Politically Correct Bullying is Now the New Normal

Politically Correct Bullying is Now the New Normal

On March 24th, Brendan Eich was appointed as the new CEO of Mozilla (which produces the Firefox web browser and the Thunderbird email client, among other things). Eich was one of the founding members of Mozilla, as well as being the creator of the scripting language JavaScript, and had been the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) of the company until his appointment to CEO.  He’s well known in the tech world.

Yesterday, Eich resigned after ten days on the job, after a social media firestorm had been touched off by OKCupid, a online dating service, who pointed out that Eich, back in 2008, had donated $1000 to support Proposition 8 in California, which banned gay marriage.  When this tidbit caught fire, Eich responded with his own blog post, which said, in part:

I am committed to ensuring that Mozilla is, and will remain, a place that includes and supports everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, age, race, ethnicity, economic status, or religion.

But that was not enough for the self-appointed hall monitors of political correctness.  They wanted Eich’s full and total mea culpa (along with a donation to a gay rights organization – the petition asking for this has since been taken down), or his job.  Even Mozilla employees were tweeting that they wanted Eich to either resign or be fired by the Mozilla board.

It finally became too much.  Mozilla announced Eich’s resignation.  The statement included these lines:

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.

Twitter users rightly pointed out the hypocrisy in Mozilla’s position.


To which the Mozilla twitter account responded:

And Eich’s forced resignation was also condemned by Andrew Sullivan – yes, seriously! – who wrote in a post on his website:

The whole episode disgusts me – as it should disgust anyone interested in a tolerant and diverse society. 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.

That is the bottom line.  We now live in a country where it is okay – nay, encouraged – to bully those with an unpopular or politically incorrect opinion.  Eich held the exact same opinion in 2008 as President Barack Obama did in 2008.  The PC bullies have very short memories.  The only difference between the two is that Eich didn’t go through a public conversion process.  There were no accusations of him ever treating a Mozilla employee badly due to sexual orientation.  All he did was not subscribe to the groupthink.  And for that, he must go.

And to those Mozilla employees who demanded that Eich resign or be fired – you are moral cowards.  There used  to be a time in this country where, if you worked for a company and the CEO/boss/president/owner did something so morally repugnant that you couldn’t stand it, a person of character would take a stand and say, “I have the courage of my convictions, and I QUIT.”  Now, we have employees who found their CEO’s stance on gay marriage so morally objectionable that they said, “I have the courage of my convictions, and HE SHOULD QUIT.”  Way to take a stand, Mozilla employees.  You are spineless, weak, and cowardly.  Your version of taking a stand is making sure that someone else pays the price for your beliefs.

You are bullies.  I hope you know that about yourselves.

But you won this round.  You cost a man his job for not being politically correct.

A word of caution, though – what beliefs do YOU hold that someday, just might not be the “right” ones to have, that might make YOU the target someday?  Because if it can happen to the CEO of Mozilla, how much more quickly can it happen to a “regular” person like you?

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15 Comments
  • This whole episode is very discouraging. Yes, it shows the gay rights activists for who they are — not supporters of tolerance, but demanding that everyone support their world view. It’s like the Puritans who fled England seeking, not religious freedom in the way we think of it, but to create their own world in which they imposed their own views.

    I’d like to ask the supporters of this “Fire Eich” movement how far this extends: Is being a gay marriage supporter a prerequisite for a top-level corporate position? Or any job at all?

    http://janetheactuary.blogspot.com/2014/04/on-mozilla-and-freedom-of-conscience.html

  • Dejah Thoris says:

    Attention Pink Mafia! When you start to act to oppress and ostracize people for what they believe, you become what you fight. When gay folks on both the left (Andrew Sullivan) and right (Tammy Bruce) are excoriating the Pink Mafia for turning themselves into a combination of the judges at the Salem Witch Trials and the KGB; you know they went too far.

    I want to know whatever happened to just not giving fat rats behind what anyone personally thought. Why is it now that someone must have their employment terminated, their business harmed, or their family threatened because of what they believe? If I went to the gun show this weekend and found out that the CEO of Colt Firearms hated religious people, I wouldn’t try to get him fired; I would just not buy his product, and I would encourage all of my like minded friends to do the same.

    But we all know that the Pink Mafia can’t have that. They can’t have the market determine this, because they know the truth; that a majority of people don’t believe as they do. So a “movement” of people who claim we should all be “tolerant and inclusive” are some of the most intolerant and exclusive people on the planet, and they demonstrate it by becoming the kind of people that they claim to hate.

    • GWB says:

      I want to know whatever happened to just not giving fat rats behind what anyone personally thought.

      Ah, but Dejah, they didn’t care what he thought. It was that he had the audacity, as a private citizen of California, to actually act on those thoughts and practice a little free speech.

      If he had stayed “in the closet” no one would have been the wiser, and he could have kept his cushy job. Just so long as he didn’t act on what he believed deep down inside. This is what the fascist left wants to impart to you and I and everyone else: you can believe in your sky spirit and his so-called righteousness, but you had better never let us catch you actually doing anything about it.

  • VALman says:

    I immediately sent a message to Mozilla, expressing my disgust. Then, I exported bookmarks from Firefox whereupon it was deleted from my system. I also had TOR on my system which was deleted, as well. Will it make any difference? Oh, I don’t know.

    I do know that it made a difference when people raised h*ll with the History channel over the Phil Robertson incident. I’m fed up with this fascist behavior.

    My thoughts are, for what it’s worth, this isn’t about the rights of gay people. It’s about wielding power. And, I think it’s time for a tremendous pushback. Minorities have rights, yes. And, the majority does also. Their rights are just as important, just as valuable, and just as legitimate as others. For a group to say that we’re going to make a person’s life intolerable because he has exercised them is the height of intolerance. They have become that which they said they stood against. We have a right and obligation to stand against these “bullies”!

  • Jen says:

    Brendan Eich simply doesn’t believe that legal marriage definition should include a couple of the same sex.(or a brother and sister, or three men and one woman, or whatever the progressives are going to push next). At no time did this man attempt to stop any gay couple from living together, working, entering a contract, drawing up a will, etc. He has worked in tech industry for years, and not one incident in which Eich was demonstrated to have interfered with anyone’s rights because they were gay.

    So we now have three very public instances of people who have lost their livelihood and their personal reputation all for the audacity to have either not personally supported a gay wedding-the baker in Oregon who had to close her public bakery because of fines/jail time, the photographer in NM whose court case is still pending regarding the charge that she violated a gay couple’s civil rights for not accepting a contract to photograph their wedding, and now a well known inventor and entrepreneur has lost a CEO position at the company he founded because six years ago he donated money to a organization that worked to pass legislation to define marriage as limited to a man and a woman.Which passed as 7.1 million Californians voted in favor of. And was overturned later by a gay judge.

    This is not a free country. This is fascism straight up. This is protected, favored groups receiving government judicial assistance in repayment for voting and money.

    • GWB says:

      More have lost their jobs in relation to Prop 8. I think at least tow others were publicly outed and either companies destroyed or people lost their jobs over it. They just happened to be “little people” compared to Eich.

  • Xavier says:

    It has come to light that the IRS leaked Eich’s information to The Human Rights Campaign, “the largest civil rights organization working to achieve equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans”.

    I’m pretty sure that’s illegal, or would be under a non-liberal administration. How much more malfeasance do we tolerate?

    • GWB says:

      Actually, Eich’s name came to light due to CA’s law that exposes the name of folks who donate $100 or more to any political cause (referendum or candidate, etc).

  • VALman says:

    Contempt of Congress proceedings this Thursday (April 10) on Lois Lerner. I wouldn’t want to be in her shoes. High heels just bug me for some reason.

  • Xavier says:

    I just emailed Mozilla to express my strong disappointment at Eich being forced out by militant gays, advised them I was abandoning Firefox after many years of use, and that I would use every opportunity online and IRL to convince others to migrate to another browser.

    If you can, take a minute to let Mozilla know your feelings on the subject too.

    I sincerely hope the Eich travesty destroys the credibility of militant ghey activists and Mozilla permanently. Mozilla’s been steadily losing market share for several years – this might drive them into the obscurity they deserve.

    So, my first recommendation is SRWare Iron. It’s based on Chrome but doesn’t have the privacy issues and intrusive Google oversight that plague Chrome. Some Firefox settings, like bookmarks, can be imported but it doesn’t have the retinue of Add-ons that made Firefox so customizable.

    Check it out here: https://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_chrome_vs_iron.php

  • I put this post on my facebook page Friday, and since then, I’ve seen a better take on the issue. The issue is troubling, but … read on. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/04/mozilla_and_brendan_eich_s_resignation_why_don_t_conservatives_want_to_protect.html

    • Xavier says:

      That’s contrived BS. I once had an employer tell me he could fire me if he didn’t like the color of my socks – and legally he could have – but in the real world employers don’t want to lose quality workers over sock color, or sexual preference, or bumper stickers. If people were being unjustly terminated, the MSM would be promoting a new cause du jour to boost ratings and create more liberal outrage. Since that’s not happening, we can discard this Slate article as meaningless garbage – which Slate articles usually are.

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