Not to put words in his mouth, but I’m pretty sure he’s saying companies have the right to fire people in either case, but in both cases the ones who would be deserving of scorn would be the homophobes.
They changed their minds, publicly. If Eich had changed his mind, he likely would not have resigned.
I see what you did there. 
Simple way to tell if it’s correct or not. Does it end with this:
Then no, it’s not correct.
Judging by what I’ve learned in this thread, Obama and Biden actively told every single gay person that they don’t deserve the same rights as other human beings. Obama and Biden’s position was all about malice and bigotry. Obama and Biden contributed to an effort to deny rights to their fellow citizens. etc… etc… Hardly sins that one would expect to be dismissed with a simple “other guys were worse” or “they flip-flopped recently”. (And of course it wasn’t just them: Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and nearly any other prominent Democrat you could name were all opposed to same-sex marriage before they were for it.)
Mozilla Corp is owned by a non-profit org, it’s not really a company in the traditional sense. But anyway, I support the right of the board to pick whomever they want as CEO.
I do disagree with what’s happened to Eich for several reasons:
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I follow tech news, this stuff came out years ago and Eich was kept as CTO through it all. If it was so objectionable why was he kept as CTO and board member during this time?
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Aside for a brief period right after the court case that spurred Prop 8 was decided in favor of gay marriage, it was not legal in California and had not been legal in the 150+ year history of the State. So it is questionable to me that Eich be labeled as some monster for choosing an opinion consistent with the law in his State at the time, and still consistent at least partially with Federal law.
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Obama clearly came out “against” gay marriage in 2008 to get elected President. He sold out the gay community to get moderates to vote for him because he knew the gays would anyway. There’s no evidence he ever had genuine opposition to gay marriage, and only took that stance for crass political purposes.
By the time 2012 rolled around public opinion had shifted considerably, and Obama openly supported gay marriage. I don’t see how Obama’s actions in 2008 didn’t substantially do far worse damage to gay rights than Eich’s $1,000 donation. But I’m willing to bet the vast majority of people around the net who were calling for Eich’s blood are not and have not called for Obama’s. Obama won California huge in 2008, if he had vigorously opposed Prop 8, declared his support for gay marriage rights and the whole nine yards he single-handedly probably could have gotten Prop 8 defeated. He chose to not do that, in fact he chose to take the other side to benefit from the political fruits of that craven position.
- Public opinion shifts–yes, even on civil rights. Everyone in America in 1790 who had any political voice believed that blacks were subhumans who at best should be treated as second class persons. The majority were perfectly fine with outright slavery, and a large minority actually practiced it. We’ve come a long way since then, in part because as opinions have shifted we haven’t rounded up and “purged” all the people who were still holding the “old barbaric” opinion once 50.1% of the public now held the “new correct opinion.” We didn’t line all the Confederates up and shoot them, we didn’t force all the establishment pro-Jim Crow people out of their jobs in the late 50s to 60s. Any kind of social change gets a lot harder if you punish people who don’t change their minds fast enough.
This isn’t the same as someone in 1990 advocating for a return for Jim Crow. Society had moved far enough at that point that that person deserves no “adjustment period.” Most of the country was opposed to SSM in 2008, most of California voters were, both major party Presidential candidates were, and there was exactly zero SCOTUS law suggesting there was any right to gay marriage. In essence it was something all indicators suggested was properly illegal at the State level, left to the discretion of voters. It’s not at all analogous to a hold out Ku Klux Klan member in the 90s or 00s.
This is a special case because the CEO is not “someone”. Yes, the CEO is someone, but he’s not just any someone. He is the face, the leader, the person carefully hand selected to set the direction of the company’s activities. His activities reflect on the company as a whole, not just his individual person.
An anti-SSM position, one where you publicly support the cause is not going to play well with young tech-savvy consumers of Mozilla products. He made Mozilla look bad to their customer base.
If he was CEO of a company selling stuff to Catholic Ministries, he can’t publicly support SSM. Even if I agree with him, you’re going to get your ass thrown out, because your pissing off your customer base.
That’s right.
Well, probably more about craven opportunism, but I’m willing to take them at their publically stated word, and say that their earlier opposition to SSM was based on malice and bigotry.
Either way, it really doesn’t reflect well on them.
Absolutely correct.
Since I’m the one being sinned against, I get to decide which sins I want to forgive. Not you.
Yes, they were. And they were homophobes for doing it.
They were still better than the other guys. By lightyears.
Incidentally, has anyone ever told you that you really suck at gotchas?
He was already a board member and CTO. While those are not the same as being CEO, being a member of the board and a CTO you also are expected to conduct yourself in a manner respective of the company’s reputation. Board members and high executives absolutely are held to a similar standard and would be dismissed from many companies for doing something detrimental to the company’s image.
Hell, that’s true for low level grunts who make bad facebook posts. So it still makes no sense to have kept him on as a board member/CTO all these years.
(bolding mine)
It was legal from June 17 to November 5, the day after prop 8 passed. I don’t know exactly when he made the contribution, but there’s a good chance that your statement in bold above is not correct.
Um, I believe that’s what I said. I noted that case you’re talking about chief, in the very part of the post you’re quoting. Like I said, “aside for a brief period…”
We actually don’t know why Eich donated $1,000, and it’s on him that he chose not to do so. He may (like many) have just disagreed with the judicial branch getting to make what was a legislative decision. Only through judicial activism can any court believe there is a right to gay marriage. You absolutely cannot find it in the constitution or in precedent or statute. It’s something that always should have been left to the discretion of the voters and the legislatures of the States. Just like the APA backed off from classifying homosexuality as a disorder due to politics so too have the courts decided precedent and statute mean nothing due to politics.
Does anyone speaking up on behalf of Eich think companies should be allowed to fire their employees just because they’re gay?
They can in most States, that’s the law of the land.
I know they can. I’m asking what you think of it.
“Should” not “can.”
It was the ‘at the time’ that I was nitpicking. And I"m not getting into the APA issue, considering I strongly disagree with your assessment.
I think Eich could have dodged the bullet this year if his stated opinions ostentatiously “Evolved”.
This one isn’t hard. CEOs wear many hats, one of which is company cheerleader. “I am still a bigot, but I can keep my opinions to myself”, works for an office grunt or even certain VPs, but not the face of a large charitable organization.
I concede that the firing raises a number of issues.
Right, but some people seem to think gay is a protected class Federally, and it isn’t.
Anyway, an employer shouldn’t fire people for being gay.
But I’ve not actually said Mozilla shouldn’t have fired Eich, Mozilla benefits not at all from being a lightning rod for controversy.
My issue is with the hypocrisy of people that only make a fuss when the media tells them to (like the people who ate at Chick-fil-A for years even though it’s basically never been hidden where they stand on various issues based on their known donations but stopped once the media told them Dan Cathy was a homophobe), and even aside from the hypocrisy of it just the concept that if someone was “wrong” in 2008 he should be hounded from his job in 2014. I don’t agree with that, but if I was on Mozilla’s Board my duty would be to the organization/foundation as a whole, not to Eich or even to a sense of justice, so I’d probably have said he needs to go too.
For that matter it’s a good thing like half of Mozilla’s board had already resigned before this, the rest needs to go once they get a new CEO in, especially Mitchell Baker. My point about “Mozilla benefits not at all from being a lightning rod” is so self evident I’d wager anyone with common sense should know that. Mitchell Baker has had a long and close relationship with Brendan Eich, and certainly knows not only about the $1,000 donation (which has been public knowledge for years and was reported on years ago), but probably knows his actual opinions and knows why he’s chosen to never speak publicly about his donation.
As Chairwoman she’s been derelict in even allowing such controversy by supporting Eich’s move into the CEO position. Because now, even though I think it was right to limit the controversy by removing Eich (or “resigning” him), no matter what Mozilla is now going to suffer somewhat for this. The LGBT community may not be angry, but some conservatives might be. Mozilla is about pushing an open Internet and making a web browser (and I guess maybe still an email client and calendar program that no one uses) and a phone OS at some point. In this day and age promoting Eich to that CEO position is a dereliction and I hope the remaining members of the board have the integrity to resign as well once this transition period is over and replacements can be found.
No, not yet.
Right. But they can in most states. And the CEO represents the company in ways most employees don’t. This is also an issue of the CEO’s conduct rather than an innate personal characteristic. All of that makes it harder for me to sympathize with this guy.
You said you disagreed with what happened to him and you also chose to answer a question that I directed to people who disagreed with the firing. I think you may be trying too hard to split hairs here.
I wonder when being a hypocrite became worse than just plain being awful. At some point it became the worst thing you can say about a public figure and baloney charges of hypocrisy started popping up all over the place. Sigh.
“It’s basically never been hidden” is self-contradictory: something is either hidden or it isn’t hidden. Do you mean their views were hidden at one point? Do you mean they were sort of hidden, but not very well? I think you mean Chick-fil-A didn’t make a secret of its views but also didn’t publicize them widely. Once the issue got more attention, people reacted. That’s not hypocritical. Period. If you are the hardcore conscientious consumer type I suppose you could argue that people should try to learn these things before they go to a restaurant, but most people don’t have the time or the energy. They respond to news when they hear it. They may not be all that well informed, but they’re not hypocrites.