What is regrettable in all this is that no one seems to consider the possibility that people may have nuanced views about gay marriage. According to the mob you're either a saint or a bigot, and thus Eich's value as a human being was supposedly entirely determined by this one opinion he voiced in 2008.<p>I'm staunchly in favor of gay marriage, which I consider to be a no-brainer -- but it seems to me the motivations of Prop 8 proponents differ a lot in nature, with some being much more excusable than others in their wrongness.<p>For example, there are people who have nothing against homosexuality but are attached to the symbolic value of 'marriage' as a Christian institution and would be completely fine with another civil contract with the same rights but a different name. This seems to be somewhat in line with Eich's actions (I remember reading a memo from Eich stating he had no plan to amend Mozilla's gay-friendly policies and employee benefits). Although I still think this view is guilty of being wrongly attached to outdated models of society, this is not nearly as bad as what Eich has been accused of.<p>There are other possible reasons one could have (for example, those who in ignorance of the many studies that showed that children of homosexual households grow up just fine could have unfounded reservations about gay adoption, but would be ready to change their mind if shown the evidence; I've encountered a couple myself), but my broader point is that there is a huge range in the degree of bigotry between those who voted Prop 8 and one should not jump to conclusions so easily as they do not all deserve the same level of condemnation.<p>Now, I can understand why Eich's views <i>could</i> make him unsuitable as a CEO because, in a purely pragmatic sense, holding views that most of your workforce despise is obviously detrimental to your ability to lead and especially so at such a peculiar organization as Mozilla where ideology matters arguably more than in other companies; it also matters because, as many have said, a CEO is the face of the company and his views and those of the company are sometimes hard to disentangle.<p>But going from there to making a call to boycott Firefox is a <i>huge</i> jump and smells like a pure appropriation of the controversy for PR purposes. This revelation about Sam Yagan seems to strengthen this feeling. Come on people, we're better than this. Being on the right side of history about an issue does not automatically waive us from intellectual rigor and moderation.
So, bottom line: Eich was forced out by an astroturf campaign led by professional boycotters (waving the gay rights flag this time) and sleazy opportunists/publicity addicts like Yagan.<p>If Eich is a homophobe, I would like to replace the rest of the world's homophobes with him. While he may have disagreed in private, his public persona was inclusive and friendly. There are multiple testominies from people that never knew he harbored wishes to limit their rights before the controversy came out. Even the LGBTQ* Mozilla employees/volunteers spoke up to say this. Meanwhile, in Montana/Utah, if the CEO learns you're gay, you're likely to be found dead in the middle of the night.<p>But the mob had already formed, and they wanted blood. Blood is what they got. And the Mozilla project suffers as a result.<p>The Eich story, and the lynch mob that followed it, permanantly reduced my respect for HN. While I would not ever donate to a campaign (let alone one that denied equal rights to human beings), this made the gay community of HN (and their supporters) look like easily-influenced livestock. I used to click on the HN comments link before actually clicking the story it was about, because I could rely on the spin being kept to a minimum. I no longer have that guarantee. Similarly, I no longer have the guarantee of fair discourse, and fully expect future comments to be downvoted to oblivion (much like reddit) when one has a dissenting opinion. If someone says you hate gay people (correctly or not), the HN community has proven they will prosecute before a proper inquiry has been made.<p>Even more disturbing, I have now learned that the militant LGBTQ* members in Silicon Valley are just as easily-influenced, and as easily driven to boycott, as members of Stormfront, or the AFA, or the PMRC. This seems to be such a big issue in the Silicon Valley that I'm now solid in my decision to stay out of SV for any new startup ventures. Intolerance (even intolerance for bigots) is not something I want to immerse myself in.<p>(disclosure: this pseudonym is owned and operated by a lgBtq*)
The hypocrisy of okcupid was evident even before this little bit of info (Yagan's past political contribution) was shared. As I and others pointed out, okcupid went on using javascript!<p>As for okcupid occupying the moral high ground, I still remember when, right after their purchase by match.com, they removed one of the most interesting posts on their blog. It was about why you should never pay for dating web sites and why paid dating website were not worth it. As with all of their blog posts it was backed up with data and evidence.<p>After the purchase and change of monetization model, poof! it was gone. Why? because it was rightly critical of match.com !!<p>Here it is:
<a href="http://www.columbia.edu/~jhb2147/why-you-should-never-pay-for-online-dating.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.columbia.edu/~jhb2147/why-you-should-never-pay-fo...</a>
I doubt this means very much, or is worth anything but FWIW...<p>I had arranged for myself and 2 friends to go have lunch with 2 people from OkCupid specifically about whether or not we would be a good fit into the company and what they would be able to offer. I'm only looking for an entry-level front-end dev position so my time isnt nearly as valuable, but out of the other 2 friends one is an ex-Googler, the other from Morgan Stanley, both as back-end engineers.<p>After this stunt by OkCupid we cancelled the lunch and will not continue on with OkCupid.
The other point to make is that OkCupid's protest cost them nothing. If they really cared, their registration page could have the usual checkbox: I hereby agree to blah blah terms and conditions, and a second checkbox saying: "I affirm my support for gay marriage rights." Failing to select both boxes would bounce the user off of the OkCupid side.<p>But no, they wouldn't do that, because that might cost OkCupid business.
There are 7 billion people in the world. Those posters who make the assumption in their posts, that "of course" everyone agrees with their position that Prop 8 was wrong, might want to reflect that probably less than 500 million, or less than 8%, agree with them.<p>The debate that such posters believe has already been settled, will be going on for a long time.
The IAC senior leadership has no (0/13) people of colour, and only one woman (thats 1/13). And in fact, they don't even have anyone who wears glasses. IAC is the owner of OK cupid, and Sam Yagan is on the parent company's wesite here:<p><a href="http://iac.com/about/leadership" rel="nofollow">http://iac.com/about/leadership</a><p>Google at least has a much more diverse company leadership teams. Ya know, men and women and people who wear glasses and hair color other than "middle brown".<p>For Yagan to take on his own Board as a subordinate, calling them a bunch of "racist bigots" --not for their private beliefs, but for their "public" actions-- as witnessed by their hiring policy, would be quite a stunt.
There's an enormous false equivalency here:<p>Prop 8 groups are single issue donations. A donation means exactly and only that you agree with the cause of anti-gay marriage.<p>Politicians are many-thousand issue donations. I know of exactly zero people who I agree with on everything. A donation to a politician can have thousands of motives, and even be done in staunch disagreement about certain issues (especially in the case where their opponent is the same on the issue you disagree with and worse on everything else)<p>On net I'm conflicted about the whole thing. But I do think that people who value tolerance should be intolerant of the intolerant.
What did OkCupid think was going to happen here?
Did they really think that if they kicked this hornet's nest there wouldn't be any blowback?<p>They didn't think there was any C level executive at OkCupid or match.com who'd made a controversial political donation?
The difference between these cases is that Mr. Yagan donated to a Congressperson's election fund, while Mr. Eich gave directly to supporters of a cause many find abhorrent.<p>The degree of separation is important: although Rep. Cannon was anti-gay-marriage, we don't know whether that was the motivating factor for Mr. Yagan's donation. It could have been for some other reason: perhaps Mr. Cannon helped him or his company in some way, or perhaps Mr. Cannon's opponent's views (relating to things other than gay marriage) were more objectionable to Mr. Yagan than Mr. Cannon's were.<p>It's also important to note that this donation occurred in 2004, when few politicians openly supported gay marriage, and most publicly said they were against it.<p>Politicians have views on all sorts of matters, some of which we agree with and some of which we don't, and most of us aren't single-issue voters. A donation to a politician is not strong evidence of the donor's agreement with all of the views of that politician. A donation to an organization that is specifically trying to pass a law, however, is pretty strong evidence of the donor's agreement with the aims of the law.
In my honest opinion, I think the point here is that Mozilla is an organization that promotes good principles like equality. OkCupid, in contrast, is just a dating site.<p>Do people really expect good principles from a dating site?
On this situations, I end up wondering what's the right level of intolerance to intolerance. How much hate can one pour on someone that is being a bit bigot before you end up being just the same, but with a mirror?<p>Then one starts to question if being intolerant with the people that are intolerant of those that are intolerant is any better, and whether we are working in a system that allocates the call stack in the heap or in a defined stack, because too much thinking in this direction would cause a stack overflow in the JVM.
Finally, someone who understands the true meaning of hypocrisy. Pretense is a large part of hypocrisy. People often misunderstand that by saying someone who does something opposite of their beliefs is a hypocrite. No, it's both that and pretense. And, Sam Yagan seems like the proverbial hypocrite.
Everyone with strong ties in marketing world will know that dating sites are one of the most shadies businesses balancing on the line of legal/illegal.
OKCupid action was blatant marketing stunt - but thei CEO is immune.
No one cares what he did etc.
No one on the board or anyone working for him will be approving his departure upon this news. Mozilla case is probably one of the most ethical ways to get publicity this guys did in years...
I have no issues with gay marriage, and I don't think that individual religious views have any place in the creation of laws that will affect people's everyday lives. However, this idea that someone can't keep their personal political views outside of their workplace is the territory of small-minded idiots. A good CEO can, indeed, support causes in his personal life that don't wind up becoming policy at the company he or she runs.<p>See this for what it is. The left is trying to make it OK to punish anyone that has ever supported a conservative cause. Everyone should now fear that their political views will endanger their jobs. This is perhaps the most slippery of all slopes, as this marks the beginning of the end of political discourse in the US. If the right made demands like this, they would be skewered in the media. Yet, because our media has an extreme liberal bias, this has, sadly, gained traction. Just say no.
Did anyone ever think this was anything more than a PR stunt? I don't agree with Eich's opinion at all but what OKCupid did was pretty shitty. They wanted cheap PR and they were hypocrits about it (continued using JS and now the news of Yagan's donations).
Prediction: those who insisted that political actions and professional life should be separate will call for Sam Yagan's head, completing the ouroboros of hypocrisy.<p>The author's basis for the claim that this was a PR stunt is that Sam Yagan made a donation similar to Brendan Eich's. Like Brendan Eich, he has the opportunity to say he's changed his mind on the issue in the years since, or provide more context for the donation. Brendan Eich's mistake was avoiding the issue entirely.
The Hypocrisy of Some Blogger<p>Summary: The <i>co-founder</i> of OKCupid made a donation to a homophobic senator in 2004.<p>There's a lot wrong with this "scandalous" revelation. Do we have any direct word on Sam Yagan's change of heart to support the oust of Brendan Eich? This blogger does not, from Yagan's actions we have to assume he feels differently now, a decade later.<p>And so, these toothless allegations of hypocrisy fall apart. This point from the rant:<p>> This was a PR stunt, and as I show below, nothing but a PR stunt.<p>The stunt had the intended result, so this statement is either false or in doubt. Or, if the stunt is unrelated to Eich's removal, then it reflects popular sentiment to boost the OKCupid brand; it's familiar bland commercialism and no kind of hypocrisy.
I find the entire Eich scandal disheartening. A man lost his job (one he was undoubtedly qualified for) because people find it easier to heap hatred on someone they've never met, than to act with dignity and respect.<p>We have some serious issues in this country, and our inability to compromise or respect a person we don't agree with is frightening. Life is filled with shades of grey, compromise is not "that nice thing your kindergarten teacher told you about" it's a critical aspect of a functioning democracy. One we seem to be losing.
This is about as non as non-stories get.<p>For one, there's about 27 universes worth of difference from supporting a specific law which does a specific thing, and supporting a politician who has different positions on different laws. Maybe the other positions he has took priority over marriage equality?<p>For instance: five years ago, coming out of the economic mess, I'd have prioritized economic recovery (so, someone who knows what they're doing on that front) over marriage equality. That's not to say marriage equality isn't important, but it's all rather pointless if the economy is trashed and everything else goes with it.
Yagan's personal views don't really matter. In fact, Eich's views don't matter either because in politics, perception is reality.<p>Yagan contributed to the growing perception that holding anti-gay opinions is socially unacceptable, something that the gay rights movement has been trying to achieve for decades. Regardless of his personal views, past actions or other motives, it helped.<p>Eich could have easily saved himself. The key problem was the perception of an anti-gay CEO of Mozilla, and this could have been fixed in the same way that all public figures handle shifting public sentiment: with a statement about how his views have "evolved", he realizes now how wrong he was, apologizing for the hurt he caused and so on. Clearly he chose not to do that.
No, it's not "exactly the same." I don't think anyone really benefited from this entire shit show, but stop trying to excuse and water down what Prop 8 supporters did.<p>Giving money to a bad politician is not the same as giving money to support a war of pure bigotry and hatred against gay people. Perhaps you weren't there in 2008, or perhaps you weren't a target. But the Yes on Prop 8 campaign deployed deeply disturbing and hateful rhetoric that relied on the worst tropes about gay people--that they want to corrupt your children into homosexuality. All this wasn't just to pass a law, but to permanently enshrine and sacralize hatred in the California Constitution.<p>Here's a question: many people, perhaps you the reader, oppose Eich's forced resignation because of freedom of speech concerns. Great, I'm with you! And why I think this was all a stupid idea that doesn't benefit gay rights at all. But why are we as a society up in arms about this firing in particular? Why are we not focused on ENDA, for instance, which protects you from being fired for saying you're gay? Why aren't we outraged that workers (illegally) get fired for saying they want to unionize? Or, more tech-focused, people getting fired for shit-talking their boss on Facebook? It seems that, as usual, freedom of speech is only a concern in the media if you're a rich, straight white man.