I think you're dismissing what has happened too lightly. The real issue here is mob mentality, and you're underestimating the ways in which it can be dangerous and insidious.

People aren't taking this seriously because in this case they disagree with Eich's opinion, so they feel it's all okay. They're letting that blind them.

What if Eich actually had the "right" opinion? And this is hypothetical at this point--I'm not talking about gay rights anymore. Suppose you are an oracle and you know that the mob was wrong rather than right and Eich was right rather than wrong. Don't fool yourself into thinking that things would be different. They wouldn't, and this has caused extraordinary difficulty in righting many wrongs of the past, including slavery. It can severely impede the democratic process because people are afraid to hold dissenting opinions--not due to legal ramifications, but social ones.

Regardless of who I think is right, I am pointing out that contrary to popular narrative, no rights have been removed from Eich.

There are and have been plenty of movements to boycott companies that I am certain are misguided. "One Million Moms" is an example of a group that organizes pushback on companies that I feel is wrong.

Even in those cases, it is their right. If they had been putting pressure on Eich to step down because he supported same-sex marriage, I would maintain that no rights were being removed from Eich.

Slavery seems a poor example, since the people with the "wrong" opinion were already rich and powerful, and the people with the "right" one were... well, slaves. A large part of this Eich fiasco has been rejection of giving power to someone who's already used it to "wrong" ends.

What are you proposing? That we shouldn't object to injustices, on the off chance we're wrong and too many people agree with us?

We can all only do what we think is best. Eich thought he was making the world a better place by trying to block gay marriage. It seems the world disagrees.

> Slavery seems a poor example, since the people with the "wrong" opinion were already rich and powerful, and the people with the "right" one were... well, slaves

Actually there were a small number of rich and powerful people with the "right" opinions. They could hardly voice those opinions or they'd risk losing all that power and, as a consequence, wealth.

The whole point is that the people who had the power to do something about it didn't do anything for a very long time, for the most part, because it would ruin their reputation, at best.

> What are you proposing? That we shouldn't object to injustices, on the off chance we're wrong and too many people agree with us?

Yes and no. You conveniently phrased this as a loaded question, making it hard for me to respond.

No, we shouldn't ignore injustices. But yes, we should be tolerant of certain things to a certain degree. But it turns out we already have a centuries-old system that allows us to do this without resorting to public shaming and near vigilante tactics. I'm suggesting we just use that system rather than trying to scare people into sharing our opinions.

> It seems the world disagrees.

You're jumping the gun. It's entirely possible that many (or even most) people who are against gay marriage don't even know who Brendan Eich is.

I still can't imagine how you expect this to ever have gone. "Well, those other people are fighting to take away something important to us, so I guess we'll just quietly smile and nod"? I hardly expect anyone whose way of life is at stake to go peacefully, no matter how wrong that way of life may be.

Not so fast. Rabbling at a village gathering is surely the most ancient form of protest. :)

But you're dropping a lot of context here. This wasn't just some dude with some job holding some opinion. He acted to enforce his opinion on others, then became CEO of a company whose entire schtick is to not do that sort of thing.

That nobody has come out in support of Eich's opinion is exactly why he's unfit to be CEO: Mozilla believes in some things, the people who care deeply about Mozilla also believe in those things, and Eich actively opposed those things. He represents the company, and he has a known history of acting against what the company is supposed to stand for.

If it turned out Ballmer had donated to prop 8, would there be nearly this outrage? I seriously doubt it; I would still call him something uncomplimentary on Twitter, but it's not like I have any existing philosophical expectations of either him or Microsoft. People called Eich a dick two years ago, but nobody expected him to quit his job.

I'll tell you what we should do. We shouldn't give those rights to gay people and we should take away those rights from straight people as well. The status quo is a clear discrimination of people who choose not to marry, but may have others in their lives where it would be mutually beneficial to opt into an agreement where they share some of those rights/benefits.

Each one of the rights currently afforded to people in a marriage or civil union should be split up and any two people for whatever reason should be able to opt into some, none or all of those rights.

I'm hoping that one day those pushing for additional rights afforded only to married people, straight or gay, get the exact same treatment that Eich did here.

Marriage shouldn't even be within the purview of the government, only religions.

I see this arguement crop up a lot and I feel like this is largely a semantics issue. "Marriage" as a union under some God and "Marriage" as a package of some 1000+ legal contracts hold the same name for historical reasons (dynamics of the Church in European power structure mostly). When gay mariage is brought up I feel like people just see the religious side and ocasionally the tax breaks and fail to completely grasp the issue. What they gay community wants is to have the easy contract that handles the passing of estates, the combination of insurance, citizenship issues, adoption preferences, etc. Currently we lack the infrastructure to affordably deliver "a la carte" packages; it's the same reason everyone gets the same TOS when installing a particular piece of software. It is not particularly realistic to say that a particular group be denied rights because the infrastructure for delivery isn't ideal.

It's only not realistic because everyone uses this exact same argument every time someone brings this up. We could move slowly towards the correct solution by acknowledging how incorrect the current situation is and fixing it little by little.

Why can't I have an easy way to pass on my estate to someone with all the same tax benefits without having to have sexual relations with that person? Why can't I get insurance options that can be extended to those I cohabitate with regardless of the nature of the relationship beyond the fact that we live together. Why are there not citizen affordances for other relationships such as extending rights to siblings as well? I'm talking exactly about all those same rights the gay community wants. Just like there is no reason many of those rights should be restricted to straight people, there is also no reason that many of those rights should be restricted to two people in a long-term sexual relationship. There's also no reason why we shouldn't be able to pick and choose which rights and obligations we want to opt into or which rights we may want to share with person A and which rights we may want to share with person B.

There is absolutely no reason in this day and age that we can't switch over to a la carte packages over 10-20 years. All you need to do is start offering those options on each of those rights individually and to let all the rights for married couples expire and for those that don't expire, you can work on sunsetting them once a suitable a la carte solution is available.

I understand that argument--and you're not completely wrong--but a) that would require a massive overhaul of our legal system. The whole impetus behind this is that by not being able to be married, LGBT citizens are denied literally thousands of legal rights. That would be a big project. b) Good luck getting our uber-religious society to do so. c) Whether the system is flawed or not, keeping a class of people out of it is certainly not OK.

Oh, I definitely agree that discriminating against a group based on their sexual preference is abhorrent, but I also resent this discussion to some degree because it completely takes away attention from the discussion we should be having and it further legitimizes marriage as something the government should even have involvement in.

For example, if I want to jointly own a home (and only a home with no other possessions jointly shared) with someone, we would not receive a total $500k capital gains exemption on the sale of the home after 5+ years of ownership. Only married people filing taxes jointly get this right. Instead, me and the other person would only be allowed a $250k exemption. How can such a situation possibly be fair? The correct abstraction would have been to allow up to $250k capital gains exemption for each individual on the deed. [0]

At the end of the day, we should be designing laws the way we design software. Strong separation of concerns should be a design goal when drafting legislation.

[0] http://charliedunn.com/_Sellers_Tips/Capital_Gains_Exclusion...

For the love of everything they aren't rights! They are privileges!

Per Article 2 of the UDHR, "political opinions" are a protected class (to use the American terminology).

However, "the right to not be judged or criticized by fellow citizens" is not a right that is outlined by the UDHR. Not as I am reading it anyway. Specifically which article and section details the right that you think Eich is being deprived of?

It seems like most are ok with harassment and discrimination against Eich simply citing exercise of free speech. But if one-tenth of what happened to Eich had happened to someone with different sexuality or female, people would cry harassment and discrimination. Why is it ok for Eich to get huge backlashes, harassments and character assassination? I fully support same sex marriage, but I feel like treating Eich like this was too far.

If it weren't for double standards, most people wouldn't have any standards at all.

All you have to do is look at all the public figures who express views, and act on them in much more thorough ways, who get a free pass. Look at the all the famous Hollywood types with very sketchy behaviors in their backgrounds. Look at politicians as well, where it's even easier to find skeletons. Eich has been held to a standard that a whole lot of people in public life, CEOs, politicians, movie stars, sports heroes, would not live up to. Do we now move on to all of them?

The biggest problem I have with this situation is not that it happened to Eich, but that the mob has been so selective. There are plenty of people in the public life who have done far more than donate $1000 to a state referendum that, let's not forget, was popular enough to pass in one of the most liberal states in the Union, but haven't been hounded out their jobs for it.

All the folks celebrating that a moral victory has been won with Mozilla ought to consider what happens if this considerable power is put to an evil use, or a use for which they personally find objectionable. Don't think it can't happen. 100 years ago, Fascism was the big thing because it allowed the leaders to Get Things Done, and in fact, many good things were done in that era by dictators with tremendous power to make sweeping changes. But some other stuff happened, too.

Of course, I'm speaking in a political climate where I heard many people state in 2009 that they wished President Obama weren't limited by the Constitution so he could _really_ fix things. I've never heard such a frightening thought from an American in my life, yet I heard it from a number of people back when the President was elected. That isn't a political thing either, because it would scare me equally no matter who the person was talking about. Sure, I don't like President Obama, but I wouldn't want that kind of power in the hands of someone who was the combined reincarnation of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Gandhi, Winston Churchill, and the Buddha himself either.

If we are living in a country where people are that ignorant of history and of human nature, then this society isn't long for the world anyway.

Maybe the tide is changing and this the start of a new era of populist activism. I guess you have nothing to worry about as long as you hold popular opinions... and, of course, those _never_ change.

Mob rule is a powerful thing and genies never go back in the bottle after they've been let out.

Free speech does not mean, and has never meant, freedom from social consequence. The Constitution does not say that you can do and say whatever you want and other people can't have opinions about it.

Eich paid good money in an attempt to restrict how people in Mozilla's home state live their lives — some of them even Mozilla employees. He expressed no regret for doing so, then became CEO of Mozilla, a company that virtually defines itself by freedom and inclusion.

There were myriad ways he could've attempted to resolve this, and he did precisely none of them. That he would rather give up the job entirely speaks volumes about what he finds important.

Because viewpoints are not opaque little packages whose contents do not matter.

Nor are they isolated from historical context.

> He remains free to be a CEO.

Given the content of the OP, this is demonstrably untrue. He attempted to be a CEO and was effectively prevented from doing so.

He still has the right to be a CEO. He does not now, and never had, the right to not be asked to step down. He does not now, and never had, the right to be respected as a CEO.

What does it mean to have a right that you can be effectively prevented from exercising? What is the difference between a right that one is not allowed to exercise and a right one doesn't have?

Eich was not legally barred from being CEO. He could have chosen not to step down. He could choose to start his own company to be CEO of. He could be CEO of another company.

He will not be barred by the government from doing all of those things. He is not being prevented from exercising his right to be a CEO. He was asked to step down by many people, as is their right, and he did.

He's still allowed to be CEO of Mozilla. (Calling a specific job posting a "right" seems a stretch — do I have the right to be CEO of Mozilla? Where are the complaints that I'm being effectively prevented from exercising that right?)

Nothing and nobody forced him to resign. He could've weathered the storm and risked Mozilla's most valuable asset, its goodwill, over his beliefs. It would've been a terrible thing to do to the company and made him a terrible CEO, but nothing stood in his way.

Claiming that someone's rights were violated because he voluntarily quit his job is patently absurd.

If Mozilla changed their mind and asked him to be CEO again he could. If another company asked him he could. Just because no one wants you to be CEO does not mean you don't have the right to be.

Mob rule is fine as long as the mob is always right. That's usually the case, right?

Would everyone please use "privilege" and not "right"? The legal benefits of a government recognized marriage are privileges, not rights. Government can grant privileges not rights.

I understand the demand for equal treatment doesn't change though.

Marriage is both legal and social, and the two are heavily intertwined (hence the religious objections). The recognition itself is, arguably, a right. The argument is then that the government should respect the right, not "grant" it.