[wheaties]

Sorry but I have to agree with this. If the purpose of the role is to be the CEO of a company dedicated to open source software then his religion, personal beliefs, and his lifestyle choices should have no bearing on being a CEO. That includes both people who are for AND against gay marriage. We aren't supposed to discriminate on any front when hiring someone so what makes this different?

[heterogenic]

If he doesn't like gay marriage, he doesn't have to get gay married. But contributing a significant amount of money to take away that option from someone else is wrong. And to believe it's his right to take that option away is wrong.

I have a same-sex partner, Brendan is willing to work and make a real effort to take away our recognition. To unmarry our children's parents. To eliminate our shared benefits, and impair the other 1148 rights conferred by marriage.

I am not happy that my money and time might go towards his salary and to further empower his views, so it's a logical decision for me to boycott his company. Many others feel similarly.

To be fair, at any point he could have said "My views have evolved, and I no longer think it is my right to deny others marriage.". He chose not to.

[wheaties]

Actually, in a free democracy, it is his right to go against others beliefs and to contribute campaign money to those who hold similar beliefs to himself. That's what makes this country so great.

[pekk]

What is different is (A) this is not a normal employee but the CEO who represents the company, (B) it is not about his personal beliefs or lifestyle choices but his public political behavior, (C) not every issue or belief is equally innocuous.

But really, (D) this caused a lot of scandal for Mozilla that runs contrary to its mission, and some internal scandal too. If it were chartered as a conservative political organization they could have laughed it off. but it's not Mozilla's purpose to play Moral Majority or Larry Flynt.

[davidgerard]

You tell me. He's out of a job because LOTS AND LOTS of people were seriously upset by his Prop 8 donation. You can decry this as the worst thing ever if you like, but it still happened and - and this is the important thing - was trivially predictable in advance, because they got a taste of it in 2012 when the donation first came to light (it reached international news coverage back then too).

So - given there's a pile of real-world data to reason from - what do you think made this different?

[cgh]

It's not hard to understand: replace the word "gay" with "black". Now do you see the problem?

Aside from that, much of the job of being a C-level executive is about perception and trust. People need to see you're a "good person" who is frictionlessly aligned with the company's public profile. Weird outliers, like denying gay people the right to get married, cause friction.