Brendan Eich and the New American Totalitarian State: Gay Marriage Activists force Mozilla CEO out

Imagine going to work one day only to be, in effect, fired -- not because of anything you did or didn’t do at your job, but because of something you did in your personal life. Something religious. Or maybe, something political.

Imagine if you were denied a promotion at work because a co-worker found out you had made a personal donation to a conservative candidate. Imagine if your environmentally-correct boss discovered that, in your free time at home, you supported an organization that exposed the fallacies of man-made global warming and asked you for your resignation. Imagine if you were the successful CEO of Widget Corp, lauded and respected for your accomplishments, but clients or customers found out you were a tea partier and demanded you be forced out.

That’s exactly what happened to Brendan Eich, a highly-respected tech guru in Silicon Valley and co-founder of Mozilla Corporation, after he was appointed CEO in late March. In less than a week, he was forced out of this position for no reason other than that he had a made a $1000 contribution to the Prop 8 initiative in 2008. His own money. On his own time. In his private capacity. Mozilla had nothing to do with it. Nor did he discuss gay marriage at work.

In an interview with The Guardian on Wednesday, Eich told the paper “I think I am the best person for the job and I’m doing the job” and that his personal beliefs were not relevant. He couldn’t be more correct.

STATEMENT FROM MOZILLA:

https://blog.mozilla.org/

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past week, we didn’t live up to it. We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it’s because we haven’t stayed true to ourselves.

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 to step down from his role as CEO. He’s made this decision for Mozilla and our community.

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.

Our organizational culture reflects diversity and inclusiveness. We welcome contributions from everyone regardless of age, culture, ethnicity, gender, gender-identity, language, race, sexual orientation, geographical location and religious views. Mozilla supports equality for all.

We have employees with a wide diversity of views. Our culture of openness extends to encouraging staff and community to share their beliefs and opinions in public. This is meant to distinguish Mozilla from most organizations and hold us to a higher standard. But this time we failed to listen, to engage, and to be guided by our community.

While painful, the events of the last week show exactly why we need the web. So all of us can engage freely in the tough conversations we need to make the world better.

We need to put our focus back on protecting that Web. And doing so in a way that will make you proud to support Mozilla.

What’s next for Mozilla’s leadership is still being discussed. We want to be open about where we are in deciding the future of the organization and will have more information next week. However, our mission will always be to make the Web more open so that humanity is stronger, more inclusive and more just: that’s what it means to protect the open Web.

We will emerge from this with a renewed understanding and humility — our large, global, and diverse community is what makes Mozilla special, and what will help us fulfill our mission. We are stronger with you involved.

Thank you for sticking with us.

Mitchell Baker, Executive Chairwoman

RE: I’m confused. How did they “force” him out?

Companies do not want bad publicity. The dating site CupidOK refused to allow Mozilla browsers to access their site, and many other web based businesses were threatening to follow suite.

Remember, this company is based in gay land — SAN FRANCISCO.

The Mozilla board got alarmed at this development and all but withheld any support for him.

What else can the man do?

RE: I let them know I am not sticking with them and why. I uninstalled this morning.

Good for you.

If we believe that there are vastly more supporters of traditional marriage than gay marriage in this country, then those of us who support traditional marriage and are tired of this constant FORCING of the gay agenda on our throats ought to band together and BOYCOTT Mozilla and tell others to boycott OKCupid. Make it a movement nationwide.

Let’s see which side wins in the end.

BTW, how did you let Mozilla know?

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