He didn't though, so your false equivalency strawman doesn't work in this instance. Considering how paltry and insignificant the donation was, I'm wondering if this guy even knew he made it at all. Have we got an actual quote from the man himself speaking out against gay marriage?
OKCupid urges users to not use Firefox
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He didn't though, so your false equivalency strawman doesn't work in this instance. Considering how paltry and insignificant the donation was, I'm wondering if this guy even knew he made it at all. Have we got an actual quote from the man himself speaking out against gay marriage?
Mercury Fred
Banned
Er, how is that a false equivalency?
blitzcloud
Banned
i appreciate the information, however I very rarely take into consideration the behind the scenes of a product.
Otherwise i'd probably walk naked or with a homemade poncho.
Otherwise i'd probably walk naked or with a homemade poncho.
Actually yes, yes it is. See my above edit and tell me you would feel differently.
It's not a strawman either for that matter.
Faith in humanity growing.
Whether you think this is stupid or pointless. Whether you're using Firefox or not. The fact that this even became an issue, and some legitimate companies are now supporting this, speaks volumes how fast the gay rights movement has shifted public opinion.
It's somewhat amazing to actually be able to witness a social change happen. For example, despite the bigots waiting hours and hours in line for chicken. That same Christian fast food company stopped 99.9% of it's donations and the CEO PUBLICLY declared the donations were a mistake.
Brendan Eich made his views public knowledge by making that donation. Nobody forced him or outed his bigotry, he did this to himself. I'm sure there are many other asshole CEOs that have bigoted or other asshole views but they are at least smart enough and socially aware enough to keep those views private and out of documented public knowledge. Brendan Eich wasn't smart enough, and unlike many other people he's never once said his views have changed or evolved on this issue in the past 6 years.
Let this Mozilla issue be a message to future CEO candidates, bigotry towards homosexuals seems like it will no longer be something the public gives you a pass on, the public will judge you and judge you harshly. Similar to how the public harshly judges open and public racists. You're free to have those opinions, but you're not free from criticism of those opinions.
Whether you think this is stupid or pointless. Whether you're using Firefox or not. The fact that this even became an issue, and some legitimate companies are now supporting this, speaks volumes how fast the gay rights movement has shifted public opinion.
It's somewhat amazing to actually be able to witness a social change happen. For example, despite the bigots waiting hours and hours in line for chicken. That same Christian fast food company stopped 99.9% of it's donations and the CEO PUBLICLY declared the donations were a mistake.
Brendan Eich made his views public knowledge by making that donation. Nobody forced him or outed his bigotry, he did this to himself. I'm sure there are many other asshole CEOs that have bigoted or other asshole views but they are at least smart enough and socially aware enough to keep those views private and out of documented public knowledge. Brendan Eich wasn't smart enough, and unlike many other people he's never once said his views have changed or evolved on this issue in the past 6 years.
Let this Mozilla issue be a message to future CEO candidates, bigotry towards homosexuals seems like it will no longer be something the public gives you a pass on, the public will judge you and judge you harshly. Similar to how the public harshly judges open and public racists. You're free to have those opinions, but you're not free from criticism of those opinions.
Mercury Fred
Banned
Publicly donating cash ≠ private voting.
Exactly. People love to misuse these terms. Especially when they don't have a solid argument.
That is absolutely false.
Read his own blog post of how he hilariously tried to defend his bigotry.
http://brendaneich.com/2012/04/community-and-diversity/
LMAO.
Kano on the Phone
Member
If you found out someone voted for David Duke or some other white supremacist, you wouldn't shy away from them or avoid giving them your money? Honest question.
Eighty Deuce
Banned
I still eat chic-fil-a, and I don't like chrome. I could care less about on individuals opinion, there will always be assholes out there.
Given my position on this, I guess I can take this as partly directed at me.
I do business with and use the products of companies whose CEOs give money to anti-black causes and vote for anti-black politicians. Also anti-woman. Pretty much all of us do, and probably a lot of people here do so consciously since they agree with me about the Republican Party (I'm not really interested in arguing here about whether or not this view of the GOP is correct; what's important is that I have this view). Many Republicans in state governments are pretty open about wanting to suppress the black vote. And obviously the party is pretty obsessed at the state level with limiting women's bodily autonomy. If I had to make a list in order of importance, I'd probably put both of those above gay marriage. But plenty of CEOs give money to the Republican Party and to Republican candidates, and often they do so in support of exactly these policies.
Kano on the Phone
Member
Who said this?
Mercury Fred
Banned
No one is seeing that-- you're taking things to an extreme to obscure the point.
In moments like this, I like to refer to the words of Martin Luther King Jr's wife, the late Coretta Scott King who spoke out about gay rights often in the later part of her life. A few selections:
Coretta Scott King said:
Kano on the Phone
Member
I don't get it. What does this have to do with the topic?
Devolution
Member
I love when people with issues with the institution of marriage feel the need to vocalize it when gay marriage is the topic. Classy as fuck.
Chick-fil-A is in a bit of a different situation than Mozilla, because the chain itself has donated to anti gay groups.
Chick-fil-A deserves to be boycotted and needs to crash and burn.
Mercury Fred
Banned
Right, but the point is if there were a specific donation to legislation that was in place to repeal existing rights for people of color, I think there would be more outcry.
And further if that was what was happening, a boycott like this wouldn't be so frowned upon as it is by some folks wringing their hands here.
Of course it's impossible to live a completely "pure" existence in a consumer, capitalist culture. But when it's something as blatant and egregious as a CEO putting up money to strip people of rights it's a no brainer to avoid the product until he either makes a positive change or is gone.
Devolution
Member
I like to be informed someone sucks so I can at least make more educated purchases or find an alternative to use if and when I can. The "everybody sucks" defense is kind of moot if there is something you really care about and can do something as simple as utilize another browser to send a message.
It's debatable if you're sending any message at all that way.
Kano on the Phone
Member
"Guys, usage dropped after we promoted Doug the bigot as CEO and there was a loud backlash. Let's try to figure out why because I just can't begin to understand what could have happened."
I'm not endorsing a "you can't be perfect so fuck it" argument. I laid out where I was coming from (in the other thread we had on this) here: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=105850826#post105850826
Basically, I think that what this guy did was procedurally just fine (or at least was such that people aren't making a purely procedural objection) and that people ought to be substantively free to participate in politics in this way, (almost) regardless of their views. I absolutely disagree with the "freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences" dismissal of this sort of concern - I'm not a libertarian and I think people need to be free from more than just government retaliation for speech (and, yes, I'm treating a $1000 donation as speech; we can get into that if necessary but I don't think it is).
The Mozilla CEO doesn't support gay marriage, probably because he thinks the marriage as a bound between man and human should be defended. He doesn't have my sword because the first part is meanspirited and stupid, and the second is wrong to me.
Marriage is nowadays most often brought into discussion in relation to homosexuals. Not my decision, but I see where you are coming from. I don't support the Anti-Gay marriage warriors because there intent is ill and based on discrimination. I don't support them at all.
Devolution
Member
When it comes to the support of discrimination I frankly don't agree they need to be protected.
Why is this only about blame? There is thing called consequence.
Some employee does something offensive. Customers decide the offense is too great to ignore or isn't. Their decision is a consequence of that offense.
If customers let it slide business doesn't suffer and employee is oblivious to the offense they made as they keep their job.
If the customers retaliate and business suffers the employee learns they got a reaction and will have to either apologize, get fired or double down and assert their position.
Either scenario is a consequence of how customers choose to react. Focusing on blame is just an argument for who is justified in taking an action. It doesn't negate the fact of previous actions being dependent on the other.
As a side note I would Google the guy if I were you. He invented javascript.
Kano on the Phone
Member
Devolution
Member
Mercury Fred
Banned
Well, I disagree with about 100% of what you have to say here and in your previous post.
Why do you feel that this person should be free from the consequences of his actions? People mentioned earlier that if someone went into their job and said "I hate black people" there would be consequences. Of course he is allowed to say it and that's a legally protected right but that doesn't mean the people around him can't shun him. And in this case, Eich's actions and his subsequent non-apology and inaction to rectify the situation in a meaningful or believable way have cause both consumers and employees and board members of his own company to want him gone.
In your earlier post you get into the slippery area of "ranking the evils" when you mention neo-Nazis. But let me reiterate: Prop 8 was designed to and did STRIP people of civil rights they had been legally granted. Not stop, not prevent, take away. If you ask me, that's pretty evil and the legal consensus seems to be that Prop 8 and measures like it exist to dehumanize and marginalize gay people for no justifiable reason.
How could you say it's a false equivalency? Prop 8 was about stripping the rights of
What would your response be if you thought they were equivalent?
If I found out Elon Musk gave a single $1000 donation to David Duke 6 years ago with no other form of support and in fact Tesla Motors in response to it coming out posted it is in 100% lock-step support of civil rights and racial equality, I probably would find it weird but it wouldn't cause me to boycott Tesla/want their new model (significantly) less.
If I found out someone high up at the EFF did the same thing in support of prop 8, I wouldn't join a campaign to "fuck net neutrality!"
The problem I have with that is that it doesn't really let us come up with rules that everyone can agree to abide by.
That's basically the point of having these norms of public or political behavior, right? They're like laws of war - the idea is to be able to agree on how we go about fighting our ideological battles even as we disagree about whatever it is we're fighting about. Like, we all agree that you can't go around killing voters who disagree with you so that you have a majority.
It's important that these rules be ideologically neutral because otherwise they don't really have any force. For example, we really don't like it when Republicans in the Senate filibuster every little thing. But "you shouldn't filibuster good bills" doesn't help, because if the Republicans thought the bills were good they wouldn't be filibustering them. We need something like "you only filibuster when something is really, really important", so that there's a culture of allowing some bills to go through even though you disagree with them. We had that at one point, but it broke down and now we're worse off.
Specifically, the problem with "pro-discrimination political activity doesn't need to be protected" is that we don't have agreement as to what constitutes pro-discrimination political activity. I mean, if we did, then we wouldn't need the norm in the first place because if gay marriage opponents understood what it was they were doing they wouldn't be gay marriage opponents. They understand the "gay agenda" as being in part an effort to persecute Christians or convert their children, or whatever. Other people will tell you that liberalism in general is about class warfare and punishing success. Or that anti-white racism is the biggest problem we face right now. These people will sincerely tell you that they feel like we're the pro-discrimination side here. So this norm doesn't work - it just tells everybody that it's okay to do bad things to their political opponents. I think this kind of approach ends up justifying boycotts for basically every political disagreement, from both sides, when what we want is a norm that works to clear out a big space in public life for differences of opinion, even fairly important opinions.
NTIETS13A_Superiority
Banned
If in front of me was a button to erase all life from universe, I would push it. You people are really lucky that it is not the case.
On less serious note: Is this about religious marriage, that I am against in all forms, or about registration of relationship, then I would wonder why anyone would care/be against it.
And everyone knows my stance in this matter is the right one.
On less serious note: Is this about religious marriage, that I am against in all forms, or about registration of relationship, then I would wonder why anyone would care/be against it.
And everyone knows my stance in this matter is the right one.
Devolution
Member
I don't agree with this. Not all bigoted people are just ignorant individuals who don't know what the moral right or humanist solution is, some are just discriminating pieces of shit who don't care.
Kano on the Phone
Member
I would. I mean using a different browser isn't hard, so it's an easy thing I can do to not support someone who contributed badly in an obvious way to society.
haha there's no way you aren't wearing a fedora
Mercury Fred
Banned
How about we go with what the Supreme Court has to say on it. Seems like a decent place, no?
Coreda
Member
Let's not forget to disable all Javascript while we're at it. Never did do the internet any good.
Kano on the Phone
Member
The feeling I'm getting here is that we need to protect people who are wrong, and I just don't follow that. Most big social progress in our country has been made by telling people "you're wrong, and society is going to steamroll you and leave you behind if you don't get your shit together." Correct me if I'm wrong, but I just don't see how that helps anyone and if anything, it seems like a dangerous attitude.
Devolution
Member
This has what to do with using a different browser after this news to send a message of displeasure at the current power structure of Firefox?
Mercury Fred
Banned
Everyone put on your fedoras in anticipation.
Sure, I was using "discrimination" pretty loosely. But either way. If you're defining "discrimination" such that almost everyone can agree with your norm, you're not going to have agreement as to what actually constitutes discrimination. If you're defining "discrimination" such that it's clear which side here is pro-discrimination, then many people won't agree with your norm.
I don't see how that helps. I don't even think that it's okay to go after people for opposing Supreme Court decisions in an activist way; there are plenty of Supreme Court decisions that I'd be happy to work to overturn. You have to get into the other side's head and explain why the Supreme Court's opinion ought to be the end of it in terms that are going to be persuasive to them - that's the whole point of having a norm like this.
Earlier you asked: "Why do you feel that this person should be free from the consequences of his actions?"
Well, because I believe in freedom of speech. I think it's just confused, in exactly the way that libertarianism is confused when it talks about rights, to think about freedom of speech as only a freedom from government. Nobody cares whether it's the government or something else which is violating their rights. I think it's awful when people get fired because of something they said on Facebook and generally support laws protecting them against that. Obviously people can't be expected to completely ignore this sort of thing, but I do think we have a duty to try not to let our knowledge of people's political views and efforts color our actions in a wide variety of interactions (generally the more impersonal the interaction the less someone's views and actions should matter).
He created it, but he no longer has anything to do with it and more importantly not profiting from it. Oracle owns the trademark.
The well-being of javascript would have absolutely no effect on Brendan Eich.
No, I think I'm just making a pretty typical sort of free speech argument. There are two big reasons to want freedom of speech.
First, what if people who disagree with you end up in power? It's useful to have pro- free speech norms to protect people who are right, and that requires sometimes protecting people who are wrong.
Second, what if you're wrong? A certain amount of epistemic humility is necessary, and it's valuable to have a vibrant marketplace of ideas to make sure that we don't fall into an intellectual trap. Now, I don't think there's much chance of this re: gay marriage, and I think this is probably the most promising place to argue that going after Firefox is fine here, but the norm is valuable in general.
Edit: I want to be clear that I'm not against strongly-worded disagreement. I agree that social shaming is a valuable tool in moving society forward. But when people's jobs are at risk because of it (when the goal is to threaten someone's job) I get uncomfortable - I think that's going too far and I'm much more comfortable yelling "bigot!"
Not into devaluing your point,because you have one, but what does that leave? Opera?
Devolution
Member
Of course some people won't agree, my point is people who are stupid or just plain malicious need to be dragged kicking and screaming towards humanist solutions sometimes. Or pressured via other means.
Mercury Fred
Banned
Well, you're positing that there is no standard and so I offered the highest court in the land (which is also backed up by a strong majority of public opinion according to polling). I don't think it's far fetched to refer back to the SC labeling Prop 8 and DOMA as discriminatory.
Dude. Duuuuuuuude.
The guy has freedom of speech. He has it he has it he has it. It is his constitutional right to give $1000 dollars to a campaign to marginalize and dehumanize gay people for no logical or justifiable reason. No one is arguing that he doesn't have that right. But society is not down with it. It is our right, in fact it's our obligation, to cast a chill toward people that act in an unfairly discriminatory manner.
Let me ask you, would you say that people who argued against and socially stigmatized people who stood in opposition to black people having full equality under the law were violating those racists' free speech?
Kano on the Phone
Member
But protection means protection from legal consequences, not social consequences, no? I mean, it doesn't benefit us to live in a society where we're trying to come up with where to put a new crosswalk and someone can pipe in and say "somewhere that blacks can't use it" and we just let that slide. I think the clear line being drawn here is bigotry, so we aren't on some slippery slope toward a society where thought crimes are prosecuted just because people are held accountable for speech (even assuming your premise that money is just speech, which I disagree with since words coming from my mouth can't be used to print mailers or make robo calls).
Edit: just saw your edit.
But someone showing a disregard for a group of people should affect them being in charge of a lot of other people, shouldn't it? Someone who holds anti-gay sentiment should be questioned if they're in charge of people who are gay. This isn't someone flipping burgers people are trying to shame out of a job, it's someone who really does hold peoples' futures and salaries and jobs and lives in his hand.
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