L’affaire Eich

In case you’ve been living under a rock, last week, Brendan Eich, the CEO of Mozilla, was pretty much forced to resign his position due to having donated to Prop 8 back in 2008. OKCupid dug up his name from a list of donors and changed their website so that if a person using Firefox visited, they were shown a page suggesting a different browser because Eich was CEO of Mozilla and was blasted as “anti-gay” for his donation.

 

As someone who is totally in favor of gay marriage, I’m with Sarah Hoyt and Andrew Sullivan on this one. It’s disturbing that someone’s private beliefs and personal donations can be used to force them out of a position especially after they’ve committed themselves to inclusiveness and equality in the workplace for LGBTs. The man believed that gay marriage shouldn’t be legally recognized. A lot of people believe that. That doesn’t make them anti-gay or homophobic. It makes them against changing the definition of marriage. Yes, some of them will be bigoted arseholes but most of them are not. A good many might favor civil unions that would have all of the same rights and privileges of marriage but just wouldn’t be called marriage. Others might fear that legalizing gay marriage would force religious institutions to perform weddings that go against their teachings — and, in light of some of the lawsuits against bakers and photographers* who don’t want to offer their services due to religious beliefs, there could be something to that fear.

 

But beyond that, do we really want to live in a world where you can be hounded in the streets, driven out of your job, and harassed for something you believe? If we start granting corporations the right to pressure workers — yes, even executives — to hide their personal beliefs and constantly hold the company line, do we really have freedom of speech anymore? Sure, it’s not the government that’s interfering. It’s just your employer. And, it’s not like we’re in the midst of a recession or anything, right, so there are plenty of jobs to be had, right? And, how does this hounding help the gay marriage cause? Is it going to change anyone’s mind? Is it going to make people more receptive to arguments in favor of gay marriage? Or is it going to cause opponents of gay marriage to become more entrenched, to move to insulate themselves more? Is it going to cause greater division in society by forcing gay marriage opponents to work only for others who share their views, putting themselves in an echo chamber?

 

Would you feel the same way about this issue if it were not gay marriage? Say that Brendan Eich supported keeping pot illegal. But, he promised not to fire anyone who thought pot should be legal, who advocated for legalization, who donated to efforts to make it legal, etc. Would it be right for legalization advocates to hound him out of his job? After all, putting people in jail over what they want to put in their bodies in their own time without endangering others is a far sight worse than simply saying “I don’t think marriage should be redefined.” The first denies people their liberty. The second denies them a tax break.

 

And would you want to be in his position with your own employer? I’m sure that most people work at a place where they may not agree with every single thing their employer believes or supports. Would you want someone fired because they were a creationist (when that belief had nothing to do with their job whatsoever)? Would you want someone fired because they were pro-choice (when that belief had nothing to do with their job)? Pro-life? An atheist? A libertarian? An anarchist? A smoker?** Someone who enjoyed a glass of wine of an evening? Coffee drinkers? Someone who had a copy of Chris Rock’s Bigger and Blacker? Do we really want to open our privately held beliefs to scrutiny by our employers? Would you really want to live in a world where that plays out?

 

This is an argument I have time and time again with a lot of people and this kind of power is why I am a minarchist (rational anarchist). If we grant gay marriage supporters a heckler’s veto like this, then inevitably that power will fall into the hands of someone who is odious. If someone can be forced to step down as CEO over this, then later on, another CEO could be forced to resign for not supporting the Kyoto Treaty (which was deeply flawed) or being a Euro-skeptic or an American isolationist. In a free society like ours, eventually the other side will get into power. So, instead of having to fight, fuss, and live in fear of that (like we’ve had to with the frickin’ abortion issue for forty some-odd years now), how about we all agree that no one should have that kind of power and that we can learn to agree to disagree civilly and that the best way to deal with someone who believes gay marriage shouldn’t be allowed isn’t to hound them over it but to talk to them. To show them that it won’t cause whatever they fear it will cause. To persuade and use reason and our brains instead of bludgeoning them over the head and exiling them to the Outer Darkness for a belief that has jack to do with being a CEO (or a developer, designer, code monkey, artist, editor, etc).

 

— G.K.

 

*Seriously, if a baker or photographer or whatever refuses to serve a gay wedding because of their religious, find another. It’s not like there is a severe shortage of them. Suing them over it is asking the government to tell them that they have to ignore their views for business. No one would object to a gay photographer or baker refusing to service an anti-gay marriage believer’s wedding so why do we think the reverse is okay?

 

**Holiday Inn already does this by refusing to hire smokers. So, I don’t stay at the Holiday Inn or any hotel owned by them. I don’t think that an employer should have the ability to tell their workers what they can and cannot do when they’re not on the clock. So, if Holiday Inn really wants to do this, they should pay their workers 24/7/365 for adhering to their policy. People would scream bloody murder if a place like Wal Mart refused to hire people who ate bacon every morning which has just as much bearing on the ability to work as being a smoker (or non-smoker) does.