So let's say you work for Mozilla and you are gay, or your sibling is gay, or your best friend is gay, or hell: you just are willing to care about people who aren't that close to you and you know that some people somewhere are assuredly gay; and so now, you have to come in to the office every day to work under a guy who, sure, has made an invaluable contribution to the web... but also actively dislikes gay people and wants to make their lives harder, donating to a political cause that deeply affects gay people. Remember: that's what is at stake here... Mozilla is a tech company, and Brandon Eich was their CTO, acting as the public face of the company and as a leader internally; asking them to continue to support him is not some academic question of whether to leave his name on a plaque somewhere... it is a very practical daily question of them having to read e-mails and take direction from someone who actively--and fairly directly... prop 8 wasn't some extremely indirect mechanism or one with a ton of tradeoffs--works to undermine the lives of either themselves or someone they care about.
What’s the difference between dislike and disagree with? Ginsberg and Scalia were Supreme Court justice’s know for this. Disagreeing with something, even fundamental, doesn’t mean people need to dislike each other.
Imagine, for a moment, this idea was placed on religious belief. Should people working for someone with a different religious affiliation assume their boss dislikes them?
I appreciate this is a hot topic. I just don’t like where we are going as people when we treat disagree as if it’s dislike and act on that.
Actions are even more important than disagreements or dislikes.
You can disagree with someone who believes in slavery, and you are free to still like them if you want, sure.
But if it was me in your place, even if I liked that person, I still would not want to work for them based on their actions. And I think this is a fair position for anyone to take.
Or if you are saying it is conceivably possible that Brendan* likes gay people, also I’d say sure. Actually it’s likely he likes at least one certain closeted repressed gay person in particular, I’d guess. Still, it’s reasonable to not want to work for such a person who takes such actions.
Let’s flip this around. Around the world there are many people who have belief systems disagree with homosexuality. Right or wrong, this is presently the case. If some have money in support of the other direction on prop 8 should they have tried to get the person fired or left themselves?
A core thing at issue here is right and wrong and lifestyles. No matter what I think, there are people who disagree on this. I’ve been hard pressed to get folks to share a logical reasoned case for their take. It’s very much about belief and assumptions.
Is it time we divide up based on some issues like this or try to destroy “the other side”? It should like that’s what’s being said.
Please note, my take on this here is how we as a society deal with these disagreements.
Pretty sure Brendan donating to a cause trying to influence law was already a case of society dealing with disagreements with action. So if your beef is with taking actions based on disagreements, you should start with being bothered about Brendan’s actions.
As to flipping it around, I get that but didn’t really follow how that helps. Bigots would be perfectly free to not want to work for a non bigot if they want… and they can try to get others onboard with joining them to ask the leader to step down.. good luck with that though. There’s a certain evil to being a bigot that goes beyond just disagreement and dislike.
Some in the world are capable of working without being emotionally incapacitated by the thought that those they work with don't agree with all that they believe in.
Mozilla is there to build browsers. Politics should have been left at the door.
Instead it wasn't and so Firefox happened and then Brave happened.
> Mozilla is there to build browsers. Politics should have been left at the door.
I think you misunderstand Mozilla. Just have a look at their mission statement[0], and their manifesto[1]. Mozilla's goal is not "build the best browser and get the most market share". Their goals are inherently political, and building a browser is just part of how they try to achieve their goals. To expect that the people working for such a political organization with such a strong ideology is pretty bizarre to me.
Perhaps it would be better for me to say ostensibly there to build browsers (and other software).
In response to the manifesto I'll ask how recent that manifesto and mission statement is? Surely they weren't always a politics first, software second organisation? They must have started out as free software and then morphed into what they are now at some point.
Or was it that case that the politics was there but it was that that changed?
The manifesto exists since 2007, but they describe principles that Mozilla has held since it was founded in 1998[0]. I wouldn't personally describe them as a "politics first, software second" organization, but that's mostly because I think the distinction between "politics first, software second" and "software first, politics second" is pretty vague and useless. Perhaps you would describe them as such, and if so, they've probably been like that since the start, or at least since before the start of their market-share decline.
Would you say the same about iFixit backing right to repair, or the FSF/EFF etc fighting for privacy and software freedoms while also developing their core products? I feel like "politics" has a very selective definition in this forum.
So just because you are gay, or your sibling is gay, or your best friend is gay... then totally unrelated people are not allowed to have their opinions, because you don't approve them?
I'd work for someone who voted to raise my taxes. That is years of my life's work redirected to causes I don't agree with. Worse than someone being against me getting married. If I could swap marriage rights for lower taxes, I wouldn't be married. It is more symbolic these days than practical.
I think the gays can cop it.
> you are gay, or your sibling is gay, or your best friend is gay
Possibly this is a case of poor phrase choice. I mean "can cop it" in the Australian informal sense of "Accept or tolerate a disagreeable situation without complaint." as opposed to the surprisingly wide [0] range of other interpretations.
