[speeder]

Or basically: You have free speech, but shut up, who knows if something you said in the past will ruin your career in the future. (does not even matter if you still believe in what you said in the past or not... I did not saw anyone asking Eich)

[codeoclock]

No no no, not "shut up" at all. That's not what I said. But, bear in mind that everything you say can affect your future. Which is totally fair enough. Judging a persons character by what they have said and done in the past is standard, and fair, practice. Expecting immunity from everything you've ever said or done is unrealistic.

If Eich no longer believes what he believed, it's on him to make sure he makes that point. However, Eich never said anything to that effect, nor did he apologize, so we have no reason to assume that his opinion has changed.

[karterk]

Judging a persons character by what they have said and done in the past is standard, and fair, practice.

You judge a CEO by the actions/decisions made in professional context. You don't use a personal decision to extrapolate what-if scenarios.

[betterunix]

"If Eich no longer believes what he believed,"

So the issue is not speech but rather thought. George Orwell had a term for punishing people for their thoughts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughtcrime

[rdc12]

And he acted on his thought about marriage equality, so it was not a piece of thoughtcrime

[skj]

No, the action of donating money to helping the suppression.

[rnnr]

I don't think Eich would deny job to someone just because (s)he was gay. He didn't tried or even thought to split any gay couple apart.

He just couldn't accept a definition of marriage which includes same sex couples.

But those are subtle details for the liberal fascists.

[joshstrange]

> He just couldn't accept a definition of marriage which includes same sex couples.

Then he took it a step further and donated to group that was working to destroy human rights for homosexuals.

> He didn't tried or even thought to split any gay couple apart.

You're right, he didn't try to split a gay couple apart, he just sought to dissolve their marriage...

[nailer]

So, as Pacabel just asked, would you support someone being forced to leave their job because they supported gay marriage?

[ghfdaghkj]

Sure, it's a free country. If someone doesn't want to exchange dollars for work hours anymore, for any reason, that should be totally fine.

I'd also stop giving that company money.

[joshstrange]

This is a ridiculous question, of course not. Please don't try to act like pro/anti gay marriage are equally ethical positions, they aren't.

[Amezarak]

You see same-sex marriage as a human right. (You would surely agree that same-sex marriage was a right even were it not a legal one.) To those of us who believe in human rights, which undoubtedly includes Eich, that would make anyone who took action to deny anyone that right unethical.

The problem is Eich doesn't see it as a human right. Indeed, to him, it may be the case he sees same-sex marriage as unethical. (We don't know what his objections are.) At any rate, he has no reason to find the support of gay marriage ethical or the opposition of it unethical.

There is no objective morality that tells us who is right or wrong here. There's no divine tablets we can all interpret listing out all our rights.

You can't stop at "same-sex marriage is a human right" and "opposing gay marriage is (ergo) unethical." That just leaves you talking right past people like Eich. It doesn't advance the argument or the cause - it just labels people as stupid or bad.

[joshstrange]

> (does not even matter if you still believe in what you said in the past or not... I did not saw anyone asking Eich)

Full stop. He had ample opportunity to speak out but he didn't. When someone says "I believe X" I assume that that person believes X until they either say "I don't believe X" or "I believe in Y" where Y is the opposite/different viewpoint on the same issue. Eich has made no such statement therefore I can only assume he is still anti-marriage equality, a homophobe, and not the right choice as the CEO of Mozilla.

Yes, you have free speech but just as codeoclock (and countless other HN'ers) said, you have to deal with the consequences. What you are proposing is a world where we can say whatever we want but never be held to what we say. I, for one, do not want to live in a world like that. I have said things in the past that I later changed my stance on and I have made every effort to make my change of view just as public as the original statement was. Sometimes this means talking to an individual or a small group and sometimes it means posting it to twitter.

I believe that if Eich had come out and said that his previous stance on marriage equality was wrong and he has since changed his view that this would not have ended the same way. Instead in both his blog posts [0][1] after this whole thing broke he drones on about how he will treat everyone fairly and how his personal beliefs will not affect his performance as CEO but he cleverly dances around the fact that he feels that homosexuals do not deserve the same rights as heterosexuals.

[0] https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/ [1] https://brendaneich.com/2014/04/the-next-mission/

[betterunix]

"he cleverly dances around the fact that he feels that homosexuals do not deserve the same rights as heterosexuals."

Yes, and obviously that is completely orthogonal to the kind of treatment he has received over his beliefs about gay marriage. It is easy to criticize people who are afraid to speak their minds when you have an army of thought police standing with you ready to punish anyone who dares to disagree.

[joshstrange]

I for one am extremely happy that we have an "army" of people ready to defend an oppressed group of people. Also this is not the "though police" he donated to a group working to destroy human rights for homosexuals. If we were talking about a CEO that was racist and had donated to the KKK would you still rush to call foul when they were forced to step down by popular opinion?

[betterunix]

Funny how the donation becomes the issue only after someone mentions thoughtcrime. Until then, the issue is what Eich believes.

"If we were talking about a CEO that was racist and had donated to the KKK would you still rush to call foul when they were forced to step down by popular opinion?"

Here are the guidelines I would use:

1. What does the organization they are CEO of do? If it is an organization devoted to providing aid to oppressed minorities, obviously KKK membership would be a conflict of interest. If on the other hand the organization makes general purpose software, I fail to see the relevance.

2. Is the CEO trying to use the organization to promote the KKK's agenda? If so, there is a problem with his professional conduct. If not, then his KKK membership is something he does on his own time; hateful, sure, but I do not want to live in a world where people are not allowed to separate their personal and professional lives.