[coldtea]

>Really? Is there a rash of this sort of thing going on that I don't know about?

Yes. How about the guy who lost his job for making a dongle joke, personally to his friend at a conference that was overheard? (And, then the woman who outed him on the internet lost her job too, again for reasons of public reaction). And tons of other examples besides -- people calling for others to get fired etc, because of their personal, not work related, opinions.

>Or is it pretty much just Brendan Eich right now, reaping the consequences of expressing bigotry publicly?

He never expressed "bigotry publicly". He privately backed a cause he believed in (right or wrong) with a donation.

As for "reaping the consequences", for me this amounts to a lynching mentallity that I'm uncofortable with.

If you don't like someone's opinions on civil rights, fight them in the court of public opinion and/or voting.

[dragonwriter]

> He never expressed "bigotry publicly". He privately backed a cause he believed in (right or wrong) with a donation.

Political donations (at least, of the size Eich made) are public, otherwise, this would never have been an issue.

[judk]

Public, but not at all connected to his work at Mozilla.

[shibby]

> their personal, not work related, opinions.

How do you know it's purely personal?

He clearly doesn't agree that homosexual people should be afforded the same legal rights and societal status as heterosexual people in their personal lives.

It's safer to assume that he would have negativity towards homosexuals in the workplace, e.g. look down upon them due to 'lifestyle choice' or some other bigoted nonsense, than to assume that once he's at work all of his prejudices are put to one side.

Chauvinists and racists rarely, if ever, leave their prejudices at home, so why would homophobes?

> If you don't like someone's opinions on civil rights, fight them in the court of public opinion and/or voting.

That's almost exactly what has happened, yet you call it 'lynching'.

'Public opinion' has forced him to step down before people 'voted' by not using/contributing to Mozilla products.

Nobody has denied him the right to hold his opinion, he's free to carry on doing so, however people have questioned his ability to not discriminate against people in his role at Mozilla, due in large part to fact that he has actively supported discrimination against people in the past based upon their sexuality.

[judk]

With 15 years under his belt, someone might have noticed if he had trouble separating work from politics. Perhaps his talent in this area is related to how he earn the CEO job over others who are incapable of conducting civil interactions with people they disagree with on unrelated matters.

[shibby]

And perhaps being the inventor of Javascript and CTO of Mozilla helped it go 'unnoticed' or unchallenged.