[stcredzero]

I'm done here. You clearly have no connection to reality, and this is distracting from more important matters.

If you are so assured of the rightness of your position and the wrongness of the other's position, that you are entitled to take actions of any degree of severity, then you have lost connection to reality, as have so many others in history. You would be well advised to never be that self righteous.

I have been racially harassed, subject to hate speech, in a situation where the police got involved. There's simply no equating Brendan Eich and his political donation with a situation and actions like that. If you can't deal with others thinking the actions taken against him are out of proportion and have the feeling of a witch-hunt because your position is so evidently right and his is so evidently wrong then you are again the one who has lost connection to reality, as well as having lost track of the meaning of a pluralistic society. A just, pluralistic society will treat even its dissenting members with justice and tolerance.

If past political donations are an acceptable justification for "open season" on others, six years after the fact, we have no hope as an open democratic society.

[dllthomas]

The sum total of anyone's action here is 1) speech, and 2) deciding not to do business with someone. I'm not saying it's necessarily the correct decision, but painting it as an assumption that we are "entitled to take actions of any degree of severity" just reinforces my point. Anyway, I'm literally not going to respond to a thing below this comment, however crazy or sensible it gets.

[stcredzero]

Legality and the extreme wrongness of someone's position entitles you to do anything, up to and including persecution of someone for a political donation from 6 years ago. Because that donation was so wrong. Thanks for the clarification. Doesn't sound needlessly vindictive at all.

A pluralistic, tolerant society tolerates the holding of private beliefs of all kinds and forgives being on the wrong side of history. A society that doesn't do this simply isn't one that respects the right of free speech. The actions concerning Mozilla do nothing to further civil rights and moves our society towards norms of intolerance of dissent.

EDIT: I think I learned something here today. There are those who think that there is no social justice for sexual orientation until the same degree of vilification is applied to their former political opponents as that which happened to the political opponents of racial civil rights. I'm sorry, but this is illogical, shortsighted, and vindictive. It doesn't matter how wrong people were and how much those who held wrong positions suffer, and any energy which is brought to bear in that sort of direction is not helping the cause of justice. This is merely misplaced vengeance. It is indeed not what MLK, Mandela, or Gandhi would have wanted. Just because this is how it happened in the past doesn't make it wise or right. I happen to believe that an enlightened society can exist without "sufficient punishment of wrong thinking."

[tiquorsj]

This whole thing and the justifications sound like reprisals during regime change to me. It is really creepy.