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[Kicior]

Fire someone because he's gay - DISCRIMINATION!
Fire someone because he'd donated to an anti-gay organisation 6 years ago - business is business, this is how free market rolls, he wasn't good enough, we gotta care about our image.

Wat

[Jelle]

It does seem like some rather ugly business. Completely understable of course, as a corporation their goal is to appease their consumers, and if an overwhelming majority of these consumers hold a political view that opposes the one the corporation is associated with...well that doesn't make for happy consumers.

Just as everyone is entitled an opinion on politics, so does everyone have the freedom to choose not to associate with people who hold views they don't care for. What I would call in question is the rationale behind attributing a political view of a single person to an entire corporation and its products. But hey they know the majority of their consumers are to narrow minded to put things into perspective, so these things are to be expected.

[Yoink]

Fire someone because he's gay - DISCRIMINATION!
Fire someone because he'd donated to an anti-gay organisation 6 years ago - business is business, this is how free market rolls, he wasn't good enough, we gotta care about our image.

Wat

Yay, you summed up most everything I was gonna say so I don't have to say it!
I'll probably get some sleep instead and take another look at the topic later.

[nenjin]

Absolutely not. Everyone else has the right to believe what they want with no strings attached. I don't think everything they believe is relevant to making business decisions, though, and because businesses do have moral and ethical dimensions, I think it's perfectly acceptable for me to say that a business decision is wrong. In this case, the decision was to boycott Mozilla for promoting somebody who, 8 years ago, expressed a political opinion in his own time and with his own money. I think that decision was wrong. Given that it was made, resigning was the correct choice, because failure to do so would've been making a business decision, costing other employees their own livelihood, because of his own beliefs that aren't relevant to the business. I don't know where you were going with the rest of the paragraph, though, so I can't respond to it. It sounds like a response to some caricature who isn't me.

If he made the right decision, his board made the wrong decision, why is the public wrong for having an opinion or a reaction to all of it? Note: I did not call for him to be fired personally. I see the legitimacy of saying "it's not fair to say someone shouldn't have a job period based on their beliefs." But I was seriously considering which browser I'd use now since I wouldn't be using Mozilla products or Chrome.

You indicated that it would be unreasonable to give the neighbor "the same pass" for being a neo-nazi. The pass in question is remaining employed despite holding beliefs I can't stand. Chances are, the neo-nazi requires a job in order to have an income. Chances are, the neo-nazi requires an income in order to pay the bills. Chances are, the neo-nazi needs to pay the bills in order to keep a home. That's why I picked that particular analogy, since you picked home ownership as the relevant identity, and I wanted to link the situations more firmly. I agree that, as a private individual, you have a right to boycott people for whatever the hell you want.

Then we're not in disagreement here, actually. But again, you're coming from the position he was "forced out" and that his livelihood was threatened. And I think that's a crock.

A business is not, in any way, neutral. The actions they take have implications. If absolutely nothing else, they have financial implications for the employees of a business. When you make a business decision, you're responsible for that. But that doesn't mean that literally every decision you make in your life should be a business decision, just as every decision a school teacher makes shouldn't be an educational one. I strongly disagree with your conclusion about conviction - he made the correct choice in the face of an unfair decision. He put his employees' welfare above his own beliefs, which is absolutely the correct way to run a business.

He put dollars over his professed, deeply held beliefs. Responsible to his employees? Sure. Does it earn any respect from me? No. People were ready to walk away from the job as it is.

And what about when said business uses its wealth and power to push a social agenda?

But that isn't what happened.

But that is the ultimate point of all this. It's why people were alarmed. It's the reality of the world we live in right now. Coming right on the heels of the most recent SCOTUS decision, it should not surprise you people had this reaction. And I think it's the right reaction given the world we're living in. I believe that given a long enough timeline, your personal beliefs eventually come to affect your business decisions and how you chose to leverage your business's influence. So start at the beginning: reveal yourself for who you are and let me decide whether or not I want to give you my business. And I believe this man did that. Do I want businesses to be judged on their beliefs as well as their performance? You're damn right I do; it's the only way we can make business accountable for something other than their damn stock price.

If this guy's CEO position of Mozilla was sacrificed on the altar of making businesses accountable for their beliefs, I'm ok with that.

What I would call in question is the rationale behind attributing a political view of a single person to an entire corporation and its products.

The mail guy? Sure. The CEO? Speaking of not being able to put things into perspective...............................

[Jelle]

Fire someone because he's gay - DISCRIMINATION!
Fire someone because he'd donated to an anti-gay organisation 6 years ago - business is business, this is how free market rolls, he wasn't good enough, we gotta care about our image.

Wat

The difference is that it's public opinion that being anti gay is bad, and that being gay is not bad. If having a gay employee was largely considered outrageous with their consumerbase, ruining their image, I'm sure the organisation wouldn't think twice.

[nenjin]

Fire someone because he's gay - DISCRIMINATION!
Fire someone because he'd donated to an anti-gay organisation 6 years ago - business is business, this is how free market rolls, he wasn't good enough, we gotta care about our image.

Wat

The difference is that it's public opinion that being anti gay is bad, and that being gay is not bad. If having a gay employee was largely considered outrageous with their consumerbase, ruining their image, I'm sure the organisation wouldn't think twice.

And historically, they didn't.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Also, being gay is not imposing anything on others. His anti-gay activity is. His anti-gay activity is also shitty. Screw evenhanded viewpoints.

In the end, though, he's effectively a politician. Whether he's trying to curry the favor of voters or customers, he needs to consider whether something he does will affect his future work prospects.

@Leo
So he can't be allowed to be in any leadership position whatsoever (because otherwise it'll be assumed his views determine policy), nor should he be in contact with any customers (because his view might offend them, whether he shares them with customers or not), nor should anybody be aware that he's supporting whatever service or product he does (because they might prefer not to support a bigot), nor should he be employed by anyone who doesn't agree with every political view he might ever express (because they might be forced at any time to assume responsibility for any political view of an employee or lose business)?

I agree that he's paid too much, but this is a totally different thing.

I specifically went out of my way to describe how what you just said is completely false, before you said it, because I knew someone would try to say it. Being a CEO is very different from other jobs in a company, and has more in common with being a politician than a programmer or customer service.

But let's say a waiter is well known as bigoted. Maybe I decide I don't want to eat at the restaurant until they no longer have him on staff. That's totally fine, I don't see a problem with it. You shouldn't feel like you have to interact with shitty people just to maintain your sense of yourself as a tolerant person.

Tolerance of intolerance is stupid and not morally valuable. In b4 the fallacy of moral relativism is brought up.

Overall, this is harsh but one of the healthy processes by which we slowly eradicate shitty behavior from our society.

[nenjin]

What bugs me is that a personal opinion from six (eight?) years ago from someone who didn't even have the job before is enough to turn everyone and everything on its heads and lose you your job. That's a kind of mandated nonopinionation that I cannot get behind. Life becomes a struggle to offend as few people as possible, and still it's to the whimsy on those who will take offense anyways.

Were everyone's opinion held to such a standard, never to be retracted if ever voiced, acted upon, we'd all have to live to an impossible, spotless standard, and only those best at faking their ways through life would come out on top. That's what bothers me. I don't want to live my life on my faults, or my mishaps, or misconstrued hopes and dreams, because that's not me, and that's not a fair standard to hold anyone to.

From the point of business tact, perhaps this guy stepping down was the best thing for Mozilla, but I hate that it should come to that, because it sets a precedent for the demand of faultlessness or for obscuring faults.

If this were a level playing field, I might agree with you.

But it's really not. We here fighting in a forum are worlds removed from the heads of multi-million dollar companies with the power to single-handedly affect policy. This isn't even really about this specific CEO, if I'm being honest. Despite not wanting equal rights for gays 6 years ago (something I'll remember the next time people decide to express an opinion about how to treat gay people in other threads), maybe he's a decent guy.

It's about others, across the spectrum, who a) have enormous power b) hold positions vital to our way of life and infrastructure and c) have the power to make their beliefs reality using the wealth of their corporation as the vehicle to do so.

So you hit them where they're most vulnerable: the vehicle that empowers them to affect policy and change in their favor. The public is using the only weapons it has: its "likes" and its voice.

Feel bad for the guy all you want. Lament "this tragically PC world of ours all you want." But please, don't ignore the larger implications of holding business accountable for what they can do that isn't business. Because that's what this is about. No one was concerned Mozilla would ask you if you're gay when it launches and it shuts down if you say yes. They're concerned about probably the 3rd most used browser in the world being controlled by someone who may have the power and the influence to affect their lives in ways they don't want, outside of their browser.

[Yoink]

Screw evenhanded viewpoints.

Damn, some of the circle-jerking in here makes those "Why Bay12 is teh smartest" threads look like indepth, well-nuanced arguments.

[Loud Whispers]

Overall, this is harsh but one of the healthy processes by which we slowly eradicate shitty behavior from our society.

Not really no. In most other situations I would agree; economic freedom to support whoever you like is one way to give more power to individuals, especially in a world where information carries more weight than hard power from the state.

Yet here? This is the guy who invented javascript; who co-founded firefox. I honestly don't care about his beliefs or why he opposes gay marriage, this man is a key figure in the history of the internet and the internet is a key milestone to almost everything in the modern world. Even if he as an individual was opposed to gay marriage, the internet would have done more to help LGBT cause than his donation to prop 8.

It's needlessly ruining the careers of people who are skilled at what they do who can actually contribute to all of humanity. This has hurt firefox, and I for one can't stand the notion that people would be willing to shut it down over this - god damn you and your affinity for botnets, equal rights will follow freedom of expression but you can't get it without.

_{And on a minor note that you believe this will eradicate anything other than reasoned dialogue is adorable; antisemitism is still strong in Germany of all places and that country's been subjected to decades of "harsh but healthy processes" supposed to have eradicated such beliefs.}

So if your neighbor donated to a Neo-Nazi group 6 years ago, you'd give him the same pass?
No, you wouldn't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

[nenjin]

So if your neighbor donated to a Neo-Nazi group 6 years ago, you'd give him the same pass?
No, you wouldn't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

Hey, if I could come after the politicians who thought that was a swell idea, I would. But they're all dead. Also, we're people. Not government officials thinking they need to bomb the Russians back into the Stone Age with the best Nazi scientists could come up with.

[nenjin]

Do we even know what his current political beliefs are?

And seriously. I wouldn't have maintained friendships with people who voted for Prop 8 or paid to help it succeed, unless they're opinion had changed into the present time. Why should I hold him to a different standard?

[Kicior]

Fire someone because he's gay - DISCRIMINATION!
Fire someone because he'd donated to an anti-gay organisation 6 years ago - business is business, this is how free market rolls, he wasn't good enough, we gotta care about our image.

Wat

The difference is that it's public opinion that being anti gay is bad, and that being gay is not bad. If having a gay employee was largely considered outrageous with their consumerbase, ruining their image, I'm sure the organisation wouldn't think twice.

And historically, they didn't.

So what is the "morally right" way to deal with the situation (and the "right" stance on the issue as a consumer):
A:political views/religion/sexual orientation/everything that doesn't directly affect peoples' ability to do the job isn't a valid argument so decision about firing you shouldn't be based on these factors
B:It's the public opinion that matters so if a substantial part of our consumer base doesn't like being PUT A RANDOM TRAIT HERE then you should be fired
C:fight the opression, if they agree with us then we are like A but if they don't then we are like B.

[Graknorke]

Feel bad for the guy all you want. Lament "this tragically PC world of ours all you want." But please, don't ignore the larger implications of holding business accountable for what they can do that isn't business. Because that's what this is about. No one was concerned Mozilla would ask you if you're gay when it launches and it shuts down if you say yes. They're concerned about probably the 3rd most used browser in the world being controlled by someone who may have the power and the influence to affect their lives in ways they don't want, outside of their browser.

*sniff*
Do I smell a strawman? I think I do. It's not that the situation is "tragically PC", it's just that someone's position as a job has nothing to do with themselves as a person. Does this guy's position as Mozilla CEO give him more ability to influence politics? Does it bollocks; being rich does.

And seriously. I wouldn't have maintained friendships with people who voted for Prop 8 or paid to help it succeed, unless they're opinion had changed into the present time. Why should I hold him to a different standard?

Because he is not your friend. He is the CEO of an organisation and so what kind of person he is and what opinions he hold do not have the impact as they would with a friend.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

All these people talking about how a CEO is only there to do a job are forgetting the other aspect of corporate governance.. the board. The board was about to remove him from his position. The board is allowed to make decisions in a company.