[autarch]

Calling this a "form of oppression" is a bit silly. How are Brendan Eich's rights being denied here? How is Brendan being prevented from acting on his own beliefs?

These two people decided that they don't want to associate with an organization where the CEO is, in their opinion, anti-gay. That's entirely within their rights, isn't it?

As others in the thread said, action have consequences. One consequence of being publicly perceived as anti-gay is that gay people and their supporters may not want to associate with you.

[yeukhon]

If you actually read the article:

We will continue our boycott until Brendan Eich is completely removed from any day to day activities at Mozilla, which we believe is extremely unlikely after all he’s survived and the continued support he has received from Mozilla.

A quick interpretation would be "Mozilla should never pick someone who doesn't like gays."

That's against employment equality even though CEO is a unique position. But still, personal belief doesn't always mean the CEO will turn out bad and disrespect everyone else.

I have question for the founders: if you were told one of your employees doesn't believe in gay rights will you fire him?

[glesica]

That's against employment equality...

Is it though? Are homophobes a protected class? Would a company be forced at the point of a lawsuit to hire a goose-stepping neo-Nazi if he or she had impeccable credentials?

[yeukhon]

Is gay a protected class then? If the answer is no, then homophobes is not a protected class. If the answer is yes, then homophobes is a protected class in your definition.

Will I want to work with someone who is pro-Nazism? Probably not, but will I respect his belief? Yes. But will I use that to disqualify him from being my co-worker? No. I would be lying to say I wouldn't feel threaten to know I am working with someone who believe in Nazism, but I don't think that's enough to justify a demotion or firing.

[npizzolato]

> Will I want to work with someone who is pro-Nazism? Probably not, but will I respect his belief? Yes.

Why would you respect his belief? There's a difference between respecting his right to hold whatever belief he wants and respecting the belief itself. The former is true, and no government should punish someone for their beliefs. The latter is not true, and I am free to judge neo-Nazis however I wish. That judgement would include not wanting to do business with them, and I would not feel bad about it.

[yeukhon]

> Why would you respect his belief?

Maybe I should be clear.

"Probably not, but will I respect his [right] being a pro-Nazism believer? Yes."

I am not making this up. My revision is actually in the context of the original quote. I will respect his right without endorsing his belief. I can dislike him and may distant from him as much as possible...

Sure we all carry bias. If the whole organization is against Nazi hiring a pro-Nazi would be stupid because that can cause internal tension. But that being said, not aligned with gay right advocates is not in the category as aligning oneself with someone with extreme thoughts. I bet people disagree on abortion and religion and tons of other very controversial issues.

[glesica]

I don't think that's how protected classes work. "Person of color" is a protected class. "Racist" is not. "Christian" is (perhaps, I'm not sure) a protected class. "Person who hates Christians" is not.

[npizzolato]

"Christian" is a protected class. From Wikipedia[1], the list is:

- Race - Color - Religion - National origin - Age (40 and over) - Sex - Pregnancy - Citizenship - Familial status - Disability status - Veteran status - Genetic information

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class

[PeterisP]

Should companies be allowed to deny jobs to communists? To people belonging to Muslim Brotherhood party of Egypt? To members of Greece's Golden Dawn? To freemasons? To members of German American Bund in 1939?

Hiring is supposed to be done according to credentials and explicitly ignoring belonging to a political party - and there shouldn't be any differences between major parties such as Democrats and minor parties such as American Nazi Party which apparantly was a real thing until 80ies.

[glesica]

But for a CEO, group memberships could easily be seen as part of his or her qualifications. I would see nothing wrong with boycotting a company that hired a neo-Nazi CEO, and I see nothing wrong with boycotting a company that hires a homophobic CEO.

No one is demanding that Brendan Eich be forced by the government to step down, they're doing things the market way, by speaking out and using whatever economic power they have.

[Rotten194]

What if the CEO of a major tech corporation was a Neo-Nazi? What if he spent his free time promoting Nazism, supporting the Holocaust, calling Jewish people sub-human, protesting outside of synagogues, etc.? Of course he would be professional and never bring in into work (and of couuursee he would never [openly] discriminate against Jewish employees, right? If a Jewish and gentile employee were both equally qualified he would obvious make a completely fair and non-biased choice for promotion...).

Obviously I'm stretching this some, I'm not claiming that $1000 to Prop 8 === being an open Neo-Nazi. However I'm asking you consider that maybe the political views of employees do matter some, and that this is a gray area where you can't completely claim that "All political activity should be protected" or "Employers should be able to fire anyone for any belief". Maybe you should try and have a little empathy for this person's partner who was essentially prevented from starting a business because he was gay, albeit indirectly, and see why this could make someone a little bitter against people fighting to keep that status quo.

[x86_64Ubuntu]

It isn't a form of oppression. How someone can say that a CEO of a company is being actively oppressed, I'll never know.