2014-04-03

Diversity in everything except opinion

This is terrifying. Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich has been forced out because of his personal position against gay marriage. If you don't believe me, read the mail from painfully hip lawyer and Mozilla Foundation chair Mitchell Baker:

We didn’t act like you’d expect Mozilla to act. We didn’t move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We’re sorry. We must do better.
Brendan Eich has chosen [ah! free choice? really?] to step down from his role as CEO. He's made this decision for Mozilla and our community. [He's been given the choice to resign or be fired.]
Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard.
Yes, it can be hard to stand for equality and freedom of speech, but clearly you've opted out of that stance and gone for sucking up to the media-approved line of thought. 60% of Americans support gay marriage (at least publicly) so it may be a majority opinion but opposition can't reasonably be dismissed as a small clique of bigots. It seems that opposing the majority opinion is only allowed when the majority opinion is "wrong". Let's remember that the California Supreme Court (no bastion of political orthodoxy) did not see anything wrong with allowing Californian voters to vote freely on whether marriage should be restricted to male-female partners in California.

I'm reminded of Bob Hope's quote after the 1975 Consenting Adult Sex Bill was passed:

I've just flown in from California, where they've made homosexuality legal. I thought I'd get out before they make it compulsory.
You're still allowed to choose to be heterosexual, but if you value your job and career you'd be a brave person to even hint at wavering on the issue of gay marriage.

Gay arch-blogger Andrew Sullivan can see where this is leading and he's really not convinced it's a good idea:

If this is the gay rights movement today – hounding our opponents with a fanaticism more like the religious right than anyone else – then count me out. If we are about intimidating the free speech of others, we are no better than the anti-gay bullies who came before us.

Allowing the media to dictate the acceptable positions on thought is not going to end well, and I wonder if the gay marriage lobby have really thought this one through. If Fox News continues its rise and the (more left-leaning) rest of the media continues its decline, do they want opposition to Fox editorial policies to become grounds for hate campaigns against people?

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