).
But with the quote from the Mozilla Executive Chairman: "'It's clear that Brendan cannot lead Mozilla in this setting,' Baker was quoted as saying." I would say any legal action over discrimination against Mozilla is now in his favour. To me that says that only reason he was not fired, was because he was given the option to resign, before they fired him. And Mozilla would/will find it hard to explain to the court how firing someone who was unpopular because of a political belief is completely different than firing someone for a political belief. I am not saying it is cut and dry, but he definitely seems to have a case.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Mozilla lost a great technically minded CEO who could have done some good things for the organization; which IMHO badly needs strong leadship right now.
Why because a bunch of the rabble could not deal with someone not sharing their opinions. Honestly I don't think anyone supporting same sex marriage supports equality at all. Government should not recognize ANY marriage. If you get married that should be entirely between you, your God(s), who ever else attends where you warship, and that's it.
It should not be your boss's business, nor the state's nor any courts. Government recognizing marrige does nothing but create a special class of people (married people), and there is no reason they should get the special treatment they do.
As far as children go, both biological parents should be considered to have parental rights and responsibilities, unless the father isn't known and nobody comes forward for in some reasonable time frame.
Everyone should be entitled to name someone (anyone) they wish to specify to share anything that exists as a spousal benefit today or those benefits should be withdrawn. I don't think anyone should have to file a tax return, but as long as we have tax returns EVERYONE should have to file individually.
So will I continue to vote against so called marriage equality; you bet I will because the last thing I want to see is the expansion of what is already a special class which should not exist in secular society.
1) He resigned, he wasn't fired.
2) There was pressure to resign, or else be fired, sure, but the fundamental reason is that users were throwing tantrums and threatening a boycott. That seems like a legit reason to fire someone to me.
No, that's coercion.
What's been lost in all this is the fact that in 2008, the same year that Brendan Eich made that campaign contribution, Barack Obama went on national television in a debate with John McCain, and said that he believes marriage should only be between a man and a woman.
Where is the outrage over that? Why is it that Obama was elected president of the United States, twice, and Eich was forced to resign from the company he helped start?
By this line of "reasoning", if your CEO decides to run as mayor or get a new ballot initiative declaring some minority group as 3/5ths of a human or making it illegal for them to serve food due to being dirty (insert minority here)'s, then I guess the companies hands are tied and they can't fire him.
Yep, just like you also can't fire an employee for voting Democrat or being a pro-gay rights activist in his off-time. It cuts both ways, sparky.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
What if he was secretly an alien trying to take over the world?
Yes, I thought it through and it's the only tenable option. That and social pressure. Laws forcing you to retain douchebags like this guy are insane, completely irrational.
So, in conservative states, it should be perfectly legal to fire gay activists and those who donate to gay rights causes? Hey, social pressure, right?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
So therefore a right wing company should have the right to fire gays, single mothers, and douchebags like you?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Community opinion? It was backlash from a vocal minority.
A majority of Californians recently voted against gay marriage.
Except he didn't say that gays were subhuman.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
If employers were allowed to fire people simply because they "didn't wanted them around" do you think we would end up in a good society?
you mean if people were free to choose to hire and associate with whomever they wish we would end up with a "bad society"? Lolwut?
I would disagree to both of your questions/answers. Actually, the cause (allow firing employees) and the consequence (good/bad society) are NOT that correlated! In other words, allowing to fire an employee when the employer does not like does NOT result in either good or bad society! There are a lot of factors involved in either good or bad society. Judging and conclude the result on only this cause is too oversimplified...
It's less about Eich and more about the fundamental rights of association that are being eroded in this country.
Employment is an association. I don't know how it gets more fundamental a human right than "I don't fucking like you, so I'm not going to give you my money to work for me." But somehow this has changed in America and a "job" is some thing the government controls, and you are just a steward of. Don't like felons? Tough shit - some areas now won't let you ask about it. Don't like gays? Too bad, hire him or else. Racist? Well, sorry - hire that other-race woman or else.
It's all bullshit, needless bullshit. Eich was a liability to Mozilla, period. It's not fair, he wasn't out proselytizing or burning crosses - sure. But he was a liability and Mozilla did not want to continue to employ him in that role. That should be their choice.
You can get blacklisted in this country for making a slightly off-color joke, or for "appropriating" a dance from another "culture". And yet we feel we need the government to step in and manage all employment in this country to an increasing degree.
"if people were free to choose to hire and associate with whomever they wish" than everybody would have to vote for the party their boss liked. Google cannot fire someone just because they want some promised Republican tax break, and Tom Smith in cubical 9B voted for Obama instead. And legally, I doubt they can encourage or even allow a corporate culture that punishes someone for voting wrong.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Replace "California" with "South Carolina" and "Republican" with "Democrat" in your argument and think hard about what you're really advocating for. Political litmus tests for employment have been a big no-no for a damn good reason. Do you *really* want your employer digging into your political beliefs, with the freedom to shitcan you if he doesn't like them?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Depends on just how weak your group is. Years ago I knew several lesbians who, when outed, had trouble finding ANY work in their region. There was some ROTC kid going around making sure any business who hired them knew they were hiring a lesbian and they would immediately be fired. Kinda hard to have 'freedom' when you can not pay your rent.
Only if you are affluent.
If you are a nobody, H.R. would make up something or wait until a minor infraction and can you.
And you'd have no recourse... because the company said it was for cause and there is no proof otherwise.
However, if you are affluent and a public person you can fight back.
This is reality for many in corporate surfdom today.
you can already fire anyone if you dont want them around. there are so many ways, ALL the power is in the hands of the employer, these days.
layoffs are a perfect example. thru no fault of your own, you can be walked out on a moment's notice. 'we are not making our numbers, we have to get rid of people' is not all that different from 'we dont think you are a fit for the role'. that's just another way to say 'we dont like you'.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
You need draw no such line. People should be able to fire people based on anything they want. What kind of whacky nonsense forces me to pay money to someone I don't want to pay money to? There isn't even a societal good justification for it anymore, try running a business with racist policies - see where it gets you.
[rushing to speakerphone] Janice, please tell all the coloreds and jews that they're fired. RightSaidFred99 said it's okay.
Came here to say this, this is the flip side of the coin. Any company could be helplessly sunk by a sufficiently offensive CEO.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I wonder how damaged Mozilla is by the Streisand effect for this whole debacle. If nobody publicized Eich's relatively small contribution to a political campaign from six years ago, nobody would know about any of this. I seriously doubt Eich had some kind of master plan for a gay purge at Mozilla. It is possible for one to be opposed to gay marriage without hating gay people, and chances are his political opinion would have no negative impact on Mozilla.
If nobody had said anything, Mozilla would probably sail along just fine. Instead, a big deal was made, and now you've got pro gay marriage people who were upset that Mozilla would ever employ such a gay-hatin' monster, you've got anti gay marriage people claiming persecution, and then the base of people who think it's much ado about nothing, anyway, because somebody's political opinions shouldn't have anything to do with their job.
Basically, everybody comes out of this smelling like shit, when if nobody had ever said anything, things probably would have been just fine.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
All humans have a right to free personal speech and should have the freedom to express themselves politically however they choose, within the bounds of the law. I don't support or condone his beliefs, I believe they are wrong-headed, but he has the right to be judged in the workplace on merit and merit alone. I realize this to be somewhat of a simplification, but the fact is the hammer can fall both ways, and I believe this man should have the right to express whatever idiot belief he wants and still keep his job.
Lol, you guys all think I'm a left winger - I'm a right winger but a real one. Yes, including Muslims or anyone else. Hire and fire whomever you wish - it's called 'freedom'.
That's right. If you're going to fire someone you need to think of a better reason than what they do on their own time outside of work.
If they are careful enough to not run afoul of HR rules regarding employee conduct and having a Hitler-free work place then you have to try writing them up for poor performance or transferring them to someone else's department. For the tricky situation where you have appointed someone as CEO without first checking on their background it is customary for the board to either set impossible performance goals and then replace him when he doesn't meet them, or politely ask him to resign in exchange for a small but undisclosed amount of cash.
If all else fails just wait until he goes into space and then forge his signature on a letter of resignation while he's off-planet. It can't possibly go wrong.
This lot gives Obama a pass because they think he was just saying that for political reasons.
I mean come on, lighten up. He's just a lying liar, not anti gay!
I'm thinking this line of thought is wrong, simply because Prop 8 was deemed unconstitutional, right? So, in reality, this guy was fired,err,resigned because he held views that conflicted with the law of the land. So essentially it comes down to whether or not he has the right to be the leader of a company when the company knows he supports a Proposition that was deemed to be unconstitutional. And we're supposed to accept that his rights were violated under the aforementioned labor laws? I don't think so. They didn't attempt to stop him from supporting the proposition, right? So where did they violate his rights? They didn't. They haven't. If he had been put through this scenario during the political campaign or anytime before the Supreme Court action, maybe he'd have a case. The flip side to this argument is what kind of exposure would Mozilla being undertaking if they allowed this guy to stay? I know that if I were gay and married, I would certainly be paranoid working with the man. And I don't think it would be unreasonable to feel the same about the company, since they chose a man with anti-gay views to lead the company. Following that line of logic, it seems likely that Mozilla, under his continued leadership, would have laid itself open to potential lawsuits. So who's violating the law? Mozilla by keeping him or Mozilla by inviting him to leave?
Because Obama, wink wink, was really on the gay marriage side and just sayin' that so's not to spook the flyover states.
Same reasons the left gives him a pass on drone strikes and gitmo.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
employees get fired for virtually everything...the annecdotes are ridiculous
if an entry level new-hire at a software company dropped a grenade in the first meeting they were allowed to attend and said, "Our app doesn't make money because everyone knows it is spam"
**right in front of the boss/guy who invented the app**
and that guy got fired...or reassigned to something so bullshit that he quit...
would we even care or suspect something wrong happend?
in my mind Mozilla's CEO is the same
just b/c he's a CEO doesn't mean he is immune to the vagaries of contemporary employment
Thank you Dave Raggett
Oh bullshit. Good luck running a company that does shit like that. Furthermore, tough shit - freedom has a lot of consequences, and unless it causes grave harm to society you have no justification for restricting said freedoms.
"GLBT organizations have a perfect right to express their opinions,"
I'll be impressed if you can point at a signficant GLBT organization that actually did discuss Eich. As near as I can tell, the repsonse was entirely grassroots, and not limited to GLBT individuals.
I'm a nature photographer.
If people are assholes it's generally not conducive to business,
Actually, the most successful business people are, in fact, complete and total assholes. Your argument is invalid.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
If you are required to not be a fascist or a communist to have a job, is that a political litmus test?
So, it's still okay to fire gay CEO's, then? I mean, if I'm in a conservative state and someone spots my CEO at a gay bar or notices that he's donated to some gay cause, he has to go. I presume you're good with that?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Yep, sure is. Ever filled out a job application that asked if you were a fascist or a communist?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
There's no outrage because he's changed his position (or, possibly, as other commenters have said, he had that position all along and merely claimed he was against equal marriage because that was the political thing to do).
Eich was given the opportunity to recant, but he didn't, strongly implying that this is still the thing that he believes.
I can agree with that for private individuals. You do not like someone you do not need to hire them. You lose that ability the moment you incorporate. You want protections of incorporation, then you also get regulated.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
This all started with the LA Times obtaining a list of all donors to Prop 8 and publishing it's contents as a searchable online database.
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/04/03/how-did-people-find-out-that-mozillas-ceo-donated-to-support-prop-8/
The law that requires that all political donors who donate more than $100 may be divulged is the issue here. So it would seem that if you want to donate and NOT face repercussions for having an unpopular opinion, then you should never ever donate more than $99 to any California Ballot Measure or Political Initiative based in California.
In this case, it appears that CA law regarding disclosure of political contributions has come head to head with CA Labor Code. And considering SCOTUS' recent decision to consider monetary campaign contributions as free speech, it also would potentially have Constitutional ramifications (not for Mozilla, but for the State of California disclosure policy) So in this case, there is likely fuck-all Eich can do about it unless he wants to make a major stink about it in Federal Courts, at his own expense and with no possibility of personal gain.
I'd argue that it was more about the straight allies of the LGBT community than the LGBT community themselves. OKCupid is run by straight dudes, and they're not a front for any LGBT organisation that I know of.
This was a delightfully broad-based protest, not stemming from any group in particular.
It is, in fact, why I find it so absolutely irritating that bloggers keep going on about how 'damaging' this is to 'free speech'. This was free speech WORKING. This was a whole bunch of people speaking out and saying that it's no more acceptable for CEOs to hold this kind of opinion on equal marriage as it would be for them to hold a similar opinion on interracial marriage.
From all accounts he both continued and even extended LGBT friendly practices at Mozilla.
The ONLY thing ever said about him was he donated to Prop 8 and because of that it was assumed (I would guess rightfully so) that he believed the legal definition of marriage should remain 1 man 1 woman (as did the majority of Californians at the time). No one has ever come forward, to my knowledge, to say he ever put forward any proposals to limit same sex benefits at any place he ever had any control over.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
Why is it OK to have a hate campaign against Eich and what he believed in?
Either you are against hate campaigns and truly believe in difference of opinion, or you start a hate campaign yourself and hypocritically drum someone out of work through the very kind of hatred you claim to deplore.
It really is that simple. One bigot left Mozilla - but EVERYONE remaining who did not quit in disgust is a bigot also. Were I am employee of Mozilla I would have resigned alongside him, even though I am on the opposite side of the prop 8 debate. I find it sad that no-one there seems to have any strength of character.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Politics: noun plural but singular or plural in construction
activities that relate to influencing the actions and policies of a government or getting and keeping power in a government
the work or job of people (such as elected officials) who are part of a government
the opinions that someone has about what should be done by governments : a person's political thoughts and opinions
So you have to be gay to be pissed off about this?
I'm straight. I'm pretty pissed off about the huge (and loud) number of people that think that making a group of people second class through law is a good thing. It's not just about gays, either.
" but get some damn perspective before you turn into the bigots you despise"
Too late.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Let's take a look at OKCupid's CEO as well.
http://www.motherjones.com/moj...
In 2004 Sam Yagan donated $500 to Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah). Rep. Cannon voted for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, against a ban on sexual-orientation based job discrimination and for a prohibition on gay adoptions.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The first part is that there are basically two groups of people: those that feel they should be able to do whatever makes them happy as long as what they're doing doesn't adversely affect others, and those who feel they have the right to tell others what they can and can't do regardless of impact on themselves.
Make whatever convoluted case or slippery slope argument you want, Adam and Steve getting married has zero actual effect on anyone else. So what you have is a CEO basically giving his social opinion that he feels something is wrong that people who work for him feel is okay. My last company allowed employees to wear shorts to work because it was 120 out in the summer. One day someone brought that up in a room with a vice president in it and his comment was "Yeah, you're allowed to do it...but I think its damned unprofessional". Half the people in the room were wearing shorts. Word got around and nobody wore them anymore. So what a senior manager says has a significant effect on workers, right or wrong, rules/laws or not.
Second part is that roughly half the people/customers/programmers/business owners/executives believe one way on this and the other half believe the opposite. You're therefore alienating half the people that work for the company and half the people it works with. Not a good idea from any perspective. Sure, the ones that feel like you do will rally behind you while the other half walk away. Probably okay if you're making chicken sandwiches. Not okay when you're trying to manage a major software company.
Bottom line: keep your social opinions to a personal level and keep them out of a professional environment. You can make all the legal arguments you want. The VP still thinks shorts are unprofessional and chances are if you wear them, you're going to be getting the crap jobs if he notices.
What is really strange is that people seem to forget that he supported a law that passed.
Frankly the firestorm smacks of the black lists of the 1950s.
Someone supports a political concept that you do not like or you even feel is evil and you get drummed out of your business.
And let us be really honest. Stalinist Russia was evil and they had the largest influence in the US communist party from the 1930s up.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
You'll never get through. The modern left (I don't even use the term "liberal" any more, since liberty isn't in it) is immune to history or reasoning about the future. Immediate gratification and freedom from consequences of (left-compatible) actions is the core belief set here. Maximizing well being of generations yet to come? Not even.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Well shit, I expect you to get the noose and storm his house any day now. But obviously people like Eich aren't like other people. Maybe we could codify him being 3/5th or something like that.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/25/politics/supreme-court-preview-obama/
June 26, 2013
President Barack Obama once believed marriage only was for one man and one woman.
He then backed civil unions for gay and lesbian couples, granting them many of the same rights and privileges as married heterosexuals.
Now he is firmly in support of a constitutional right that has put him at odds with many social conservatives.
People are outraged, just not the people you were thinking.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Government does recognize marriage so by voting against marriage equality for all what you are really saying is you support privileges for the people that already have them.
But he's all in favor of limiting same-sex benefits given by the government to his workers.
Smells just like "separate but equal" to me.
Yes, it's correct. That's a bigoted perspective, in that it pretends your religion is the only one, then uses it to justify taking a basic human right. Your worldview being painfully simplistic shouldn't affect other people, and you shouldn't have the right to vote for laws that take others' rights(and you should also choose not exercise your vote in that way, morally speaking).
Bigots are wrong and terrible people, you're wrong and a terrible person, but that doesn't mean you should be fired(or forced to resign).
Mary Kay Lotourneau ring a bell???
If employers were allowed to fire people simply because they "didn't wanted them around" do you think we would end up in a good society?
It's called an "at-will" state. Texas is that way. It's also seeing an employment boom right now. Is it a society I want to end up in? Yes it is.
If you're an executive or high-level manager at Koch Industries and become a gay activist, I would fully expect you to be shown the door.
What I don't understand is Christians don't own marriage..all religions have some form of it. Some of them even allow same-sex marriage.
Further, the Catholics basically had same sex unions among their monks!
This dude shouldn't have gotten fired though. No one should be fired for holding a particular belief (even if it's offensive to some), as long as they aren't "in people's faces" about it.
If he was going around the office saying "fuckin fags shouldn't get married" then yeah can his ass. But, if all he did was donate and/or support anti-gay movements in his personal life...no one has any right to damage his professional career for that!
How'd that work out for you, mate?
There's no outrage because he's changed his position (or, possibly, as other commenters have said, he had that position all along and merely claimed he was against equal marriage because that was the political thing to do).
Eich was given the opportunity to recant, but he didn't, strongly implying that this is still the thing that he believes.
Because there's nothing more that people want in a leader than someone spineless when the pressure is on...
I feel that Mr.Eich was compelled to resign not by his employer, but by the GLBT community. They exerted political pressure which would have impacted the Mozilla organization, and Mr. Eich made a personal decision to shield the organization from that political pressure.
GLBT organizations have a perfect right to express their opinions, and even to use political and economic pressure to achieve their desired ends. The Mozilla foundation acted correctly in not bowing directly to this pressure. Mr. Eich acted both correctly and even (some might say) with noble altruism in resigning.
Understand the causes of actions - if you insist on placing blame, place it where it belongs. Mr. Eich was forced out by the GLBT community over his support for a bill which directly contradicted their political agenda. Their actions were within what is considered to be acceptable, and resulted in Mr. Eich sustaining a personal loss for his open support of a bill he obviously believes in. I don't think anybody here behaved badly or did anything wrong; but I believe that all involved should now be judged by their actions and their roles in this drama.
Ok, cool. So how do I boycott the GLBT community to show my distaste? Wait, I can't cause such badthink, that makes me a hatemonger!!
Not only does marriage pre-date your religion, who do you think gives you the marriage certificate/license (hint, it's not your religion)? Since society dictates religion, it's society that defines marriage. If you doubt that, ask yourself when was the last time you stoned anyone. Many things listed in the bible and right by religion are illegal, including selling your daughter and slavery. Why is that? Because society decided to change it.
More importantly though, Prop 8 was NOT about granting gay marriage, it was phrased as gay marriage so opponents could push it easier, most of whom were from out of state. Prop 8 was about removing gay's right to a civil union, which they were already allowed to do. That's oppression, which what Eich supported and why the court struck it down. There is also word that this may not be what broke the camels back anyhow. He also supported anti-Semitic candidates, and they knew if that broke, the sh*tstorm would have been even worse.
And contrary to what many think, gay marriage foes are not celebrating, this wasn't good for anyone, but how would you feel about someone in power who actively tried to take away your rights? My guess is that you wouldn't exactly welcome them with open arms now would you? This wasn't ancient history, and this fight is still ongoing.
If someone is going around the office saying "fuckin fags should get married", they should also be fired.
THL phish sticks
*gay marriage backers (not foes)
Get some fucking perspective people. This guy's (small) donation had zero effect on the proposition's outcome, nor did it have any effect on the Mozilla foundation (before anyone knew about it). All of his contributions to Mozilla have been exemplary and accepted until someone found out he supported pop 8.
Someone took a non-issue and cried "biggot", in effect doing more harm to Mozilla and Brendan Eich than was done by the donation itself.
The "Moral Authority" that has convicted Brendan Eich is unleashing a powerful weapon and setting a terrifying precedent in the U.S.: exercise free speech (read lobbying, money as free speech) and be ostracised.
It is comical that the "Moral Authority" on this issue fights for "Equality" by denying to others.
A court may actually decide that Non-profits can terminate employees for activities "incompatible with and adversely impacting
the mission and purpose of the organization."
If California wants to make a test case....Im sure a lot of people would love to take this to Federal court.
No, this was free speech failing. This was a case of punishing an individual for his political actions. The people speaking out were not discussing the issue, they were saying that if you don't agree with us, we will attack you personally.
I disagree. There's good reasons for protecting people from discrimination according to certain classes; the whole idea is to prevent classes of people from being stuck in an underclass because no one will employ them.
However, it's also important that people be qualified for the jobs they're in. For instance, discriminating against black people is normally bad, but what if the job is to be a model for clothing targeted at white people, or an actor for a product that only certain white demographics are interested in? Conversely, what if the job is to model hair accessories that only black people would be interested in; should white models be excluded? As far as I know, in jobs like this (modeling, acting), employers have very wide latitude. A black actor isn't going to get very far suing Stephen Spielberg because he couldn't get hired to play the part of Abraham Lincoln, nor would male actor get far suing Spielberg for refusing to cast him as Lincoln's wife.
Eich was not just some low-level worker, he was the CEO (briefly). As such, he's the public face of the company, so his political positions absolutely do reflect on the company as a whole. To me, that means that the company has every right to scrutinize his public political positions, and to remove him if the customer base rebels and decides they hate him and are boycotting the company. The same isn't true of some low-level coder, or the janitor; these people are (more) easily replaced, and aren't paid nearly as much either. Being the top boss of a company carries a big paycheck and a lot of privileges and visibility, but along with that there's downsides, such as a lack of privacy and being subject to the whims of the board. Don't like it? Don't apply for the job. Stay a low-level manager. It's just like being a celebrity. If you're a celebrity making millions of dollars per movie, or an outspoken politician, you have no right to complain that you have no privacy. It's part of the territory. If you value your privacy that much, stay the heck out of the limelight. No one forced you into that job.
Does labor laws apply for CEO position in California? In my country, positions like CEO and chair in board of directors are held outside of labor laws, based on specific mandate contract.
Maybe, maybe not. If you're a nobody, HR likely doesn't give two shits what political campaigns you donated to, as long as you don't make the national news and drag your company's name into it. If you're a CEO and you make international news because of your political views and donations, expect trouble.
Your comment, dear sir, is strangely familiar. I've heard it somewhere before. Ah, I remember, the Spanish Inquisition. No, no, I think it was even earlier, yeah, the Constance Council: "John Huss remained ardent in his faith in God and in his faith in God’s Word. At his trial, he was given the opportunity to recant. He would not do so. A large procession of people led him away to the place where he would be burned at the stake."
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
This was free speech WORKING. This was a whole bunch of people speaking out and saying that it's no more acceptable for CEOs to hold this kind of opinion on equal marriage as it would be for them to hold a similar opinion on interracial marriage.
let me consider that statement...
Free speech works by "a whole bunch of people" saying someone else's (ceo or otherwise) opinion (speech) is unacceptable "free" speech. My brain hurts!
The modern left (I don't even use the term "liberal" any more, since liberty isn't in it)
Is THAT what they're claiming now, that liberal stems from liberty? That's a new one. I always thought it came from their stance that they can "read-in" whatever they want (ergo a liberal enterpretation) into the constitution.
Yes, and the people pushing "separate but equal", with separate bathrooms and water fountains for black people, also didn't exactly say that blacks were subhuman did they?
There's an old saying . . . "Four boxes to use in defense of freedom. Soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order."
If you're CEO and your political beliefs are going to reflect on the company and become the subject of international news stories, yes.
True. Permissible (even encouraged) under the current US political/governmental system.
Whoever used their rights and abilities to enforce their agenda on Mr. Eich, the Mozilla Foundation and (by extension) all of us should be identified and made to answer for their actions. The right to do a thing does not equate to the right to do so without regard for the consequences. We can all use the same rights and methods against those responsible. I wonder if anybody at "OK Cupid" is listening?
Well, you seem to be forgetting that we had a system where companies systematically refused to hire people on the basis of race. Even when they were equally or better qualified, no hire. That's why we need to regulate employment on some level. Of course absolute control is bad. Absolute anything is bad.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Marriage is a civil institution. People with religious delusions want everything to be about their cults, but reality doesn't work that way.
Of course the courts have the power to redefine civil marriage.
It's not quite that simple. For centuries there was no separation of church and state in Europe, so it is difficult to say whether marriage was religious or civil as they were one and the same. To further complicate matters, prior to the church instituting it's view of marriage on the people, one could only get married civilly with the express permission of the king, governor or whomever was the legal authority. It was the church that stated that people are free to marry whomever they chose, with certain restrictions (ie couldn't be previously married, free consent, etc.). The church's influence in Western society and culture wasn't just about marriage. It also extended to education (both lower and higher, including universities and the like), legal systems, social norms, philosophy, research and science and numerous other areas that touch modern life. Why can't you marry your first cousin? It's illegal. Why is it illegal? Because the church forbade it long before any monarch or government declared it wrong.
And that really is how things work. Like it or not, pretty much all of modern society has been influenced by religious systems.
Let us identify those responsible and subject them to their own tactics. Those tactics are legal and even acceptable here in the US. Distasteful, but there is a certain aspect of "poetic justice" here.
Gay neo-con Obamites! All part of the Dick Cheney master plan!
No, he's right. This is free speech working - and in order to keep it working, we (those of us who disagree with their speech or their tactics) have an obligation to make an answer, to exercise our free speech.
Honestly the entire thing is moot at this point but, from all of the comments I've read, nobody seems to have mentioned that his contribution to Prop 8 could be based on his personal religious beliefs.
If anything (and there is no signs of him doing so at this point), he could press on the Federal level a case of discrimination for violating his Civil Rights based on the religious aspect alone.
He would probably also win if there was even a slight whiff of him having been pressured into resigning because of this. Race, religion, gender = the big three when it comes to discrimination lawsuits and highest on the no-no scale of what companies can fire for/pressure over.
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
A majority of Californians recently voted against gay marriage.
That would be more accurate to say that a majority of people in California who voted supported a measure to ban gay marriage.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
There's no hate campaign against Eich.....Address what I've actually advocated or STFU.
Classic. A new record.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Not from all accounts that have reached my ears, no.
I'm a nature photographer.
What a fascinating, near-perfect being you must be!
Yes, it's correct. That's a bigoted perspective, in that it pretends your religion is the only one, then uses it to justify taking a basic human right. Your worldview being painfully simplistic shouldn't affect other people, and you shouldn't have the right to vote for laws that take others' rights(and you should also choose not exercise your vote in that way, morally speaking).
Bigots are wrong and terrible people, you're wrong and a terrible person, but that doesn't mean you should be fired(or forced to resign).
Two issues you bring up are germane in this discussion. First, you state that you shouldn't have the right to vote for laws that take others rights - well, the whole thing about same sex marriage is whether or not people are denied equal protection under the law if the state does not recognize two men or two women who want to marry each other are kept from doing so. From the state's position, marriage is a civil contract and denying somebody the ability to enter into said contract may violate equal protection. I say may, because the Supreme Court hasn't ruled on that issue, yet, and until it does, it could go either way (although my money would be that they say it does violate equal protection). Marriage, in the eyes of the state isn't about love, it isn't about friendship, it isn't about companionship or anything like that. It is simply a legal contract between two people (which is why most countries now have civil unions to describe the relationship between the parties instead of marriage, which comes from the term Holy Matrimony, which has obvious religious overtones).
While one cannot make a valid judgement related to your first point, mainly because it is not up to the people to decide, but the courts (if it were up to the people, they could easily vote against same sex marriages and often have, so majority, evidently, doesn't rule), your second point is valid. And that is (to paraphrase it), bigots are wrong. On the surface that seems simple, but what it really says is that it isn't that religion is the culprit here, but those who use religion to support a wrong position. It may seem like mincing words, but in reality, religion, like any other philosophy, is neither wrong or right. However, the people who subscribe to that philosophy still choose how to act.
Only a minority of the christian religions condemn homosexuality. Most mainstream protestant religions and the catholics do not do so in their doctrines. Therefore, all of this anti-religious sentiment found on slashdot and elsewhere is misdirected and should be focused on the individual committing the act, not to everyone who might subscribe to that religion or philosophy. Lumping all people of religion into a group and assigning traits to that group is just as bigoted as doing so to gays, or blacks, or any other group.
You simply can't fight bigotry with more bigotry. It just won't work.
I have to interject my $0.02 because I don't think you have seen through to the logical conclusion of your position. What if a group of people decided that they didn't like the rules of the government, so they begin to campaign against the entire government itself? Should they have the freedom to do that?
And when that proves unsuccessful, they start an armed revolt to change the government. Should they have the freedom to do that?
And when they are successful, they begin to rewrite every law in the book. Should they have the freedom to do that?
One of the laws that they add says that if you fire somebody because of a political contribution, they will imprison you or take your money. Should they have the freedom to do that? If not, why not? Shouldn't they have the freedom to not associate with people who would do that kind of firing?
It is impossible to say everyone should have the freedom to make whatever associations they want because every freedom granted is a limitation on somebody else's freedom to stop you from doing that thing. Re-read your Coase.
So instead of making an appeal to any particular fundamental right (which you won't be able to get everyone to agree to anyways), you need to get everyone to agree to a *process* for making the rules, and once everyone agrees to abide by the rules that are made through the proper process, then you follow that process and abide by the laws you like and go through the process to change the laws you don't. It's obvious that you disagree with this law, but do you have a much better way of making laws than the sort of representative democratic republic generally followed in the US (other than declaring RightSaidFred99 supreme monarch)? Not once in any of your comments have you mentioned that you felt that the law was improperly passed, merely that it is a bad law because it impinges on the freedom of people you would prefer to have freedom and gives freedom to people who you would prefer did not.
You are truly Google fail. Took three seconds tops.
California Proposition 1A, High-Speed Rail Act (2008)
Company have no morals they are here to make profits. That's why we have so many rules to force them as a society to do stuff they would not do on their own on pure economical ground. For example all tragedy of common like air pollution, or even not hiring children to work in mines, or pay the same a woman and a man, or not discriminate based on skin color.
As such If the CEO political position are such that the customer will massively impact the company , then if the CEO really has the responsibility associated with the (usual) high salary, he should leave on his own on pure economical ground for the company. And that include your case.
Now on the moral position, it is much more iffy depending on what sort of moral you adhere to. In the above case I would say "screw the bigot customer" and try to reposition the company toward non-idiot and keep the CEO no matter the skin color or gender or religion or sexuality or cis/trans or yes indeed politic or whatever people find to discriminate. But it is much harder to define a general point.
In this specific case, even if I tend to be against idiot bigot living in the 19th century like Eich, but I tend to think that he should not be forced to resign (he was not as far as i can tell) but should resign on his own when his own private life negatively impact the customer base (which he did).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I would contend that just because your rights have been denied for a long time, does not mean they are not rights.
as the church that stated that people are free to marry whomever they chose, with certain restrictions (ie couldn't be previously married, free consent, etc.).
Don't be foolish. Polygamy was banned fairly recently, consent wasn't actually required of the woman who was considered chattel, and even age restrictions are civil not religious. There is nothing in the bible about how old a person, especially a woman, must be to wed.
Why is it illegal? Because the church forbade it
Why did the church forbid it? Because earlier religions forbade it. Why did they forbid it? Because inbreeding resulted in deformed offspring and being ignorant as they were, they attributed it as punishment from the god(s) du jour.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
That stopped being true the minute a church made it policy not to marry a couple without a valid government marriage license.
Gay CEOs are likely smart enough to stay away from highly conservative industries
Yeah, if they know what's good for them, amiright?
If you pushed for Eich to resign, are you still using ReiserFS?
I can be moderated as Inciteful...
Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from the consequences of your speech. We have to balance the need to let people support unpopular opinions with the need to prevent people from secretly subverting the government. Ultimately if you want to influence public policy you have to be willing to stand up and do it publicly.
So, it's still okay to fire gay CEO's, then? I mean, if I'm in a conservative state and someone spots my CEO at a gay bar or notices that he's donated to some gay cause, he has to go. I presume you're good with that?
Well, considering that most "conservative states" are also "right-to-work" states, meaning that either the employer or employee can terminate employment at any time without having to give a reason...
It would be legal, if that's what you mean by "..presume you're good with that."
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Correction:
Instead of "right-to-work," I mean to say "at-will employment."
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
...to the Kool Aid swilling, fudge packing geeks of the Open Source world.
There's an old saying . . . "Four boxes to use in defense of freedom. Soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order."
Since the screaming left owns the first 3, and has made the final prohibitively expensive, I have no other choice but to just enjoy the decline
So therefore a right wing company should have the right to fire gays, single mothers, and douchebags like you?
I won't get into the subjective "right/wrong" part of the argument, but I will point out that in many states employment is on an "At-Will" basis, which would make it legal for said company to fire whomever they want, moral justification notwithstanding.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
While I agree that the firing of Mozilla's CEO is a really dangerous precedent, there's nothing at all wrong with being "intolerant" of a bigot. I hear this argument all the time and it's so stupid that I find it hard to believe that people actually argue this in good faith. Surely you recognize the difference between being intolerant of someone for what they are (what they were born as) vs their actions/beliefs.
Would you be intolerant of someone who believes all non white men should be slaves to white men?
How about people who believe that all muslims deserve to die?
What about people who want everyone below an IQ of 100 to undergo forced sterilization?
Of course you should be intolerant of these people. They are awful people and their sense of decency and humanity is messed up.
I'm not at OKCupid, (don't even have an account there anymore), but I totally agree with you about taking responsiblity for one's actions.
I'm a nature photographer.
Which makes them an interesting foil to the "modern" (and I use that term very loosely) right, with it's core belief set stuck anywhere from 1000 to 600 years ago, depending on whether they're more focused on their invisible sky wizard, or bringing back feudalism (with the starring role in jus primae noctis being your friendly neighborhood corporate entity^H^H^H^H^H^Hperson).
Clowns to the left of us, jokers to the right (or vice versa, if you prefer...)
It's not a black and white issue, it is complicated. "Marriage" as a civil institution is what's messed up. Civil unions are the civil institution, whereas marriage is a social institution (with various ethnic, religious and other traditions involved). The equality that people want in marriage is in regards to civil equality for the most part. Ie, issues in regards to adoptions, death benefits, hospital visitations, joint property ownership, tax benefits (or penalties), and so forth. It really was confusing about what the difference in California law was between civil unions and marriage, other than the words.
I think the institution should be split up. You get both a civil union in order to get the legal benefits, and also get a religious or other ceremony for the social benefits. And couples are allowed to get both, just one, or neither.
What's worrisome to me is that this has a big chance of backfiring. Sure, in San Francisco and Hollywood it is easy to come to the impression that gay rights is now mainstream. But the reality is that the majority of US residents are still somewhat negative about gay marriage. It is great that gay rights are advancing, but it is also very easy for them to be rolled back. Right now there is a lot of anger out there about judicial activism in this regard, as all the states that allow gay marriage have done so because of court rulings rather than the ballot box or large movement of public opinion.
In California prop 8 was overturned basically due to a loophole; the governor's refused to defend the law in court. Yes that sounds good on the surface but has a lot of nasty consequences. First, other states have been drafting laws against gay marriage intended precisely to avoid similar legal problems. Second, it opens wide the doors for governor's you don't agree with to use the same lack-of-enforcement as a de-facto veto of a proposition. We're not always going to have a liberal governor in California.
The key word in your description is "remain" -- Prop 8 wasn't about keeping the status quo, as was the case in a lot of states who passed laws amending their constitution to define marriage as 1m1w
Prop 8 was different to a lot of people because of this distinction. The traditional legal definition of marriage was already ruled unconstitutional in California (per the state's Constitution, not the US one) -- thus, gay people in the state of California for about six months there were allowed to get married.
And Prop 8 was an attempt to *remove* that right. It's a lot harder to remove a right (and a lot more offensive) once its been recognized as being held then it is to preemptively try to keep anyone from getting it. As far as I know, California is the only state which tried to tighten up the marriage definition after a state court ruled the existing definition violated their constitution.
It might seem overly technical and nitpicky, but personally the difference between the two situations really resonates with me. As a customer/regular person, I've held people who supported Prop 8 in contempt, however mildly so, and so understand the people who were upset at Eich's elevation to such an open and progressive organization. That said, I don't actually share their feelings. The world has changed far too much, far faster then I could have imagined, for me to continue holding Prop 8 against anyone in any serious way.
Mini-rant/clarification: I do take issue with statements like, "majority of Californians" -- but I hate it when any side of an argument speaks up about a majority. To be clear, a majority of Californian's didn't side with him. Barely over 7 million out of 13.7 million voters in a state of about 36 million people did. (Heck, a big pet peeve of mine is when practically anyone speaks for The American People. Its almost always a partisan who is speaking to a segment that at least an equal segment probably aggressively opposes what's being said)
Not sure what the High Speed rail bond issue has to do with the definition of "political campaign" since that term is not anywhere in the article you referenced. It does talk about politics and campaigns but those two word are separated by a lot of other words.
Just a few tips on using Google for the naive: If you are looking for a term consisting of more than one word, put the term in quotes and you'll get better results. You can also use the Google "define": To see a definition for a word or phrase, simply type the word “define” then a space, then the word(s) you want defined.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Eich may or may not be a bigot, but you surely are one..
Where is the outrage over that? Why is it that Obama was elected president of the United States, twice, and Eich was forced to resign from the company he helped start?
Because the liberal media is a conservative myth, and Obama plays in a larger theater than Eich.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
> People with religious delusions want everything to be about their cults, but reality doesn't work that way.
Way to flamebait. Good thing you're on the party line or you'd have gotten modded down.
The simple fact of the matter is, that everyone wants everything to be about their beliefs, "cult" or not. In a democratic society we work out (or are supposed to) something that works as a good enough compromise, but at the end of the day it's basically all arbitrary crap. I doubt you'll find a law on the books that derives itself from anything much like pure reason... They're really all there because people didn't like one thing or another, and wanted to make sure that wasn't allowed. "That's annoying" "That's mean" "That's weird" "That cost me money", etc. Really, "against my religion" is probably one of the rarer reasons for a law to be on the books. When it comes to gay marriage, I quite honestly think that more people are against it because "That's gross" rather than any religious reason; they just use religion as an easier point of debate.
If a company doesn't want certain people representing it in public as their public face, which is exactly what the CEO is, they have every right to not place those people as CEOs. CEOs are not normal employees, and in other countries don't even have regular employment contracts (I'd be surprised if they do here in the US too), and are not subject to the same worker protections. There's different rules for people at the top.
You are going off the plane....you have a golden parachute in one hand and your lawyer's number in the other... which one you going to use?
Choose your own CEO adventure!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Andrew Sullivan — a prominent Illiberal — has drawn some fire upon himself by claiming, "we are no better than the anti-gay bullies who came before us."
While Andrew's employment remains secure, I take an exception with this statement. Though there surely were (and remain) anti-gay bullies, I can not find a single case of a CEO being fired (or forced to resign) simply for being either a homosexual himself, or for supporting a homosexual cause. The only thing, that comes close is the US military — but even they stopped doing it over 20 years ago, when "don't ask don't tell was implemented".
This makes today's Illiberals not "no better", but worse than the "bullies of the past". Much worse...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Has anyone noticed how much faster Slashdot is when view with Chrome?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
You have it backwards. In European cultures, marriage was a religious institution first. It wasn't later when the government got involved and civil marriages came into existence.
Your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
It's easy to criticize. But what were they supposed to do?
I don't know about a political organization, but in terms of politically visible persons: George Takei was fairly vocal in this (with lots of discussion from his supporters/detractors in regards to that as well). Sometimes it seems that an official political "organization" versus "group with figurehead" is a blurry line sometimes.
You lose that ability the moment you incorporate. You want protections of incorporation, then you also get regulated.
You shouldn't have to forfeit your rights and submit to arbitrary restrictions imposed by a third-party just to exercise your natural freedom of association and act as a group.
The protections of incorporation are really fairly limited. It's not an absolute defense; if you cause harm which can't be made whole out of corporate funds, incorporation won't help—you can still be made personally liable for the damage. The benefits of incorporation mostly come down to simplified tax accounting and clarifying the scope of each party's responsibilities when entering into contracts. The first part is a solution to a problem created by government in the first place, and the second doesn't need government at all, just a mutually-agreeable arbiter to settle disputes.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
What kind of severance package did Eich get. Somewhere in a contract of a multimillion dollar CEO has to say they will lose millions if they leave by quitting before the contract is over but, if they are fired/removed by the board they get the full contract plus a severance package. Would not put it passed that based on contracts they say he quit in the PR spin but at the bank he is still on the payroll.
No, it's illegal in every state. It's also not remotely what happened here.
1. No one was fired. One guy resigned.
2. It had nothing to do with how he voted.
3. The backlash came from his donating financial support to a hate campaign
3. The backlash was in the form of people being pissed off about #3. Voting never entered into it, and not even SCOTUS bullshit redefinition of money as "speech" makes that much of a stretch legitimate.
Even if he was fired, which he was, again, not, it was because he pissed off a fuckton of people who: a) would be working for him, and/or b) need to use what they make in order for the company he would be running to stay in business (google's not going to give them 90% of their budget otherwise).
You wants to be a bigoted scumbag? Fine, that's your right. You want to *vote* like one? Absolutely, it's still how decisions get made in this country (hah).
You want to give public support to a hate group, and not have it held against you when it comes out in the open? Tough shit. Like the libertarians say, "the market has spoken."
If Eich said "Same sex marriage is not for me" that's one thing. But he said "I want to pass a law that denies gay people the right to marriage". That, dear sir, is bigotry. Being against bigotry is not intolerant, it is required behavior of any moral person.
Actually marriage is a joke nowadays. I think having same sex marriages just tops it off as the silliness it has become. In the old world it had a purpose but nowadays it's a pointless thing. I recently watched some show where women were discussing love and marriage and the consensus was that they didn't care as much about marriage but wanted the "big wedding." I think that sums up modern marriage nicely. I don't care much about this subject anymore but I wish the government would just get out of the institution of marriage. Let people call themselves married if they want to and they can leave anytime they don't want to be married anymore. It's pretty much what happens now anyways. Divorce is all about property rights and child custody and money anyway. Let's just quit with the entire government involvement and save a bunch of taxpayer's dollars. I don't care if people marry their goldfish, just leave the State out of it.
We're waiting.
Where does it end? I suppose we could just do away with elections and voting, eh? After all, some number of people will not be as wise or enlightened as you, why should they be allowed to vote, or to express any opinions at all?
Dalton Trumbo never recanted either. I guess it was OK to blacklist him then.
Mr. Eich was forced out by the GLBT community over his support for a bill which directly limited their freedom to marry the person of their choice
FTFY. Would you really take no action if someone tried to pass a bill saying you were not allowed to marry your wife because of the colour of your eyes? Would that be your "political agenda", or just you standing up for your basic rights?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
He wasn't fired, he left. The employees protest did not violate this law for the same reason that this law exists in the first place: The political actions of an individual employed by a company aren't controlled by that company. Mozilla had no authority to either order or forbid their employees to protest Eich's appointment.
Well, it would depend entirely on his reasons for taking over the world. I have an open mind about these sorts of things.
bay area companies are now refusing to hire based on race.
I'm a white guy. I walk into a bay area company and everyone around me is indian or asian. I am given 'the look' and the interview process is mostly a formality. I'm given an excuse why I don't get the job and all along, I know what's going on. the hiring manager is indian, his workers are and he (and his group) do not want americans working there.
on my last job, I was the only american in the whole engineering dept. the only reason I was hired is that my specialty was needed at a critical time. that rarely happens and when it does not happen, I'm passed over.
I see TONS of discrimination going on. age and skin color, all are quite 'popular' right now in the silicon valley area.
its disgusting but it seems to be the new way around here ;(
just fyi.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Political litmus tests for employment have been a big no-no for a damn good reason.
Sure. In 9 states. In the other 41, it's legal. In Washington, California, Colorado, Michigan, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Louisiana, and Florida it's illegal to fire someone for political activity or for not voting for your employer's preferred candidate, or for belonging to a particular party (one or more of those protections, depending on the state).
The linked blog post is by an employment attorney, so it's reasonably sure to be correct. Some states are more specific than others about what specific political activity can not be used to justify firing. Some extend protection to all activity. Others are specific only to voting. Your Republican in South Carolina example is perfectly legal.
Sure, marriage is a religious institution untouched by civilized, secular society, which is why we still have forcibly arranged, polygamous and/or incestuous marriages that cannot be divorced, rape is punished by forcing the victim to marry the rapist, and adultery is punished by stoning. The courts and the government have no power to redefine or recognize marriage, which is why the non-existing divorce cases are never decided by secular courts, courts never handle custody battles, and there is no such thing as a joint tax statement.
This is literally the same argument racists used a few decades ago to argue against letting black and white people marry.
Drop that first sentence and you've got yourself a good argument. It will never happen as long as the protestants are in control, but it's a nice idea.
The problem is that you've conflated it with the wrong reason. Mozilla needs a strong CEO, yes, however the first thing a CEO is is a manager of people. You cannot effectively manage people of mixed composition if you genuinely believe that a certain percentage of them are not deserving of basic human rights. If he was a member of the KKK, would you expect him to treat black employees equitably? If it was public knowledge, would black employees even expect him to treat them fairly (even if he did, would they believe it - knowing he was KKK)?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
What good is freedom of speech if you can't speak your mind without being vilified by everyone?
de Tocquerville even warned that freedom of speech is useless unless the speaker is allowed to voice their view without being persecuted for it.
He even closed "Democracy in America" with: "Tyranny in democratic republics does not proceed in the same way, however. It ignores the body and goes straight for the soul. The master no longer says: You will think as I do or die. He says: You are free not to think as I do. You may keep your life, your property, and everything else. But from this day forth you shall be as a stranger among us. You will retain your civic privileges, but they will be of no use to you. For if you seek the votes of your fellow citizens, they will withhold them, and if you seek only their esteem, they will feign to refuse even that. You will remain among men, but you will forfeit your rights to humanity. When you approach your fellow creatures, they will shun you as one who is impure. And even those who believe in your innocence will abandon you, lest they, too, be shunned in turn. Go in peace, I will not take your life, but the life I leave you with is worse than death.”
Freedom of speech is useless without the tolerance to allow a person's views to be heard, without persecution. Unless you can voice your view without persecution, "You will retain your civic privileges, but they will be of no use to you" is literally true - you can voice your view, but you will suffer for it, what good is it?
It's perversion of the spirit of the first amendment to say "You have freedom of speech, but not freedom from its consequence."
I may not like what I consider ignorant drek spouted by Neo-Nazis, KKK, certain Westboro Baptist Church members, etc. I may think they are personally the worst filth humanity has to offer. But I am willing to fight to give them the right to spew their bile and to protect them from those who seek to silence them by whatever means necessary. Anything less amounts to tyranny by the majority.
And that's precisely what is being done here - Eich voiced a view - years ago, and now that what was then the minority is now the majority, he is being punished for it.
The very cornerstone of freedom of speech is being willing to protect those whose views we hate, and the ability to exercise their right without fear of backlash or persecution.
I'm not saying Eich is left starving... far from it. The point is that nobody should feel a threat to their person, livelihood, or property because their views -- however unpopular, ignorant, or wrong -- are expressed.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Are we still pretending that donating money to prevent American citizens from marrying the person they love is just a "political belief"?
You know what would be really shitty? Someone codifying into law a political belief that denies a group of citizens the ability to make medical decisions on behalf of an incapacitated spouse.
Look, I disagree with plenty of things people believe or say. We agree to disagree and move on with our lives. Actively donating money to bigoted causes that seek legalize your views at the expense of mine crosses the line of polite disagreement into "You're an asshole."
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
Don't confuse the "modern right" with the "Baby Boomers on the right". The aging right is stuck with the values of their 20s. No surprise there. And the horrid GOP is drawn mostly from the oldest. But that's not the modern right. There's very little mention of invisible sky grandfathers in the under-50 crowd (the belief may still be there, but it's rarely presented as argument for policy).
And you joke about feudalism, but at it at least was a reciprocal arrangement with duties that went both ways.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It's not like I've never heard of that. You could file a suit; but I don't recommend doing that until you're close to retirement, have the money, and don't care about ever working in The Valley again.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Under both federal and California law it is illegal for non-profits to contribute to political campaigns. For example, religious organizations organized as non-profits contributing to California proposition campaigns. Do you _really_ want to follow up on violations of California law?
sPh
Marriage is too closely tied to religion and culture. It needs to be completely left up to people to decide on their own. The government needs to institute support for only civil unions with no restrictions on anyone, and leave "Marriage" up to individuals to do on their own, in a way not recognized nor controlled by the government.
Yep, sure is. Ever filled out a job application that asked if you were a fascist or a communist?
Although I'm not old enough to have had an application that asked if I was ever a member of a communist party, a colleague of mine is old enough and once when I was over at his house, he showed me the carbon-copy of such an application he filled out...
Oh yeah, that was an application for a US government civil service job (not military, or top-secret), although he told me that was a common question on many Job applications of the day (he said the grocery packer job he applied for had the same question, although he didn't have any actual proof of that in hand).
Yes, people have been pair bonding, but what we hold as a modern notion of marriage is not what the groups you mention and is directly descendent of what the church taught was Holy Matrimony. As for consent, from the start, the woman had to consent freely. Whether her consent was given freely or not is open for debate, but the whole reason people are asked if they take so and so as their husband/wife, came directly from the catholic church. That is the consent portion.
As for polygamy, the early christian church continued the ban of it because they still thought of themselves as jews and it was banned under the Torah. It isn't a recent thing at all.
As for the age of marriage, I didn't mention it, however, both the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament state that one should not marry a child. A woman was considered a child until her period started. As such, without giving a specific number, scholars agree that women could marry somewhere around age 14, give or take personal development.
I would contend that just because your rights have been denied for a long time, does not mean they are not rights.
Whie I agree 100% with your statement, it doesn't matter. There is not a right to marry. Even the courts have upheld that. From the court's perspective, this isn't about marriage at all, it is about the legal rights automatically bestowed on the couple once they get married. Most of those rights can bestowed manually, through things like power of attorney, etc., but in marriage, it happens automatically.
Simply put, the courts don't care about marriage. From the legal perspective, the discussion is about the establishment of contracts. Nothing more and nothing less.
Boycotts are protected as free speech under the first amendment of the US Constitution .
Brendan Eich resigned, as a result of the backlash. We don't know if the board would have terminated him if he did not. That just didn't happen.
Would that hypothetical termination have violated California law ? It's unclear.
Wouldn't the ongoing boycott of Mozilla because of its CEO would have been reason enough for the board to terminate him, whether this boycott was due to some political or non-political action of his ? I guess we will never know.
-- Julien Pierre http://www.madbrain.com/blog
The use of the word "rights" really bugs me. There are universal rights which most people agree to, and which, for the most part, do not require third parties to recognise to give effect to them. Free speech is one such. You speak, and the state may not stop you. Freedom is another. The state may not take you and throw you in Guantanamo without due cause.
Everything else is a privilege bestowed by society.
No. Bigotry is being unable to see beyond or alter your beliefs. Eich may be guilty of that, but there are bigots out there who can't change their beliefs that being anti-gay is an unforgivable, life-long affliction that must be purged from the collective psyche lest we all become bigots.
Intolerance makes the world go 'round, no matter if you're on the brightly-lit gay side, or the dark and oppressive anti-gay side. It doesn't make one's cause look good to have mindless zealots incapable of nuance asking others for nuance. Saying you're anti-bigotry doesn't make you a moral person, if you're really just a bigot of a different sort.
Intolerance will never end as long as we're intolerant. Just saying you're "intolerant of intolerance" is childish and backward thinking. You must be intolerant of harmful intolerance, and the spreading of intolerance. Going after Eich for a few grand of donations is fine, but doing it the way it was done only incites more bigotry and intolerance.
If that's what you really want, good luck winning your quest. History if full of well-intentioned and morally superior heros who went too far on the verge of their victories and lost it all.
Would you still old that position if he was fired for supporting "gay marriage"? Should it be Mozilla's choice to fire a man for having sex with other men?
I tend to think that it should be, both in this case and in those other cases. All too many people forget that blacks were not forced to sit in the back of the bus because the bus companies wanted it that way. They were forced to sit in the back of the bus because the government passed laws mandating it. There is evidence that if those "Jim Crow" laws had not existed, segregation would have gone away on its own.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I don't care if he was supporting a bill to impose shariah on California, or give tax breaks to encourage polygamous marriage, or circumcise all males that enter the state. I don't have to agree with him, I can campaign against him, but it is still his right to think that.
The right to free political involvement is where all other rights come from. Once you permit someone to be harassed for their political beliefs, no-matter how abhorrent they are to you, then whatever your rights are will soon become subject to the whims of those who have the most power to harass their opponents.
Being against anything to the extent that it overrides your civility is the basic core of intolerance. History has been full of groups who have seen their cause as being more important than basic civility such as KKK, Taliban, Supreme Harmony Society, Hutu militia, Red Guards, some US Civil War era democrat politicians, and the result has always been roughly the same. To my knowledge Eich was not practicing uncivil behavior towards gays by discriminating against them or using slurs against them, he just supported a bill. This bill, you might believe is discriminatory in nature, but that decision in a democracy is up to the people and their representatives, and at the very least we all have the right to put forward any question for the people to decide on.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Yeah, now that you mention it, the GLBT community mostly seemed to not care too much about the whole thing, and at least some of them even sided publicly with Brenden.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
So if one of your employees makes a contribution to the New Black Panther Party, you can't fire them for being the type you don't want around?
I don't know. You tell me.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
WTF? Are you seriously claiming that only Christians have marriage? That the last marriage I witnessed wasn't real due to being a Hindi marriage with Gods that have nothing to do with Christ. Or that my marriage is not a real marriage because neither I nor my wife are Christians?
Every culture has marriage in some form or another, usually with the blessings of the local religion. Remember that Christianity is a Johny come lately religion based on nothing besides a collection of contradictory books and is no more relevant then any other religion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
What's been lost in all this is the fact that in 2008, the same year that Brendan Eich made that campaign contribution, Barack Obama went on national television in a debate with John McCain, and said that he believes marriage should only be between a man and a woman. Where is the outrage over that?
Apparently no one believed Obama then. Somehow they still believed that he opposed surveillance, though.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
In California prop 8 was overturned basically due to a loophole; the governor's refused to defend the law in court. Yes that sounds good on the surface but has a lot of nasty consequences...it opens wide the doors for governor's you don't agree with to use the same lack-of-enforcement as a de-facto veto of a proposition.
I was worried about that for a while, but after reading through the supreme court's decision, I don't think it's a serious issue. Essentially what the supreme court did was extremely non-binding, and a fancy way for them to say they didn't want to overturn the law without committing to rule the same way in the future.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I am given 'the look' and the interview process is mostly a formality.
I told you to shower before going to interviews!
Really though, wouldn't racial discrimination of that sort be done based on your name before you even arrive at the interview?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Marriage is marriage, where does this bullshit about civil unions come from? You live in a relationship with someone for long enough and that's considered a common-law marriage, especially if you publicly declare it. The State can issue documents that make it even more legal and the Church can also issue documents that make it OK for your religious views but marriage is marriage.
Most Western Democracies have equality laws which make it illegal to discriminate, laws that were passed by legislatures or such including being part of Constitutions, of course Judges are going to rule against discrimination, at least in a Constitutional Representative Democracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
WTF? Are you seriously claiming that only Christians have marriage? That the last marriage I witnessed wasn't real due to being a Hindi marriage with Gods that have nothing to do with Christ. Or that my marriage is not a real marriage because neither I nor my wife are Christians?
Every culture has marriage in some form or another, usually with the blessings of the local religion. Remember that Christianity is a Johny come lately religion based on nothing besides a collection of contradictory books and is no more relevant then any other religion.
No, that is not what I am claiming. However, the modern western notion of marriage is the form handed down from the Holy Roman Empire that was the Catholic Church's version. Yes, other religions have marriage and have always had marriage, my point was merely in context of the predominant Judeo-Christian version that was adopted by the secular western society.
Well I mean in that instance the f word implies he's just excited about gay marriage.
even the courts have upheld that
*gasp*
I don't think you've reviewed the case law at all.
9th amendment protection has long been extended, often as a specific example, to right to marriage.
The equality that people want in marriage is in regards to civil equality for the most part. Ie, issues in regards to adoptions, death benefits, hospital visitations, joint property ownership, tax benefits (or penalties), and so forth
Not really. Here in Australia, all those things aren't determined by an official marriage, but whether the law considers you partners. Marriage makes your partners, but so does sexual cohabitation, and the rules are applied equally to homo and heterosexual couples. The marriage rules were changed a while back to deal with the increase in cohabitation without marriage.
But even so, there's still a big push for allowing homosexual marriage, despite it not offering any legal or technical advantages.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
People can be opposed to changes in marriage for reasons which are not religious.
It doesn't matter what the supreme court did. If the state is the only entity that can defend a challenge to a law or prop voted into effect by the people, then when the state refuses to defend it, the challenge will always prevail.
Suppose the people voted for a law that said ever citizen of the state shall be entitled to a two year degree at any state college and i challenge it, if the state doesb't defend the law, i automatically win. Now the law is void~ not because of my posistion being the right one, but because the state never officially said i was wrong. Now imagine any law and any governor who orders the state to act or not.
But all of a sudden allegations that marriage is only the first step and the final plan is mandatory gay sex education in elementary schools do not sound so far fetched. I have and will donate to political causes others may not agree with, for example school choice. I sure hope that a donation I made as a private citizen would not some day preclude me from being CEO of a company. If Hobby Lobby doesn't have corporate religious freedom to restrict health insurance, perhaps OkCupid should be penalized for boycotting based on a political viewpoint.
You can boycott the LGBT community by not marrying someone of the same-sex.
Also, by leaving the rest of us who did alone, rather than try to take away our rights, as Prop 8 did.
-- Julien Pierre http://www.madbrain.com/blog
We're drifting away from that. For my marriage, I went to the government office, payed $35 and got a marriage license. Then arranged for a marriage commissioner (basically government) to show up ($75 + mileage), say some non-religious words and my wife and I said some words, pieces of official paper were signed and witnessed and we were married. Note that it was always considered marriage, not civil union or such.
My son has probably never touched a bible and probably couldn't quote any of it. The religous stuff he did go through was more practical, such as being presented with a paddle at 13 yrs in case of finding himself up the creek and the other religious stuff was always presented as to why these beliefs existed. (Mostly revolving around respect with rites that were handy in a society that had no writing)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Sure, it is your right to call the backlash hate, but that doesn't really make it so.
If that's hate, I'd love to know what you call the "Yes on 8" video ads that called gays dangerous to children, etc ?
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/04/04/brendan_eich_supported_prop_8_which_was_worse_than_you_remember.html
Please watch them before answering.
-- Julien Pierre http://www.madbrain.com/blog
But the reality is that the majority of US residents are still somewhat negative about gay marriage.
Nope. Gotta stay up on the news...
That said, I agree with you about splitting the two. In an ideal world, that would be the way to go. Unfortunately, I could imagine a lot of people suddenly being upset that their government sanctioned "marriage" suddenly has become a government sanctioned "civil union."
Supporting a traditional definition of marriage is not the same as treating people with disrespect, and it is the attempt to paint the proponents of traditional marriage and criminal homophobes with the same brush that gets people labelled as bigots, rightly so.
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
US is different, you can cohabitate and not be considered "married". Although if you stay cohabiting long enough then it can turn into a "common law marriage". Though that is really only enforced if one of the couple insists on it; typically this situation arises because a couple really doesn't want to be married but then some legal problem arises to force the issue (child custody after a split for example). That's where civil unions helps out straight couples too as there are a lot who just don't want to bother being married and would rather do things the Australian way.
That's because standing is paramount in pursuing cases. The state and the individuals being married are the main parties affected in a marriage contract. The Supreme Court properly identified that everyone else who wanted to intervene to prevent gay marriage were self-important busybodies who would not actually be personally affected in any significant way (compared to the requested imposition on equality rights of the prospective spouses) if Joe marries John Doe or June marries Julia, and who should therefore butt out.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
This was a delightfully broad-based protest, not stemming from any group in particular.
Shenanigans. This was a very clever advertising campaign.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
In theory reverse traditional polygamy would be a solution. In practice, there are biological/evolutionary and social reasons why fewer people seek such an arrangement, making it an unsuccessful approach to correct gender imbalances arising from traditional polygamy.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Yes: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it (Evelyn Beatrice Hall, regarding Voltaire's beliefs)"
The antidote to bad speech is more good speech.
I agree "chilling precedent" is a risk here. What could it be next? Using campaign finance disclosures against Progressive Democratic or Green voters? So, there is wisdom in the CA law on that.
From here about me BTW:
http://www.fec.gov/finance/dis...
"FERNHOUT, PAUL
KUCINICH, DENNIS J
VIA KUCINICH FOR PRESIDENT INC.
06/30/2003 500.00 26940295925
09/21/2003 250.00 26960140255
STEIN, JILL
VIA JILL STEIN FOR PRESIDENT
10/22/2012 250.00 13964633282
Total Contributions: 1000.00"
Yet I know in some sense that does foreclose some opportunities laws or not -- although it may also open others. There was also a time in the USA before the secret ballot when people would sometimes even have to fight their way through to the polls. It's not clear to me the secret ballot even is worth it if the cost is vote fraud via voting computers and also not being able to vote via the internet. Still, there was a chilling effect a bit in knowing any campaign donation would be a matter of record, it's true. I live in a very staunch Republican area. Although in looking at that record I do regret not donating to Cynthia McKinney's campaign as a matter of record (although I did vote for her against Obama). I think I was still a bit disillusioned supporting Kucinich where he seemed to cave on antiwar stuff at the Democratic Convention. Still, we homeschool which Republicans tend to support and Democrats tend to work against somewhat as Democrats push expanding compulsory prison-like public schooling. Republicans have tended to support digital rights a bit better than Democrats. Greens tend to be a bit anti-technology whereas I would like to see better technology. I feel Kucinich actually made more sense coherently given his stated beliefs and personal religion back when he was against abortion (even if preventing abortion in the USA may not be practical culturally or legally or politically). McKinney has her own anger management issues apparently like at an ID checkpoint (not saying sometimes anger is not justified though). Sometimes we don't have the combination of choices we might wish for -- or even know exactly what we might wish for. Possibly the deeper issue is that, compared to other Western democracies, the USA has only two parties -- far right (Republicans) and center right (Democrats). It's hard to make good choices with such a limited set of options. And even left/right is a little arbitrary, since there is no reason that, say, opposition to abortion should go with Republicans. Once could almost just as easily imagine the Democrat platform arguing for the sanctity of life from conception with collective responsibility for care and Republicans arguing for the individual right to choose with an individual responsibility for care. Same for many other arbitrary constellations of political alliances which differ in other countries.
Although, it sounds like from what others write here that Eich was a controversial choice even before he took the position for various reasons, including both for management style and also on technology vs. marketing. And it sounds like some of the propaganda for Proposition 8 was essentially gay bashing. Things are so rarely black and white. If Eich been less controversial, and if Proposition 8 commercials had been less indirectly gay bashing, then it seems possible Mozilla might have said something like "Mozilla takes no position on the protected speech of employees; however Mozilla endorses inclusiveness and diversity" (or something like that).
Still, it is ironically interesting that 50 seconds into the third video here (pro-Proposition 8) the actor (?) says "It's already
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
This is literally the same argument racists used a few decades ago to argue against letting black and white people marry.
Would you please stop this "gay is the new black" nonsense. It's offensive.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
No he said "I want to pass a law that prevents a judge from forcing this state to redefine marriage."
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Regardless of what some advocacy organization says, when the vote is put to the people more often than not the bans pass.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
If the state was all that liberal, it wouldn't have passed Prop 8 in the first place.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
It's hypocrisy of the highest degree. Eich's career was just lynched for holding the same position that Barack Obama held at the time.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
You have and had the same rights as everyone else.
I want to marry Salma Hayek. I can't. Not only because she has no idea of who the hell I am but because she's already married.
In order to enter into the institution of marriage, one needs to have an eligible partner. That means someone who can legally consent, is not of the same sex and is not currently married to someone else.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
the reality is you're wrong, and among youth it's hugely in favor of marriage equality
There is a substantive difference between not having the legal privileges of being married, and being lynched.
You are a nitwit.
well if you honestly think that it must be true
The problem with 99% of the defenses of Eich is that they pretend he was a working stiff instead of the boss. And also ignoring the power he had over other employees, including gay ones.
Eich wasn't fired,
In this country, it used to be socially acceptable to hate blacks and discriminate against them.
That is no longer the case.
In this country, it used to be socially acceptable to hate Jews and discriminate against them.
That is no longer the case.
In this country, it used to be socially acceptable to hate Italians/Irish/Chinese/Catholics and discriminate against them.
That is no longer the case.
Homophobia is at the place where racial or religious discrimination was at a long time ago: unacceptable in polite society.
It was often that way with slavery, inter-racial marriages and even savages keeping their stuff. It's a problem with democracy, too easy for an organized group to remove the rights of others which is partially solved by things like Constitutions with Bills of Rights but even then a large enough majority can remove rights.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
It all came out in the end:
Idiot. People aren't "special" for finally having the rights you've always enjoyed. Blacks weren't "special" after the passage of the 13th Amendment or the Civil Rights Act. Non-property owning men and women weren't "special" after Universal Suffrage. Etc.
When liberals do it, it's okay.
could it be?
If the state is the only entity that can defend a challenge to a law or prop voted into effect by the people
The supreme court didn't rule that to have happened. That is, they didn't say the state is the only entity that can defend a challenge to a law.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Regardless of what some advocacy organization says [...]
Like The Washington Post and ABC News?
Actually, as of late, they haven't been passing. Again, you have to stay up to date. There are a bunch of legacy laws that need to be overturned, granted, but you're not seeing any new laws banning gay marriage in the last year or two--the last ban was back in 2012.
its bigotry by proxy hiding behind "religion", why are these people so bothered by other peoples lives, why can't they just live and let live and stop poking their noses into other peoples business.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I have to agree. No matter how much of an asshole view a person has, they should be able to act on their belief within the law without being condemned for it. The thing that really gets me is that they took it to his employer. If you have a political problem, fight that problem on the political stage. Don't bring that crap to the workplace!
No, that's like sacking someone for being black or jewish.
If the cause he/she donates to is a cause to prejudice to someone for who they are then they should be outed in the same way as Eich.
If the gay CEO sees that being gay in a bigoted community is destroying the company business then maybe its a business decision for CEO to resign in the same way Eich has done. Life is tough at the top (sometimes) when you have to put the business before personal.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Fred Phelps, is that you???
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Are you Fred Phelps's wife?
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Those Republicans with their hate need to just get the fuck out of this state.
Actually a lot of those who voted for prop 8 were Democrats. Remember this same state went for Obama during that same election, and prop 8 still won the majority vote.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Free speech means you will get taken to task for saying horrible things. Nothing about free speech means there won't be consequences.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
The people speaking out were not discussing the issue, they were saying that if you don't agree with us, we will attack you personally.
You'e making a false difference, where none really exists.
People are saying they don't want to work for an asshole. That's fine too. The coporate veil is a legal fiction. If you'e an asshole IRL, then you're an asshole, end of. Suddenly being a corporate employee does not wipe the slate clean from 9-5.
People are saying they don't want to do business with an asshole too. That's also fine too. There are people I won't do business with also.
The thing is: the point of speech is to convince people to do things, otherwise it's pointless. If everyone ageed that he was being an asshole but then made no change in their actions, what would be the point.
The point about free speech protections is to be free from government sanctioned (i.e. legal) violence for what you say. Insisting that people treat you the same no matte what you say is not what fee speech is about.
He's suffered no violence and there's a big debate on the matter going on. That is free speech working exactly as it should.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
All humans have a right to free personal speech
Yep.
d should have the freedom to express themselves politically however they choose, within the bounds of the law
Yep!
I believe this man should have the right to express whatever idiot belief he wants and still keep his job.
And that's where the problem lies, and where I disagree. The thing is being an asshole IRL does not get wiped clean 9-5 merely by being in a company. Since you've given a general argument, we can prod the bonudaries to see how far it goes.
So apparently it's within the free speech laws of the US to declare that one grouping of people "should" be killed. It only steps over the bounds into solicitation of murder when you say a specific person should be killed.
Imagine a hypothetical situation where you have a company with a significant number of key employees falling into a category targeted by real wing nuts, say Jews. The you get a CEO who in his off hours is known ot rant and rave about the Zionist Imperialism and how all Jews should be killed.
Well, now you have a bit of a problem. What do you do. The thing is you can't have both keeping their jobs. Tose key employees aren't going to work for a company where the CEO espouses views about how they should be murdered for their beliefs. In fact they'd have a good case for construtive dismissal. Or you eject the nutty CEO for holding his views.
What do you do?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Ok, one more time for the slow among us. The Sjpreme court's take on it is not impkrtant. Its the failure to defend a law passed by the people that is. Any law can be defeated if no one defends it and the state has a duty to do so but faied to do it.
Imagine the sstate's smoking regulation being challenged by big tobacco and no the governor decides not to defend it. Imagine the off shord drilling ban having the same circumstances. They win by default and the law is overturned even if everyone in the state unanimousely voted for it.
Eich wasn't fired/resigned/whatever because he expressed a political opinion He resigned because the reaction both inside and outside of Mozilla to that action was having serious, negative repercussions for the organization. If Steve Jobs had showed up at One Infinite Loop in full Nazi regalia one day, one might also argue that he was just expressing his political opinion. The fact that half the business world suddenly stopped buying Macintoshes in protest is key here. Would the CEO's right to express his admiration of Nazis (or at least Nazi fashion) be more important than the fact that he was tanking the company? Should the Board simply sit back and watch the entire company die because they don't want to "break the law"? This is quite idiotic. I'll speculate that if Eich had expressed regret or a change of heart, the whole thing would be done by now and he'd be working. But he chose not to, and this has led a lot of people (including three board members) to signal their great displeasure. For those looking to blame the "gay lobby," I would suggest they think this through more carefully. Gay people don't want to be treated badly, so when they see someone in a prominent position acting like that's ok, they react sharply. If Mr Eich had given money to an anti-Hispanic organization and people protested, would they want to say, "Oh, that's just appeasing the Latino Lobby"?
So someone actively trying to take away your rights should not be called out as doing such?
Bigot, pure and simple.
The fact that Prop 8 passed just makes it worse. He didn't just voice an opinion, he contributed money to getting the law changed to reflect it. Imagine if someone spent money supporting a law preventing you from marrying your wife because you had blue eyes. It's just their "opinion", just their free speech, right?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Imagine the sstate's smoking regulation being challenged by big tobacco and no the governor decides not to defend it. Imagine the off shord drilling ban having the same circumstances. They win by default and the law is overturned even if everyone in the state unanimousely voted for it.
The governor who did that likely wouldn't get re-elected if the law was important and popular. Would you care to provide a reason why free and fair elections are not a sufficent check against that behaviour?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
"Rapidly losing the will to live here."
If not a joke, your contributions would be missed, whether agreed with or not. See also my comment to someone else related to depression: http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
And on the value of public disagreements: ..."
https://sites.google.com/site/...
" The theory Dan Sperber suggested--the argumentative theory of reasoning--proposes that instead of having a purely individual function, reasoning has a social and, more specifically, argumentative function. The function of reasoning would be to find and evaluate reasons in dialogic contexts--more plainly, to argue with others. Here's a very quick summary of the evolutionary rationale behind this theory. Communication is hugely important for humans, and there is good reason to believe that this has been the case throughout our evolution, as different types of collaborative--and therefore communicative--activities already played a big role in our ancestors' lives (hunting, collecting, raising children, etc.). However, for communication to be possible, listeners have to have ways to discriminate reliable, trustworthy information from potentially dangerous information--otherwise speakers would be wont to abuse them through lies and deception. Listeners must have mechanisms of epistemic vigilance. One way listeners and speakers can improve the reliability of communication is through arguments. The speaker gives a reason to accept a given conclusion. The listener can then evaluate this reason to decide whether she should accept the conclusion. In both cases, they have used reasoning--to find and evaluate a reason respectively. If reasoning does its job properly, communication has been improved: a true conclusion is more likely to be supported by good arguments, and therefore accepted, thereby making both the speaker--who managed to convince the listener--and the listener--who acquired a potentially valuable piece of information--better off.
Our evolutionary account is much more in touch with the prevailing view of the evolution of human cognition. According to this view--alternatively named the social brain hypothesis, or the Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis, among others--most of human cognition evolved to answer the demands of our social world.
And:
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes....
"We do not claim that reasoning has nothing to do with the truth. We claim that reasoning did not evolve to allow the lone reasoner to find the truth. We think it evolved to argue. But arguing is not only about trying to convince other people; it's also about listening to their arguments. So reasoning is two-sided. On the one hand, it is used to produce arguments. Here its goal is to convince people. Accordingly, it displays a strong confirmation bias -- what people see as the "rhetoric" side of reasoning. On the other hand, reasoning is also used to evaluate arguments. Here its goal is to tease out good arguments from bad ones so as to accept warranted conclusions and, if things go well, get better beliefs and make better decisions in the end."
So, thanks for being part of that process. In any case, hang in there, there is a chance it might get better.
Also, tangentially, on things "getting better" and depression and being in a minority:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
"Its goal is to prevent suicide among LGBT youth by having gay adults convey the message that these teens' lives will improve."
Example:
"It Gets Better - Princeton University"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
But that sentiment can apply to lots of things given a life so full of
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
So it's okay to fire someone for being conservative and supporting conservative causes, but not for being liberal and supporting liberal causes? Okay, got it.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Are we still pretending that donating money to prevent American citizens from marrying the person they love is just a "political belief"?
Considering that it's still a contentious legal issue in most of the U.S. and is largely split along party lines, yes that's exactly what it is. That may change in the future, but, for right now, it's very much a political issue. And the people on the right think they they're every bit as morally justified in this as those on the left. And I personally don't want to see people losing their jobs over this very fucking politicized holy war, be they a Prop-8 supporter in CA or a gay rights supporter in TX.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Lol.. so we are a lawless nation unless someone can get elected to fix something. kind of like term limits in california and the current governor. You would hope an election would fix it but you would likely be wasting your time.
But not only that, someone will have to duplicate all the effort and expense to redo the law and it will have to go up against court precedent which will make it unenforcable until it is changed. Precedent also limits the ability to challenge the premise of the nullification of the law. It may be that some laws could never be recreated unless a judge ignored precrdent. It opens a can of worms that are dificult to gather up and put a lid back on
The default needs to be uphold the law and then maybe we wouldn't have a billion laws on the books not being enforced and every politicial screaming there should be a law about that whenever it is broken.
$1000 is not a lot of money in a campaign that took millions in, and Prop 8 said nothing about gays being "subhuman".
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I disagree that you don't have the same rights as "breeders". You too can choose to be heterosexual and to breed, same as anybody else.
The benefits are for the *children* and *parents of children* in an attempt to have the human species continue. I am aware you are philosophically opposed to the species continuing; but that doesn't give you the right to insist that others can't continue the species.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Were scared into, misinformed and generally lied to in order to get them to vote against equal rights, removing an existing right and attempting to get gay couples forcibly divorced.
Get it right, dont gloss over the 8 campaign and the hatred and lies it was spewing.
Correct, they didn't. What said that blacks were subhuman was the US Constitution- where they were specifically listed (along with women and Native Americans) as being 3/5ths of a human. I don't see anybody pushing to claim that homosexuals are 3/5ths of a human, do you?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I used to think that way, until the gays decided to turn on EVERYBODY ELSE and start being extremely violent and destructive.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Not unless he's posting from hell.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
This is a ridiculous straw man you're building here, and please do note where I said that I was making somewhat of a simplification. The correct example for you to make would be something to the effect of "Knowing that he holds these personal beliefs, can he be trusted to not exempt or exclude homosexual employees, from XXXX due to their yyyy...." To which my answer is that, yes, this is certainly a valid concern. But I can't imagine that this man was hired off the street with no previous examples of his character and actions to draw from. So where's the line for you? At what level is personal speech "acceptable"?. What is "the right level" of tolerance? Let's take it further: "what is the right level of patriotism?" "What is the right level of morality?" "what is the right level of piety?" Just because you and I agree that LGBT crowd should be allowed to marry gives us no right to impose those beliefs on others, and to do so is wrong.
The Bay Area is one of the liberal places on the planet. The Fresno area, not so much. Eich isn't living in Fresno or Sacramento, he lives and works in the Bay Area.
Are you joking? Polygamy is *allowed* in the Torah, see http://www.jewishencyclopedia.... and http://www.chabad.org/library/....
Living among monogamous pagans is a much more relevant factor.
multiple marriage (regardless of which sex is the single) = polygamy [ok so far]
"reverse traditional" by which I assume you mean one Female, multiple Male marriage = polyandry [note same root as android, etc. Literally "many men."]
the far more common one Male, multiple Female marriage = polygyny [note same root as gynacologist. Literally "many women."]
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
Barack Obama is a politician. They're free to hold offensive views and many are rewarded for it, it's part of the job.
And they weren't really the same position either. The most anti-gay-rights thing Obama ever did is to state that "Marriage should be between a man and a woman." About as close to the fence as you can get on the anti-gay-rights side. Later he denounced those views and has made many pro-gay-rights statements and actions.
Eich donated to a campaign to strip gays of an existing right to marry and has been completely unapologetic about it. Not the same position.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
This is a ridiculous straw man you're building here,
It's not a straw man, it's reductio ad absurdum. Quite different.
and please do note where I said that I was making somewhat of a simplification.
Yes, but you'd simplified it so far that what you said didn't work. Unfortunately I did not know the more complex thing you were thinking.
To which my answer is that, yes, this is certainly a valid concern. But I can't imagine that this man was hired off the street with no previous examples of his character and actions to draw from.
But there's more than that. Mozilla is a very public organisation and a charity dedicated to "doing good" in some regard. There's also the problem that mozilla employees who have opted to work at such a place not being happy working for someone who is a known bigot. The thing is you get to choose to have one or the other but not both working for you. Who do you choose?
So where's the line for you? At what level is personal speech "acceptable"?
Circumstance dependent, of course. At a certain stage, I'm not going to do business or work for someone who is too far over. It's always easy to identify things far to the side of the line.
What is "the right level" of tolerance?
That's an easy one. I'm happy to tolerate (from a legal point of view) anyone that doesn't try to restrict the freedom of others. Your freedom ends where my nose begins and all that. From a personal and professional point of view, I don't like assocating with assholes.
"What is the right level of morality?"
Your freedom ends where mine begins.
Just because you and I agree that LGBT crowd should be allowed to marry gives us no right to impose those beliefs on others, and to do so is wrong.
That's the thing though: Eich was the one using the force of law to impose his beliefs on the LGBT crowd, not the other way around. He funded a law which prevented people he'd never see or never meet from marrying. Of course he's free to do that if he likes, and I'd never dream of trying to use government sanctioned violence to prevent him from doing so (a qualm, you'll note that te doesn't share). However, I see no reason why anyone should choose to associate with someone like that if they don't wish to.
Free speech is generally about preventing government sanctioned violence against the speaker. It allows the speaker to say unpleasant things about others, and of course on the flip side, it allows others to say unpleasant things about the speaker. Free speech doesn't say you get to keep your friends etc.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
: a person who strongly and unfairly dislikes other people, ideas, etc. : a bigoted person; especially : a person who hates or refuses to accept the members of a particular group (such as a racial or religious group)
Your definition of bigotry differs from that of all respected sources. Therefore, the remainder of your argument is invalid. You also say...
Intolerance makes the world go 'round'...
To which I say, what world do you live in? I imagine if you were a Jew in 1939 living in Germany, or a native american in 1800 living in north america, etc, you may have a different opinion on the effect of intolerance and it's value to society.
Regardless of whether we agree with someone's political, religious, or frankly any belief is NONE OF OUR BUSINESS. Last I checked this is America where we have freedom of speech and are free to believe what we like. You're saying basically that anyone that donates money to a campaign for a candidate or cause that you're not in favor of is wrong. That my friend is also bigotry. If he was forcing his views and beliefs on the company and the employees then yes, that's wrong and cause for dismissal. He believed something was wrong based on HIS BELIEFS and regardless of what the rest of us think he's got every right to do so. You don't have to like it. You don't have to use a product he's responsible for. THAT'S YOUR CHOICE! Get it? By the way, I suggest you don't use any web enabled device because Eich invented JavaScript as far as I know. You wouldn't want to use a web page that had JavaScript on it that was invented by a bigot.
Prop 8 was to reign in judicial activism.
And since when are politicians entitled to additional rights?
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
So this article is typical bullshit.
So when judges rule in a way you don't like it's judicial activism?
Politicians don't have additional rights, they have different job conditions. For example if you were a bartender you could use adult language with customers and not get fired, while if you were a mascot at an amusement park you couldn't. I can't show up to work in a french maid outfit and keep my job while a stripper can. I could, however, star in porn videos in my free time and keep my job while a Disney pop idol couldn't. Are you getting the idea? In some jobs there are restrictions in what's allowed both on and off the job for PR reasons.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
There's very little mention of invisible sky grandfathers in the under-50 crowd (the belief may still be there, but it's rarely presented as argument for policy).
Very little direct mention as argument for, maybe, yet it still *informs* most of their policy. Those that aren't blatant corporate cock-sucking, at least (and yes, I know, the majority of the policy on "both sides" falls into that latter category).
You say that like it's a bad thing. Why would policy informed by a strong moral compass, work ethic, and sense of responsibility be bad? I'm for anything that builds an expectation that adults are expected to be responsible, to plan for stuff that can go wrong and work to prepare for stuff going wrong, and to act as if our choices in life have real and profound consequences. Plus the religious tend to be more charitable, and I'd like to see charity come back into favor (at the expense of some other guy should be forced to give his money to the poor, which is not charitable at all).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Resistance is futile.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Brenden invented Javascript and has remained very active in that community. He has DEMONSTRATED the ability to engender an active ecosystem which is what Mozilla requires. To weigh that against a political contribution 6 years ago is insanity and nonsense. The strident call for his resignation bodes very poorly for the validity of LGBT concerns and suggests an underlying coercion that is coming to the surface now that they consider themselves in the ascendant.
Be More, Be Manly, The Manly Geek Ubergeek Extraordinaire Blogger: www.manlygeek.com/blog Podcaster: podcast.man
Okay, they the GLBT community members who took part in this are hypocritical bullies who are using their newfound political favor to engage in the same acts they used to condemn loudly when they were done to their members.
For what it's worth, I'd be equally pissed if Eich was "forced out" for being gay or for donating in opposition to Prop 8. That would be equally wrong to do this for those reasons.
Okay, then when the political winds change you would also consider it "free speech working" if a CEO is forced out because he supported gay marriage once 6 years prior? Because that would be the exact same thing that happened with Eich for a reversed position.
Funny thing about discrimination law is that it doesn't prevent discrimination, it merely trains people what not to say. The OP says that clearly. What would be illegal was implied but carefully never said explicitly, and it is hard to prove intent. I knew of a case many years ago where it looked like a line manager was choosing people to lay off who had used the company medical benefits, such costs come directly off the bottom line, but nothing was provable because no intent to do that was stated, meaning in public. The result is that the law is an aid to people who discriminate.
We are lucky that many people who lead like to be liked and almost worse than being fired outright is to be shamed. At least if the CEO has a disagreement with the board and the shareholders, he can rationalize that he did the best he could, but if he knows that according to his own standards he made a mistake or did wrong that he feels shame for it, then he may resign on his own accord. That is good. It levels the playing field between ordinary and powerful people.
If you read the relevant California law, donating to a PAC or similar for a ballot initiative is also protected and they cannot make hiring/firing decisions based on it.
I wish you hadn't posted anon, you made a brilliant statement about everything wrong with forcing Eich out of office. Every future thread about this topic should start and end with your post.
Why is Californian law an issue? Mozilla developers are located all around the world, as are Mozilla users. This is a world-wide Open Source software development community, not a USian business.
Oh, then you also had no problem with people being forced out of their jobs for supporting gay rights in the 80's. No? They you're a hypocrite. The worst atrocities in history have been committed by people convinced they were "morally right" - the Holocaust, the Salem Witch Trials, the Inquisition, the Crusades, 9/11 - do you really want to go down that road with secular humanism as your moral basis? We all know where that road ends and it isn't pretty.
Work ethic is a moral value. A strong work ethic leads to strong class divide, with people judging each other as lazy or don't "deserve" their wealth because they didn't meet up to one's work ethic. This is a major reason leading to class warfare.
Hahaha! That's what the words "lazy" and "deserve" mean. You wanna? You better work bitch! Not a class divide thing at all - people from all classes can be found working hard (like it's a profession).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
If you want to call opposing gay marriage being a hate campaign then you'll also have to accept it when the other side calls pro-choice initiatives murder campaigns. Or other similarly stupid word transformations meant to coerce people to your cause.
What was done to Eich was unjust and indefensible. Everyone who had a hand in it should be ashamed of themselves.
The question of who invented it is complicated and probably irrelevant. The question of how to disentangle government and religion here is much more important.
Marriage has a whole range of legal effects, many of which are difficult or impossible to replicate without marriage. Because of that, deliberately restricting marriage to that which is defined by one or more religions is establishment of those religions, and hence unconstitutional.
I really don't care whether the term "marriage" is kept as a legal term that churches use (perhaps in a slightly different way) or if it's replaced legally by some other term and relegated to informal and/or religious usage. I care about the legal effects, and who the effects apply to is much more a political than religious question.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
...in this setting,' Baker was quoted as saying... Doesn't sound like she gave him much of a try at it unless you believe the 'It was Brendan's decision' part. Wouldn't a newly minted, first-time CEO want to give it the old college try and see where the chips fall after some open (and lengthy) discourse?
I'm not following your logic. You say that Eich did something that was within his rights. At that point, numerous people complained about him, which was within their rights as clearly as the donation was within Eich's rights. You seem to be implying that Eich has free speech but should have immunity from consequences, while the people who complained about him should suffer consequences for their complaints. Why does Eich get the free pass here?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You mean if "at will" employment existed?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
What does Stalin have to do with this?
BTW, his influence over the Communist party was weaker until around September 1939, when quite a few Communists quit because of Stalin's alliance with Germany, and the Party switch from "Hitler is evil" to "Hitler is all right". The people who were OK with that were mostly just taking Stalin's orders.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It may be difficult for a gay to lead some companies effectively, in which case there are reasons not to select one for CEO. Satisfied?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
He did say the Klan of the 21st century, if there have been tons of lynchings since 2000 on they are keeping it very quiet.
Supporting a traditional definition of marriage is not the same as treating people with disrespect
Cognitive dissonance at its finest. Oppressing people is fine as long as they're the ones you think should be oppressed or because oppressing them is traditional?
All you have to do is put yourself in their shoes. If 90% of the country was gay and forbade you from marrying a person of the opposite gender because marriage had always been for same-sex couples, would you feel oppressed? If a gay person's spouse could visit them in the hospital, could claim tax write-offs and could inherit easily from their spouse and make medical decisions for them, but you were denied those things because your marriage was considered nontraditional, would you feel oppressed?
http://hotair.com/archives/201...
Obama wasn't on board until about 2012 as well, he must resign too.
Because the communists of the black lists where people that aligned themselves with a political group that was unpopular and arguably evil and proven wrong by history.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
So when judges rule in a way you don't like it's judicial activism?
Not always but in this case it was. The judge was not impartial. He was a gay man who exploited his position to further the cause. It wasn't just his vision of what ought to be, it was a decision in which he had a personal stake. People get bent out of shape that Clarence Thomas used to work for Monsanto, it would be like if he still consulted for them while on the bench.
For example if you were a bartender you could use adult language with customers and not get fired, while if you were a mascot at an amusement park you couldn't.
If there are behavioral guidelines in place, that's true.
I can't show up to work in a french maid outfit and keep my job while a stripper can.
If there's a dress code where you work.
I could, however, star in porn videos in my free time and keep my job while a Disney pop idol couldn't.
Two words, "Morals Clauses". Three more words "Disney uses them".
Are you getting the idea?
Yes. That you're grasping at straws.
In some jobs there are restrictions in what's allowed both on and off the job for PR reasons.
This has nothing to do with that. This was legal, ethical behavior that took place several years before he was employed by Mozilla. After a modern-day witch hunt and lynching, he was forced out of a job that he was eminently qualified for and that's wrong.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
A "traditional" definition of marriage also includes a marriage between a man and 17 women, or a man and an eight year old girl.
You'll forgive me if I don't give a shit about what a "traditional" definition of marriage looks like.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Please tell me that is sarcasm because if not then you really are a fool as marriage was around before religion (at least the ones around and practiced today) That and the government recognizes a marriage even if a non religious person preforms the ceremony
I must respectfully disagree. By simply campaigning against him, he may consider himself harassed. Free speech, to be really free, must have license to offend.
There is no reasonable definition of harass here, that's the real problem. It's basically what you could probably get a civil jury to agree with, and I think we've all noticed how split right down the middle this whole case is. Is it harassment if 90% of the Mozilla user base stops using the product? Is it harassment to write a letter to the board protesting their choice? Is it harassment to stand outside their offices with a placard chanting? If he feels harassed he has every right to file protective motions in a court of law, I doubt he'll be following that up though.
As for your uncivil points, a lot of people would argue that 'yes' he was being uncivil when he donated money to that cause. Other people would disagree (maybe me included). People are going to have their say, and California criminal codes don't trump the constitution of the land.
Nice post though, made me stop and think for a minute. It's a shame we have to tolerate the horrible, nasty, venom filled, bigoted, hurtful, degrading and insulting free speech to allow all the other good stuff. But it's well worth that offence and harassment.
Homophobes and racists using the same language and the same arguments for their bigotry does not make "gay the new black". It just makes bigots the new bigots. A surprising twist.
Of course its okay when YOU do it ... just not when the other guy does it.
Fact: 52% of the state agrees with him. As such, thats how we decide things in this country, remember?
Its funny how you'll use the word bigot for anything that is in disagreement with you, but its okay and even Greeeeat! when you do it yourself.
You're a hypocrite, regardless of how politically correct you think yourself to be.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Not really at all. Because, you see, morality has a hierarchy. The right to labor is a bit higher than the right to punish sin.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Not always but in this case it was. The judge was not impartial. He was a gay man who exploited his position to further the cause. It wasn't just his vision of what ought to be, it was a decision in which he had a personal stake. People get bent out of shape that Clarence Thomas used to work for Monsanto, it would be like if he still consulted for them while on the bench.
I guess we'll need asexual judges since by this logic, a straight man (or woman?) would be equally unfit to rule on the case.
So you seem to be upset that there was nothing in writing that said "while employed with us as the face of the company and highest-paid employee, being a horrible bigot and donating to bigoted causes will be considered a fireable offense due to the loss of business from public backlash." Well after this I'm sure all CEO's contracts will have such clauses, so the board members won't have to choose between stepping right onto the wrong end of a lawsuit or hurling themselves against the 38th floor windows. And he wasn't forced out of the position anyway. He could have stayed on and gone down with the ship.
I also find it hilarious that you compared this to a witch hunt or lynching. We're not so far past those that you wouldn't know the original meaning of those words. It's just hilarious how the most powerful group in any society always has a massive persecution complex.
"This guy's donations to a bigoted cause brought a boycott onto his company and he was pressured to leave the position for it!?!? THAT'S JUST LIKE BURNING HIM ALIVE FOR BEING UNPOPULAR OR BEING HANGED TO DEATH BY AN ANGRY MOB FOR HIS SKIN COLOR!!!"
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The have's think they work hard, so they antagonize the have-not's who question the system. They convince themselves that the have-not's are just "lazy"
That's the opposite of strong values: that's hypocrisy. Those with a strong moral compass and strong values recognize hard work wherever they find it. Those who lucked into money don't, and are thus mistaken about "lazy".
The problem you complain about stems from the lack of moral commitment, not an excess of it.
I've never met anyone who falls into the "class divide" mindset/trap you mention who wasn't themselves "lazy". It's excuse-making, or worse it's a line swallowed whole from others' excuse making.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Hahaha. The old "I'm right, and any argument you make against me is flawed because you're wrong, and thus none of your data or arguments are trustworthy" rhetoric. Begging the question while poisoning the well.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Of course the Supreme Court's take is important. The Constitution of the USA is the supreme law of the land and the Supreme Court provides a verification check that all laws are consistent with and do not violate the Constitution.
While the people may be capable of using referendums to pass laws that violate the constitution, if the state believes that that law violates the constitution then why should the state be forced to waste court and legal resources defending a law that they know is going to be eventually stuck down? Since when are conservatives in favour of useless waste of government resources? Oh I guess it's OK when those wasted resources are spent defending their pet bigotries.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
" If 90% of the country was gay and forbade you from marrying a person of the opposite gender because marriage had always been for same-sex couples, would you feel oppressed? "
would the same country allow us to have a legal union allowing us the same rights? just not a term used by those believing gay is the only way approved by "their god"?
fucking usually IS a precursor to marriage.
Did you notice the part where he apologized for doing so, and Brendan Eich did not ?
-- Julien Pierre http://www.madbrain.com/blog
he was fired for bad judgement
just like in my new hire embarrasing the boss/founder example...even though its true it's still bad judgement which is enough to get you fired in the "vagaries of contemporary employment"
think twitter...twitter is speech...if a person sends a dick pic via twitter they might be fired depending on their job
that's ***legal***
those are two examples but the point is he had *bad judgement*
is it fair? i'm not addressing that question b/c I don't know the details of his hiring in the first place...maybe he had been warned internally, maybe all Mozilla are like him...no way for us in this discussion to know
he apologized...that should be noted
Thank you Dave Raggett
Right, right. You claim that X is bad. I ask "wait, why is X bad? Please justify" and I'm the one with blind assumptions?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Yes, that's it. The pro-gay side is just as bigoted as the anti-gay side. They oppose opposite -sex marriage, beat up and spit on straights, refuse to rent apartments to them, ban them from churches, and call them morally depraved. Oh wait, no they don't.
Actually, they do all those things. They even have an epithet for them: breeders.
That's an extremely small minority, and is like saying that white people like lynching black folks (or like saying straight people like to lynch gay people for that matter). Don't tar an entire group of people for a couple bad actors.
I'm a gay person and I've been around many gay/bi/etc people through much of my adult life, and I've only ever known one person who used that epithet.
In California prop 8 was overturned basically due to a loophole; the governor's refused to defend the law in court.
California's Prop 8 was overturned because it was ruled (rightly/wrongly) in federal court as being unconstitutional under the US Constitution Amendment 14, which is why a state constitutional amendment can be considered "unconstitutional." The state refused to appeal or fight that ruling.
First, other states have been drafting laws against gay marriage intended precisely to avoid similar legal problems.
Those states are in trouble as well, as they may also run afoul of the 14th amendment.
The real question here is whether the states can define marriage, and if so how the federal government can handle multiple definitions of marriage as it also has a stake in marriage benefits.
Regardless of what some advocacy organization says [...]
Like The Washington Post and ABC News [washingtonpost.com]?
Are they journalists? Well then they're likely super-leftist too.
(I'm not even sure how I would tag this post. A combination of super-cynical and sarcastic?)
I wish I hadn't already commented on this thread when I have mod points. This is too enlightening to leave at Score: 0.
According the online Etymology Dictionary, "liberal" stems from Latin liber, meaning free (for a man). What did -that- mean? Essentially, something which was liber was "suitable for a free man," or gentleman, which is why "liberal arts" are titled to that -- arts for a gentleman as opposed to a tradesman. The middle ages saw some interesting definitions for liberal, both positive (selfless, noble, abundant) and negative (unrestrained, extravagant). It attained it's more current definition during the Enlightenment, meaning "free from prejudice, tolerant."
Yes, because what they think is not necessarily what is real. I think Unicorns are neat. See where I'm going?
It's the process not the end result that is most important. If you allow any law to be left undefended, you allow any law to be left undefended. Suppose there is a law that says all traffic not separate by a solid wall median must come to a complete stop when school buses are loading and unloading children unless in designated zones which have a speed limit of 20mph or less. Now suppose everyone but a trucking company supports this law but it makes them late for their deliveries so they pay a governor a lot of campaign contributions and then take the law to court claiming it unconstitutionally impedes their right to travel and participate in commerce.
So if the governor decides not to defend this law because for 500K he became convinced it was unconstitutional, it is gone and likely not to be brought back without a lot of hassle. But if the court says it is unconstitutional, then it is. If they do not, you have a chance to make your case again to the appeals court and maybe even to the supreme court. But you cannot step in for the governor and say wait a minute, this is a good law because children sometimes dart in front of traffic right after exiting school buses. It has to be the state or government doing it.
Nobody's saying "don't hire that guy". However there are situations in which somebody may not make a good CEO.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
That's the thing you see, they would have to buy off the governor and the judge. They could try judge shopping by carefuly choosing the jurisdiction in which the case is tried. In the end whether a law is popular shouldn't matter, but whether it follows established constitutional precedent does.
But even if the scenario played out as you said, the difference is that anybody who had had a child injured due to an incident where a car didn't stop for school bus would have had standing to appeal the ruling striking down the school bus law. If nobody can prove standing by showing that they were actually harmed (as opposed to not being allowed to promote their bigotry) then yes the state by default gets the chance to look at the ruling on prop 8 and say: the judge is right and the prop is garbage so no point throwing good money after bad.
Prop 8 was bought and paid for by religious fundamentalists who were upset that other people that they don't like might have the chance to be happy. There was plenty of precedent that indicated that piece of toilet paper shouldn't get the time of day at any jurisdictional level.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Now there can be problems with the standing requirements for legal challenge, and that's when you get into issues of national secrecy Catch-22s, such as with the Patriot Act, where the people who are being harmed aren't allowed to demand access to any evidence that would show that they are being harmed. But that's quite different from allowing everybody with an axe to grind free rein to butt into the business of other people who they otherwise would have no dealings with.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Excellently said. This is the unspoken truth that people have a hard time recognizing.
In the modern world people want to feel as though they don't have to make a choice. That everything is obvious. That you can just put everything under a microscope and it becomes clear. This is simply a failure of the people running with the herd to own their wishes/choices and jump out there with that. We are devolving into invertibrates.
Amicus curiae briefs during the original trial?
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
No. Polygamy is outlawed for religious and tax reasons.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!