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by StevePerkins
3779 days ago
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I don't have a link, and I'll admit that this is subjective and anecdotal. I just recall there being a LOT of people who found it perfectly reasonable to oust somebody for long-ago political donations, despite there being no indication that he ever actually discriminated against anyone at Mozilla. Yeah, you can make arguments that the mere existence of a such past donation creates a symbolically hostile environment, etc. But those arguments seemed pretty thin to me. At the time Eich made that donation, every major Democratic presidential candidate (including Clinton and Obama) were ALSO publicly opposed to marriage equality. So it seemed like extreme mental gymnastics to put a "hate speech" label on Eich. In the GitHub story today, if you were feeling charitable then you could likewise apply some positive spin too. There IS some context to those slideshow bullet-points and that tweet, which has been buried under the outrage. Once again, I disagree with these messages even when that context is considered. But my point is that it seemed like there were a lot more people willing to do mental gymnastics in the Eich case than in this one. |
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No, the extreme mental gymnastics here involve thinking that hate speech can be defined by looking at the content of Clinton and Obama's campaign speeches.
The ouster came six years after his donation. The only way that could be characterized as "long ago" is by the use of extreme mental gymnastics.
Anyway, donating to Proposition 8 is equivalent to making the statement "I will actively work to take other people's rights away, even though it will never affect me". Is it any surprise that he was ousted? It was a disaster for Mozilla to associate with him.