The other is an extremely fringe view which has only ever been supported by a tiny percentage of the population.

I also don't think Eich was "out there advocating" for something. He made a private donation, which was not a significant amount in the grand scheme of things ($1,000 either way was not going to make any difference to the outcome). The law required that fact to be made publicly available, and then others publicised it; he didn't voluntarily choose to publicise his donation. When people publicly asked him about his beliefs on the topic, he avoided answering the question.

Just so you know that. Again: Brendan Eich spent $1,000 to hurt people like me. If gay marriage was not legal, my life would be significantly worse today.

I didn't do anything when Eich was made CEO. I probably should have. Let's say I did. Would you say I'd be in the wrong for telling Mozilla that I disagree with their choice of CEO, because he directly hurt people like me and avoids answering questions about whether he's likely to do it again?

Hm, here, try this. Instead of something provocative, let's try something else.

Suppose Eich donated, say, $500 to strengthen the DMCA. Let's say be advocated for harsher punishments for anybody reverse-engineering a DRM scheme, even for interoperability or other non-piracy purposes. Then suppose he gave another $500 to lobby against net neutrality.

When asked about these donations, let's say he refuses to answer or talk about them.

Would you be comfortable with him leading Mozilla? Kinda seems like his values might be deeply in conflict with those of the organization, making him a poor choice for CEO. But also ... That's just politics, after all. Has nothing to do with his leadership or technical skill.

> I also don't think Eich was "out there advocating" for something.

You're right- he was paying other people to go out there advocating for it. Hardly better!

As a side-note, pretty much unrelated to the point of that post, I don't see anything wrong with being opposed to same-sex marriage and promoting this opinion. As a matter of fact, I don't see why would anybody be opposed to that, but, hey, that's probably more the reason why somebody who is opposed to that should get a better PR so they could explain me their position. That is what constitutes healthy political climate, which is an opposite of calling a witch-hunt on anybody who has been caught supporting or even having a non-conventional political beliefs (which, ironically, today equals to having so called "conservative" beliefs).

Having said all of that, I actually have no idea if Eich would have been a good CEO. I don't know how much in common this job has to what he has previously done, and if he would be good at it. I don't like the current leadership of Mozilla, but there's no proof that Eich would be any better, I simply have no information that would allow me to say "things would be different if only Eich was the CEO".

Oh gee, thanks for not hating us. That's actually quite a low bar.

Imagine someone describing a "healthy political climate" where anti-racist and pro-racist views got an equal hearing.

It's so fucking depressing to see this stuff on HN.

You see, the problem is that pretty much every political topic is someone's life. It hardly would be worth discussing otherwise. Thinking that the topic that concerns you personally is somehow universally special among the others is despicable arrogance.

Now, I suppose that you are thinking that it is easy for me to say all that stuff about same-sex marriage, because I don't care. And you are kinda right. But let me assure you that there are topics in which I am pretty heavily emotionally invested and have a very strong opinion on (I won't specify what it is to not escalate this even further). And that some people I work with, and even have pretty good friendly relationships with have not only argued against, but outright have hobbies that go directly against to what I think is right. So I'd rather wish some of these hobbies to be banned (or, let's rather say "legally restricted"), and I said that to these people on more than one occasion. We both are fine about that. People cannot agree on everything.

(There is also stuff that is currently banned that I want to be legal. Just to make it more symmetric, so that you don't think it's something about wanting things to be banned that is special.)

You can disagree about political issues if you have an alternative position - if I think we should have a robust social safety net and you think we should eliminate welfare because everyone should work, at least you've articulated an alternate position where people can still survive. You can want to privatize the post office and mail still gets delivered. The issue with arguing about people's human rights is that there is no alternative. You're just saying some class of people should have less than others with no remedy

I'm sorry, but no. Fuck. That.

You listen to multiple people describe to you how a certain political stance directly harms them on a fundamental human level and your response is "I don't care, and you're arrogant to think I should care"? No, fuck that.

It's good that we don't work together because I would absolutely have a problem with that attitude.

Such as? I'm pretty sure I don't oppose anyone's fundamental human rights.

Would you say the same thing about racism? I.e., I should be prepared to work with a racist coworker because I myself probably hold equally despicable views on some other topic.

And it’s hard to come up with something specific to you without really knowing much about you, but I’ll try my hand by randomly picking something which I haven’t made up my mind about yet (so ideally I can be more likely to come up with case for either side) and perhaps you might fall on one side and see how either way you’re infringing on some kind of human right: it’s the “right to be forgotten” topic. On one side, if you let people deleting things about them online, it’s a way to censor discussion about them, you could probably abuse this to get everything negative about you removed, and it would generally lead to an erosion of freedom of speech if people could come after you for what you said and force you to delete it. On the other hand, you have a right to privacy, it’s difficult to consent to sharing once something goes online, there’s already been huge problems with doxxing and people being permanently unemployable because of something that ended up on the Internet about them that was no longer relevant or true and they are haunted by it forever.

I think the issue probably affects fewer people than say racism might, but it’s a clear example of how you could take a viewpoint and have entirely reasonable people claim you are infringing in their rights with your opinion.

It seems to me that you are now defending a logically tenable position: that people who say arbitrarily awful things in public ought to be able to keep their jobs regardless of the extent to which their views are deeply offensive to their coworkers and society at large, and inconsistent with the mission of the company. But if that is where you end up, I take that as a reductio.

I should note that the donations here were meant to be private, I believe, but were found through some transparency law or the other; not an active public endorsement or anything, especially one officially sanctioned by putting Mozilla clout on it. But yes, to be logically consistent, I am saying that I think you should be able to keep your job even if you grab a loudspeaker the moment you step out of work and proclaim that you think we should drown babies (I am even willing to entertain this if you actually drown babies, though I believe this to be a very unpopular view). I as your coworker will certainly have some very strong opinions about your character, some of which will likely leak into my interactions with you as personal bias, but ideally if you are a normal, well-adjusted person while at work I think you should be able to remain employed.

The rest of your comment confirms that you are indeed advocating an extremist position, which I don't think it would be productive to discuss further.

As I said in the second paragraph, I don't really see why would anybody be opposed to {1}. So it just so happens that I am pro-by-default, i.e. "pro, because why not", but I might have as well been strongly pro or strongly anti. I very well suspect there is a very good argument for anti-{1}, it's just that I've never heard of it, nor did I do much research on that topic. And if I do, I may end up falling into both strongly pro-{1} or strongly anti-{1} categories.

The point is, that {1} is completely unrelated to {2}, so I can work on {2} together with somebody who has a polar beliefs to those I have on {1}, i.e. in both cases:

- if I am strongly pro-{1} and he is strongly anti-{1}

- if I am strongly anti-{1} and he is strongly pro-{1}

I'm not sure exactly what I'm trying to say here. But I just want to put it out there that reading this thread as a gay man in 2020 is massively dispiriting. It's clear that only a tiny minority of straight people, even on HN, have any real concern whatever for gay rights.

I won't argue about fairness of comparing {not allowing same-sex marriage} to {skinning small animals alive}, but even in that case your analogy should be about "someone who was arguing back in 2008 for keeping skinning small animals alive legal" while you voted to make it illegal (note, that votes split almost 50/50 back then, BTW, so that's a lot of people you choose to never work with).

And, since you asked, yes, I know for a fact that some people I work with (including both superiors and subordinates) have wildly different political opinions on some topics than I have. With some we never discuss it, with others I'm comfortable enough to argue about that and even laugh them off sometimes. More than that, even some of my friends have strong opinions on which we differ. And with some we may go into mountains, and tie into the same rope (which, if you are not familiar, kinda means "trusting our lives to each other", quite literally), and not hate each other 100% of the time, because of some of our political beliefs don't match.

And if all of that is a problem to you, yeah, I totally can agree to disagree with you, I can even respect that, as long as your disagreement doesn't mean hunting people down, because their opinion doesn't match yours. Now with that I kinda have to disagree.

I have no problem working professionally with somebody who says taxes should be lower, or who argues that renewable energy is a waste of money, or who supports charter schools or school vouchers, or all sorts of conservative ideas. I'd disagree strongly with them, mind you, but...

I guess that's sort of a core part of it, ultimately. These are not dry political questions for me- they have a very real, immediate impact on my day-to-day life.

> And if all of that is a problem to you, yeah, I totally can agree to disagree with you, I can even respect that, as long as your disagreement doesn't mean hunting people down, because their opinion doesn't match yours. Now with that I kinda have to disagree.

I would also agree- although what do you mean "hunting people down?" Presumably not, uh, with bow and arrow. I would not hunt Brendan Eich for sport.

I will, however, criticize people vocally- not for their opinions, but for their actions.

Suppose I sent a letter to Mozilla's board - "I'm a queer person who uses Firefox and who contributes to other Mozilla products. The choice of Brendan Eich, who has contributed to find opposition to my human rights, as CEO makes me feel uncomfortable contributing further to Mozilla as an organization, and because of this I won't be giving my money or time to Mozilla while Eich is in charge of it. I urge you to reconsider your choice of leadership. Sincerely, (me)."

Could you respect me after sending that letter? Is that valid criticism, speaking out? Is that free speech? Or am I just another woke bully?

The problem is, when you frame this in terms of self defence, practically any action is justifiable.

I'm a believer that we need to change hearts and minds to make progress; social change isn't a war that can be won by force.

> Should I take the position that I am being deprived of my human rights

I think this reduces to the question of whether or not you think you are being deprived of your human rights. Do you? I think at present there is no generally accepted plan for how polyamorous marriage would work in detail. This is in contrast to gay marriage. At the same time, there is also not much concerted opposition to polyamorous marriage. (E.g., no-one is trying to pass constitutional amendments to rule it out.)

As for poly marriage, yes, there's no attempts to make it even more illegal because it's taboo to the point that nobody brings it up except when conservatives make slippery slope arguments (which gives you an idea of how unpopular it is). Kind of like there was no DOMA in the 1970's; gay marriage was unthinkable.

I feel that you're sidestepping the main question about poly marriage. How would it work in detail? Do you support a specific version of it? In fact, do you actually support it at all, in a real non-rhetorical way?

And while Australian law bans polygamy for married couples, it accepts a person can be in multiple concurrent de facto relationships at once [1]. A (rather small) minority of the Australian Muslim community actively practices polygamy; at most the first wife is recognised as a legal marriage (sometimes even the first marriage is not legally recognised – you can religiously marry without legally marrying, by choosing not to register the religious marriage with the government) – but second and subsequent wives are legally recognised as de facto relationships, and hence have the vast majority (if not all) of the legal rights that they'd have if they were legally married.

It also sometimes happens that a wealthy businessman dies leaving behind a wife and one or more mistresses, and the mistresses then claim in court that they were his de factos, and hence are each entitled to a portion of his estate [2].

This all has the potential to make various legal proceedings more complex than they would have been in the monogamous/monoamorous case. But the complexity is something that Australia's courts and government agencies are already dealing with. I don't think allowing polygamous/polyamorous relationships to have the legal status of "marriage", as opposed to de facto, would actually make any great difference in practice.

[1] https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Depart...

[2] http://web.archive.org/web/20200323020828/https://www.hocw.c...

1) Multiple concurrent legal marriages should be treated in exactly the same way that Australian law currently treats multiple concurrent de facto relationships

2) If you are married under Australian law (and that marriage is legally undissolved), you will be able to concurrently validly marry a subsequent person, provided that (a) you have the written consent of all the people to whom you already have undissolved marriages (b) the person you are marrying has seen those written consents and acknowledges in writing having seen them

3) Foreign polygamous legal marriages will be legally recognised as marriages in Australia (provided they meet all the other legal requirements, like consent, not being incestuous, minimum age requirements, etc); however, if the foreign legal system does not impose consent to polygamy requirements equivalent to (2) above, and an existing spouse did not consent (or a new spouse was unaware of the polygamous nature of the marriage), then they will have the right to void the marriage. (This would represent a reintroduction into the Australian legal system of the concept of a "voidable marriage" – that concept used to exist in Australian law until 1975; it was inherited from English law, and still exists in English law until this day.)

Is there any problem with the above proposal? What is it missing? I think most of the meat is actually in (1); the only non-obvious element in (2) is requiring informed consent from both the existing spouse(s) and the new spouse for a polygamous marriage. Multiple concurrent de facto relationships don't require such informed consent – a man with a legal wife can have a concurrent de facto girlfriend, and keep the wife and the girlfriend secret from each other – that's morally quite reprehensible, but doesn't make the de facto relationship legally any less a valid de facto relationship. I think morally, legally recognised polygamy shouldn't be possible without informed consent of everyone involved; and politically, it would be impossible to legalise it without giving such a guarantee.

The complexity in (3) is how to deal with the fact that some foreign legal systems allow polygamy without knowledge and/or consent – for example, some Islamic countries allow a man to take a second wife without his first wife's permission. I think the best solution, is if a person did not consent to a foreign polygamous marriage, they have the right to annul it under Australian law (but, if they are happy/accepting of it, they don't have to use that right, and it can remain valid.) I wouldn’t make it automatically invalid, because there may be cases where everyone involved knew about and consented to the polygamy, even if that consent wasn’t legally required under that foreign country’s laws, but the lack of a formal requirement for consent means there are no written records to prove it exists even when it actually does

- When 2 or more people get married, a new legal entity of the marriage is created. It has members, property and an estate. It pays taxes

- Divorce is from the perspective of a person leaving the marriage and leaves with 1/n of the marital property

- Reform child legitimacy laws (legitimacy doesn't matter, the state advocates for the well-being of the child)

- Rights normally reserved for a spouse are extended to all spouses (such as hospital visitation)

- Mandate that policies that extend to a spouse (such as life insurance) get changed to cover all spouses

And a bunch more stuff I'm sure I haven't thought about. Here's the thing though; I know I'm so incredibly unlikely to see it happen in my lifetime that it feels like a waste of time to get into the details of changing the law. Instead I spend my time on is making my relationships work and giving support to others about how to have happy and healthy non-monogamous relationships.

https://polyadvocacy.ca/

I'm not saying all this just to be difficult. There are genuinely so many ways poly relationships could be legally recognized. For example, would merely removing the prohibition on bigamy be sufficient? Or do we need group marriages rather than some combination of pairwise marriages between members of the group? How does divorce work? If A, B, C and D are in a poly marriage and A and B want to remove C, but D doesn't, how is that resolved?

I'm not in any way saying that there could not be answers to these questions, or that no-one has yet suggested answers. I just expect any serious advocacy for poly marriage to demonstrate a consensus across a wide range of the community on what the correct answers are. In the case of gay marriage this was much easier to achieve. Once gay rights advocates agreed on gay marriage as a goal, it was almost immediately clear how gay marriage would work. This simply isn't the case for poly marriage.

Western countries would want to make the institution non-discriminatory, which would mean: (1) allow women to have multiple husbands, as well as allowing men to have multiple wives; (2) allow same-sex polygamy, so a woman could have multiple wives or a man multiple husbands; (3) require knowledge and consent, so a person cannot marry a new spouse without consent of their existing spouse(s), and the new spouse must be aware of those existing spouse(s); (4) open to people of all religions and none, instead of being for Muslims only, or being for members of certain ethnic groups only

(3) actually already exists in some countries – for example, Singapore requires consent of existing spouse to contract a valid polygamous marriage – so that element isn't new. (Although some other countries allow a husband to take a second wife without the first wife's consent.)

(4) isn't historically novel either – although in recent times, Islam has been the only major religion to commonly allow polygamy, it has been widespread in human history and has never been unique to Islam. Indeed, polygamy for non-Muslims is legal in a number of African countries, for example South Africa – former South African President Jacob Zuma legally has four wives, and he isn't Muslim, he follows Pentecostal Christianity

Nor is (1) historically novel – a number of traditional cultures have polyandry, although in the contemporary world no country legally recognises it. (Well, apparently, polyandry is theoretically legal in Gabon, but unknown in practice.)

The only element of the above that's truly historically novel is (2), allowing same-sex polygamy. But, I don't see how that historical novelty is an issue. There's nothing special about same-sex polygamy which makes it somehow more complex than opposite-sex polygamy is.

> For example, would merely removing the prohibition on bigamy be sufficient? Or do we need group marriages rather than some combination of pairwise marriages between members of the group?

Compared to multiple concurrent two-person marriages, group marriage is historically very rare, and isn't legally recognised in any country today. Given that, I think it would be most logical to start with pairwise marriage only. If people really want group marriage, they can campaign for that separately. Given a group marriage can be simulated by a collection of pairwise marriages between the group members, does the lack of group marriage – in a society which allows polygamous pairwise marriage – really pose any issue?

> Once gay rights advocates agreed on gay marriage as a goal, it was almost immediately clear how gay marriage would work. This simply isn't the case for poly marriage.

That really isn't true. Given over 50 countries worldwide already have poly marriage, we can just do what they do, minus the discriminatory parts, none of which are essential to the concept.

I think perhaps it might make a bit more sense if you replace “marriage rights” with something such as “right to life”, which might be easier to relate to. And to make it more even, let us replace Brendan Eich with one of those two-faced comic book serial killers who is a functioning successful part of society in the workplace but outside of it likes killing people. Nobody in particular, just people in general.

Now the question posed is, if you had no idea if they were a serial killer, would you work with them? The answer to that is “of course”: you know no reason not to. However, this issue is slightly different, because by some means it has been revealed that he is in fact a serial killer, but somehow this isn’t strictly illegal or anything so he’s coming in to work anyways. At work he’s great but once you leave work you are concerned (in general, not because he’s going to target you in particular) that he may be waiting in your bedroom to kill you.

Now we have a curious question of what we should do with this person. From a logical perspective, which is the one made in the comments you’re responding to, nothing should be done: removing him from his position doesn’t stop him from killing people, and if we do fire him we lose out on him entirely. I hope you can understand why someone might hold that position. And from that perspective, I think that they would likely respond to your letter with “you have every right to voice your criticisms, but I think you are being irrational because I cannot see how your letter asking Brendan Eich to be removed from his position helps your case because he can still privately donate all he wants regardless” (unless you in fact believe that he should not be able to hold employment at all and thus be unable to donate money because he is penniless.)

On your side, I think the argument is now fairly obvious: in the situation I described, I know very many people who would be hesitant to work with such an individual. We’re human, we associate qualities of a person and color all their actions through that lens. While you say you would be happy working with people of the opinions you mentioned that supposedly don’t directly affect you, I would strongly suspect it would affect how you thought of them at least subconsciously. Really, I think the opposition you have against working with someone who does not support LGBT rights is just this except amplified to the point where you can no longer try to correct your biases for that person because of it affecting you personally. And I think there is probably a very real negative effect of people working with others who privately hold views they don’t agree with, because that subconscious tension is always there even though if you look at it “rationally” it should have nothing to do with your work. And really, in many cases we seem to consider it OK to get rid of people who make everyone around them feel or perform worse.

Now, is that a valid reason to terminate someone? That’s exactly the argument here. Personally I tend to lean more towards “no” than most people would, I think. I am fortunate enough to not have anyone try to restrict my freedom of marriage or association to my knowledge, but I have worked with people who have never personally done anything to me but I have found out (usually after the fact, to be honest) that they hold fairly string views that I not only disagree with but I could consider attacking a category I might fit into (“people who defend freedom of speech of the alt-right should be punched”, “brown people are all H1Bs that take our jobs and we should send them back to their own country”). Notably, it was never an issue that I think I could measure impacting our working relationship, in many cases which I think I could prove for a fact because I didn’t know they held such views and they weren’t aware that I fit into the categories that they were talking about. And quite often I think we actually even did pretty well when we both were aware of this because it would just not come up in a working relationship. Would I work with them again? I think I would. I’ve come to realize that I personally have to separate people from their private (or private until solicited) opinions, because more often than not when I think I meet someone who shares my views on human rights they actually don’t and I’m just completely unaware. So for my own sanity I just have to separate them.

Skinning animals alive for fun is a criminal offence in many jurisdictions (animal cruelty), and recognised as a symptom of mental illness (it is in the DSM-5 criteria for conduct disorder, and maybe other disorders too).

By contrast, donating to a mainstream political campaign is not a crime, and is not recognised as a symptom of mental illness

So I think the analogy you are trying to make here is a poor one

Anyway, back on the political question, on one side you have real people being affected and on the other you have vague and abstract claims of tradition. This sure makes it feel wrong to those people affected.

Edit: Perhaps the real problem is with the framing of the question. Some people just want the right to a legally recognized partnership. Some people see marriage as having religious implications. In any case it's a complicated issue that we're not going to solve here.

I tend to think that the state shouldn't be in the business of marriage at all. If private clubs / religions want to recognise a special ceremony between whatever groupings make sense for their club (someone suggested polyamorous families above) then they should go ahead.

The state should have nothing to do with it, not recognising relationships that have had such a ceremony as different to relationships without. Now I know that is not currently the case, but I'd be more in favour of removing state recognition of any marriage than changing who the state lets get married.

Places where it is genuinely useful to make the distinction should be replaced with thought-out duck-typing rather than nominative typing - if you've been living with someone as a partner for a certain amount of time, or are clearly trying to bring up children together then you should get the presumptive 'next of kin' status that the law finds helpful regardless of your ceremonial status. Or perhaps people should just have the right to add others to 'next of kin' status at will.

People have all sorts of private opinions. I hate the DMCA and think it represents an extremely dangerous precedent that completely misrepresents why laws like copyright were created in the first place. The idea is almost more dangerous than the implementation. That said, I think I would be ok with the Mozilla CEO donating to the DMCA as long as he did not take action on that opinion at work. I would be cynical and watching the corporate behaviour like a hawk. I would give little benefit of the doubt in assuming the worst of any official behaviour, policy, or stance that seemed inappropriate. I would be unsympathetic about any consequences that resulted from inappropriately projecting personal values into corporate action. I cannot say that I agree that it is appropriate to take corporate action against somebody for the opinions they hold as a private citizen.

A pharmacist needs to provide birth control even if they personally object to it for religious reasons—-because it is the law. If they don’t, there should be consequences ( perhaps losing their license ). However, it does not follow for me that they should be penalized for stating their opinion privately, at a rally, via donation, or even in the local paper. He has the right to stop his own daughter but not to stop mine. What he does with his family is not a good reason for me to go after his business. Now, I might not support his business. That is my personal decision. I might even suggest that others don’t support him either. I sure hope that this would not lead me to lose my job though. That would not seem at all fair to me. In fact, I would consider shutting down my freedom of speech and action like that to be quite unethical.

This is definitely valid! I thiiink I'd still disagree- in a public-facing leadership role, it's just not that easy to separate personal actions from business-related ones- but it's definitely a view I have some sympathy for. I do get where you're coming from.

That said- Eich resigned. He wasn't fired. And so far I've seen no real evidence that this wasn't just his decision- that he realized he wasn't the best candidate for CEO because of his past actions. Perhaps he really was just pushed out... If you have anything backing that up, I'd like to see it.

Because from what I've read- and that's not too much, so if there's any info I'm missing please fill me in- if I say "I don't like the CEO, I won't donate anymore while he's in charge, and you shouldn't either"...am I in the wrong?

Oh, come on. We all know what "resigned" means, when the one resigning is a CEO.

You say the only reason your partner could immigrate is due to being allowed to marry, but it is actually also due to US immigration laws not recognising civil partnerships or de facto relationships. If they did, your partner could have immigrated even if you weren’t allowed to marry. I don’t know what Eich’s views on immigration laws are (or were), but for all we know he might support such a change to US immigration laws. I think it is very likely that some people who voted for Prop 8 would have supported such a change (I can’t say whether that “some” would have been few or many.) Personally, I think immigration laws should be marriage-neutral, and treat married and unmarried relationships the same.

I think it is an important cultural norm that employees be allowed to engage in small-scale, mainstream, private political activity outside of work without getting in trouble at work for doing so. We need this norm to apply at CEO level as well, because the norm at the top flows downhill to the rest of the company. (“Mainstream” means it doesn’t apply to fringe groups like neo-Nazis; “small-scale” means it no longer applies if employee wants to run for public office, lead an activist group, etc)

(There is possibly an exception for CEOs supporting policies which directly contradict the core business interests of the company; I don’t think marriage laws relate to the core business interests of a browser vendor; DMCA laws are possibly somewhat closer to those core business interests, but even then probably not close enough - if Mozilla’s product was a content platform in its own right, as opposed to being a tool used to access other people’s content platforms, then DMCA would have been directly relevant to their core business.)

I think the biggest blame here lies, not with people who called for Eich’s sacking, but with the failure of the Board to publicly come to his defence. A CEO can weather any amount of public criticism so long as the Board still publicly supports them.

I myself wish he’d explained his views in more detail. However, I am not sure if his doing so would have helped much. Whatever he said, some people likely would have tried to twist his words in to making them sound as unreasonable as possible, and it would not surprise me if his PR team were advising him that explaining and defending his views in detail would only add fuel to the fire. Also, if one views it in terms of the principle that employees (CEOs included) should be allowed to privately express their political views by donation, then demanding a public explanation is undermining that principle and turning private views into public ones. It is possible that respect for that principle is one of the reasons behind Eich’s refusal to publicly elaborate his views on the issue.

And again, I am not defending the belief itself, but the expression thereof.

> You're demanding a special privilege for your partner and then talking as though it were a natural right.

It's not a special privilege. It's a privilege people who are straight get but not people who are gay, which is not okay.

It's the same kind of misrepresentation as saying Eich spent $1000 to hurt people like the poster. That's my point. No-one in these debates is actually setting out to hurt other people, yet from the other side that's how it's experienced.

I'm also pretty sure that you draw the line somewhere and I'd be surprised if you were fine with siblings being allowed to marry each other, even when they're deeply in love, they take care of each other like other couples and them being together doesn't harm you or anyone else the slightest.

Edit: My take on this is: Even though I'm married myself, I don't think marriage should be part of the legal system or the concern of the state. If the state wants to support people who take care of each other, it should state specific requirements and everyone who fulfils them gets the benefits, no matter who they are. And if people want to get married they can do that as part of a private ceremony, provided by the church or whatever, and if they can't live without the consequences of being married today, they can sign a private contract to their liking. No reason to involve the state in this private matter.

This is a valid position but the Prop 8 people showed no sign of believing it. They were, reserving marriage for themselves, not working to change the laws first, and this was very directly stated both in the language of the proposition and their advocacy for it.

Remember, gay marriage was legal at the time. They could have de-privileged marriage as a legal construct with no unfair impact but put no effort whatsoever into that. It was entirely focused on removing access to those benefits from gay people.

I lived in a relatively conservative part of California at the time, was canvassed a bit, a fair chunk of my family are Orange County Republicans, etc. The language was uniformly an argument on religious principles, and if you suggested reforming the laws which privilege marriage they were profoundly uninterested in those options.

You won't be singing the same tune when they take away the tax breaks, your right to visit your partner in hospital, your right to live in the same country as your partner should you be of different nationalities, etc. etc.

I'm so sick of straight people who essentially say "well if gay people can get married then I guess marriage shouldn't be a real thing any more". In 100% of cases these people turn out not to have even minimally thought through the implications of this. But maybe suddenly stripping straight people of their right to get married would be the only effective way to stop the endless stream of heartless and hurtful comments on threads like this.

I don't see how any of that should depend on people being married? All but one of those things are already possible where I come from without being married, and the last example could be easily fixed.

> I'm so sick of straight people who essentially say "well if gay people can get married then I guess marriage shouldn't be a real thing any more". In 100% of cases these people turn out not to have even minimally thought through the implications of this.

If have thought this through pretty thoroughly. So before we continue, answer the one simple question: where do you draw the lines, that exclude certain types of partnerships from getting married? If you draw it then you're doing the same thing opponents of gay-marriage do, and if you don't draw it marriage becomes a stupid concept within the legal system.

> But maybe suddenly stripping straight people of their right to get married would be the only effective way to stop the endless stream of heartless and hurtful comments on threads like this.

That is exactly what I was saying: Get rid of marriage as a concept within the legal system of a state.

Why do you think this idea is relevant here? It's only relevant if you want to argue that gay marriages shouldn't be legally recognized because no marriages should be legally recognized.

You mention that you're married yourself. If you really wanted the state not to be involved, you could just have conducted a non-legally-recognized marriage ceremony. So why didn't you? My guess is that you (a) didn't actually feel strongly about this issue at all and (b) wanted the many benefits conferred by a legally-recognized marriage. As to (b), gay people want these benefits too.

If Eich had donated money towards an organization that opposes marriages of more than two people, so this discussion had been about those types of relationships instead, I would have brought forward the same arguments. But I have the feeling that Eich wouldn't had lost its job in that case in the first place.

> Why do you think this idea is relevant here? It's only relevant if you want to argue that gay marriages shouldn't be legally recognized because no marriages should be legally recognized

No my take is: Either make all relationships legal (of course as long as none of the participants are exploited), if you insist on keeping marriages as a legal concept. Or, preferably, get rid of marriages altogether from the states point of view, since this is much more efficient and practical.

I'd find your opposition to the legal recognition of any marriages more credible if you divorced your wife in solidarity :)

No, again: If opposite-sex marriage is legal, then I think any other type of partnership should be allowed to become married as well, whether its same-sex with two men, 20 women, a whole family, ...

> I'd find your opposition to the legal recognition of any marriages more credible if you divorced your wife in solidarity :)

Why do you assume I'm married to a woman? I'm married because we get the most benefits out of it and my partner is kind of sentimental and has a different opinion about that topic, so I'm doing them a favor as well.

Like with every other human being, my views and actions aren't always consistent. For example I also don't like child labour, but here I am typing this on a machine that likely made quite a few children suffer.

I didn't respond negatively to that comment. I provided an explanation, that those people who object to the idea of gay marriage do the same thing as almost everyone else, even many who are in favor of gay marriage: They have a certain image or ideal in their head, of how a marriage has to look like, and everything that doesn't fit that image feels wrong to them and shouldn't be legal. Hence almost everyone wants to exclude certain types of relationships from getting married.

I explicitly focused on that argument:

> They very explicitly wanted to take a right away from other people, even though they suffered no plausible harm from those people exercising that right.

from the comment, which IMHO is a misleading argument, since I don't believe that many gay marriage supporters take it seriously. So you should finally answer my question, so I know where you stand: Do you believe that that argument is valid, i.e. are you also fine with a mother (50) marrying her son (30) or 12 people getting married? According to that argument it should be legal as well, since they don't harm anyone, but I have a strong feeling that even most gay marriage proponents wouldn't support such a type of marriage. So they're line would just be somewhere else.

1. I never put forward an argument against gay marriage, yet the paper is all about debunking arguments against gay marriage.

2. I don't consider it a bad effect if other types relationships were allowed to get married, it's the opposite, I'd consider it a huge improvement to what we have right now. Yet the paper assumes someone said: "If we allow gay marriage, we will also have to allow [policy X], which would unquestionably be bad."

Hence I must assume, that you either didn't read or understand anything I wrote, or you didn't read the paper.

Here in Australia, the government has decided that unmarried couples in long-term marriage-like relationships (with characteristics like intentions of permanence, sharing of finances and mutual financial support, living together, raising children together, etc) should be treated equivalently to married couples, and receive the same rights and entitlements as married couples do – those long-term marriage-like unmarried relationships are called de facto relationships. This has been enshrined in law, and is now mostly true (modulo some obscure legal technicalities, and the fact that some government agencies at times fail to adhere to the spirit or even letter of the law – although to my knowledge immigration is the main and maybe even only offender). So, in Australia, there are no special tax breaks for being married – unmarried people in de facto relationships can claim the same tax breaks. Family law courts, etc, treat long-term de facto couples as if they were married for issues like property settlements and child custody. This gave a somewhat different character to the same-sex marriage debate in Australia – unmarried couples, both opposite-sex and same-sex, already had pretty much the same rights as opposite-sex married couples, and extending the right of marriage was primarily a symbolic statement of equality rather than a change in people's real world rights and entitlements.

I think other countries, including the US, should do the same thing as Australia has – extend long-term/serious unmarried couples the same legal rights and entitlements as married couples.

And once you've done that, there really is no obstacle to abolishing marriage as a secular legal institution. People who want to participate in it, either as a cultural institution or as a religious institution (or both) are free to do so, but there really is no compelling reason for the government to get involved.

This impractical pie in the sky stuff about abolishing marriage as a legal institution is almost always just a lame excuse for opposing same sex marriage. I'm not sure why you're bringing it up or why you think it's relevant to Brendan Eich.

I already said that, for the case of immigration/visas, it wasn't working that way in Australia; but, that is the only case in Australia in which I know about. But, that's a problem with the Australian immigration system that could be fixed with sufficient political will; it isn't a problem with the principle that serious/long-term unmarried couples should have the exact same rights as married couples, it is just a correctable failure to fully and correctly implement that principle in practice.

For many years I was in an opposite-sex living-together relationship, including having a child together, without being married. (We did eventually get married.) I know people in my extended family who have lived together (in opposite-sex relationships) for 30 years, had kids, never got married, never experienced themselves as being disadvantaged in any way compared to legally married couples. So my lived experience in Australia tells me that unmarried couples rarely or never experience any discrimination on the basis of their marital status, outside of the immigration system. (And maybe some religious institutions, but that has nothing to do with the government or legal system.)

> People usually used this impractical pie in the sky stuff about abolishing marriage as a legal institution as a lame excuse for opposing same sex marriage

When did I say I oppose same-sex marriage? I support same-sex marriage, but I also support abolishing marriage. The two positions are not mutually exclusive – so long as the state is in the business of recognising marriage, it should treat same-sex and opposite-sex couples equally – but, it should get out of that business altogether.

> I'm not sure why you're bringing it up

I didn't bring it up; someone else did. But since it has become part of the conversation, why shouldn't I share my view on it?

The idea of removing marriage as a legal institution and "fixing" 101 other rules that used to depend on marriage is, as I said, pie in the sky stuff. This silly idea is great cover for homophobes. It's harmless to discuss it in the abstract, but not so much in the context of the question of whether gay people should have fundamental rights.

If immigration officials are not treating married and unmarried couples equally, that's a problem with either the law or its enforcement in practice – both of which are fixable with sufficient political will – not a problem with the principle that married and unmarried couples ought to receive identical treatment.

If the principle of equal treatment were legislated, and if that legislation were consistently enforced, what then would be the problem with abolishing state recognition of marriage (for both opposite-sex and same-sex couples equally)? I can't see how there could be any.

> You "support" gay marriage in rather a quiet and ineffective way, I'd say.

In 2017, Australia had a national postal plebiscite on the question "Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?". (Technically called the "Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey", since by calling it a "survey" the government was able to carry it out without the permission of Parliament.) I voted "Yes". I told my friends and family I was voting "Yes". I even posted a photo of my "Yes" ballot paper on Facebook (I covered up the barcode so that I didn't spoil my vote by doing so). Over 60% of my fellow Australians voted the same way. Within a month of the result being announced, Australia's Marriage Act was changed to reflect the result of that vote. So how exactly was my support ineffective?

In your pie in the sky world, I'm sure they will. In reality, not so much.

I deleted my point about your support being "quiet and ineffective", as I didn't have a justification for that - sorry. But I do think you are very naive in thinking that undermining the importance of marriage as a legal institution is a good way to advance rights for gay couples.

Right. Because government agents and agencies never systematically violate equal treatment mandates.

In the case of immigration/visas, a big problem is that (in many legal systems) most immigration/visa decisions are not judicially reviewable. (There are often exceptions for certain areas of immigration law, such as refugee status determinations and deportation proceedings, but if you are refused a visa from outside the country you usually have no legal recourse.) This means that, even if you believe you have been discriminated against on a legally prohibited ground, no court will even hear your claim.

I think that's wrong, and that should be changed. And it impacts all kinds of people; I'm sure some people get discriminated against on the basis of their sexuality when seeking visas and have no legal recourse, but plenty of people get discriminated against on other grounds – or even just get visas denied for completely inscrutable reasons (e.g. Daniel Stenberg's continual denial of a US visa) – and have no recourse either. But this is a problem which could be fixed with sufficient political will; the law could be amended to grant rights of judicial review in all visa/immigration matters.

Another point: you can say "even if the law says that married and unmarried couples should be treated equally, immigration officials will ignore/violate that law", but you can equally say "even if the law says that same-sex and opposite-sex married couples should be treated equally, immigration officials will ignore/violate that law". I don't understand how, the risk that some immigration official might discriminate against a same-sex couple is a good argument for retaining the legal recognition of marriage, since immigration officials can discriminate against same-sex couples whether marriage is a legally recognised institution or not.

This is how right-wing activists frame it but it’s thoroughly dishonest, not to mention unscientific. A baby is a human child which has been born. The contraception options those people oppose affect what is at that point a few cells. Abortion is always well before the point of viability and increasingly rare the later it gets – you’re talking cases with severe health risks and a long way from being developed enough to have any chance of surviving in a NICU.

The key issue in the abortion debate is – "at which point in the development of an individual human does it gain the moral status of a person". Some say at conception, some say at birth, some say at some point in between the two. The natural sciences (including the biological and medical sciences) can't directly answer that question. It depends on what are the correct criteria for an entity to have the moral status of a person, and that is a question for morality/ethics/moral philosophy, not a question for the natural sciences. At best, if we have agreed on moral principles to determine the answer to that question, then the natural sciences can provide factual information which can be combined with those moral principles to reach a moral conclusion; but, in this case, the different sides don't agree on what are the right moral principles to apply, which is a question beyond the proper scope of the natural sciences. Hence, I don't think either side's position is inherently "unscientific", although people on both sides of the debate are fairly called that when they wrongly present the debate as something which science can settle.

> A baby is a human child which has been born

"Baby" is a term of everyday language; I don't know if it has a formal scientific definition, but even if it does, you can't presume someone using the word outside of explicitly scientific contexts means the word in some technical scientific sense. In everyday language, "baby" is the correct term to use for an unborn child (at least one which is sufficiently far along); I know when my wife was pregnant, she had a baby in her womb, and when she was pregnant with our daughter, we told her big brother that "there's a baby inside mummy's tummy".

Is "baby" the right word for a newly conceived embryo? Not in many people's usage; in my own usage, an embryo isn't a baby yet, but it is going to become one at some ill-defined point in the future, yet prior to birth. However, maybe in some people's usage, a newly conceived embryo is properly called a "baby". Different people use language in different ways. And how the term "baby" is or should be defined in everyday language is another question which is outside the proper scope of the biological and medical sciences.

> Abortion is always well before the point of viability and increasingly rare the later it gets

So, a friend of mine who identifies as "pro-life" told me about a case in the state of Victoria, Australia, in the year 2011, in which a termination of pregnancy was performed at >= 37 weeks gestation for a "maternal psychosocial indication" (i.e. no confirmed or suspected congenital abnormality). I didn't believe him at first, but it is in the official statistics (see Table 6.20b, page 141 of [1]).

I don't support a complete ban on abortion (possibly my "pro-life" friend does). But I do think there is something wrong with a state's abortion laws if healthy babies can be legally aborted at >=37 weeks for a maternal psychosocial indication. I don't see how that morally differs from performing infant euthanasia post-birth for a maternal psychosocial indication.

[1] https://www.bettersafercare.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2...

Its sometimes framed that way, but since the situation is sui generis in other ways (no one ever has entitlement to another human's body the way necessary for compulsory continuation of pregnancy in any other circumstance) there are other valid framings; particularly, its equally valid to frame it as "what is the extent of the right of bodily autonomy against intrusions by other humans".

In truth, there is no single key issue, and there is a fair degree of correlation between the differences on those issues, so its often difficult to even pull one out as decisive for any individual, much less for the general debate.

But, even if one were to agree that a woman has a right to bodily autonomy which outweighs the right of her unborn child to life, how does that apply to a case like the one I referred to, of a termination at >= 37 weeks for a maternal psychosocial indication? If the mother didn’t want the child, why not permit it to be born alive, then put it up for adoption? It seems clear that particular line of argument, whether or not it is correct, is insufficient to justify the law and practice of the state of Victoria, Australia (and the same may possibly be true of some other jurisdictions as well.)

You could start with the first case I mentioned: opposition to contraception, which is something American right-wingers are increasingly trying to class as abortion even though there are nothing more than unimplanted cells at that point.

Most dictionaries define baby as starting at birth. Medical science has been able to push the point of viability back earlier (fortunate for the prematurely born children we know) but that’s nowhere near the first 8-9 weeks when the vast majority of abortions occur. Where science comes into this is answering questions about development: when the brain is a handful of cells, without the major developments which start on the path to cognition it’s not what almost anyone would call a “baby”. (Yes, politics means that more people will now claim otherwise then did before this was turned into a major political recruiting issue in the 1970s. We don’t need to let bad faith arguments redefine common words.)

My personal benchmark: when would you have a funeral? Somewhere between a third and half of the fertilized embryos spontaneously abort. If you wouldn’t have a funeral or a forensic investigation, it’s something else.

As for the case you mentioned, I can see that’s a favorite talking point of Australian anti-abortion groups who are trying to portray it as common. Given that it’s a single record for common medical procedure my first thought would be that we don’t have enough information to know that it wasn’t a data entry or classification error. The narratives portraying these situations as doctors happily killing viable babies have a long history of turning out to be gross misrepresentations of very painful medical situations.

Ask yourself how likely it is that this would happen and NOBODY would say a word - no horrified nurse going to the police, no clerk calling the news, etc. - and ask whether that would happen in the situation as portrayed by abortion opponents? You keep using this data point in your comments rather than an extremely rare outlier so it’s really important to your argument to establish that it’s a real and valid case since you have exactly one data point.

Which forms of contraception are you talking about? Which "American right-wingers"? (And why pick on Americans? You seem to be at least partially talking about the moral views of conservative Roman Catholics, whose views are largely the same everywhere and have nothing to do with whether they are Americans or not.)

Some people believe that the moral status of an individual human being begins at conception. Some forms of contraception may prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg. If you believe a fertilized egg has the moral status of a person – a belief which is neither "scientific" nor "unscientific", but rather beyond the scope of the natural sciences to judge – then forms of contraception which prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg are plausibly immoral. Everyone can choose which moral beliefs they want to accept and which they want to reject, but either way moral beliefs are outside the proper domain of the natural sciences.

There is some controversy over whether particular forms of emergency contraception do indeed prevent implanatation or not. Some people have taken positions in that controversy which may not be supported by the scientific evidence, and so on that limited issue may be "unscientific", although I don't think anyone can fairly deny that it is at least possible that some forms of emergency contraception do sometimes prevent implantation. Similarly, although for IUDs the primary method of action happens pre-fertilization, my understanding of the scientific evidence is that IUDs do sometimes prevent implantation.

Quite separately, some religious people – in particular conservative Roman Catholics – believe methods of contraception which only act prior to conception, such as condoms, to be immoral. That's a moral belief, so (like all other moral beliefs) I can't see how it can be "scientific" or "unscientific"; and that moral belief is a separate topic from abortion. (Nobody claims condoms are a form of abortion, not even conservative Catholics who believe that condom use is immoral.)

> Most dictionaries define baby as starting at birth.

I don't agree. Which dictionaries are you talking about?

I've always considered the OED to be the most prestigious English dictionary, and it currently defines "baby" as "An unborn or newly born human being; a fetus, an infant" (sense I.1.a). That definition clearly includes the unborn in its scope, although possibly not the embryo. (And indeed, I myself would not call an embryo a "baby", although it is important to note that dictionaries are descriptive not prescriptive, so if somebody else does call an embryo a "baby", you can't argue they are wrong simply on the basis of a dictionary.)

> Where science comes into this is answering questions about development: when the brain is a handful of cells, without the major developments which start on the path to cognition it’s not what almost anyone would call a “baby”

It is not the job of the biological sciences to determine the meaning of the word "baby" in everyday use.

It is not the job of the biological sciences to answer moral questions, such as when does an individual gain the moral status of a person.

Embryology tells us that, at the point of implantation, the embryo contains around 200-300 cells, which are still largely undifferentiated. Nobody disputes that.

The question of whether those 200-300 cells constitute a "baby" (when that word is meant as a term of everyday language) or whether they have the moral status of a person, is not a question within the proper scope of the science of embryology to answer.

> As for the case you mentioned, I can see that’s a favorite talking point of Australian anti-abortion groups who are trying to portray it as common.

I've never heard anyone try to portray it as common. Everyone I've heard talking about it has presented it as a single case (out of around 14,000 abortions performed in Victoria in that year). (And, as far as I know, has not been repeated since.) The argument, however, is that whatever you think about those 14,000 as a whole (of which a mere 378 were performed post 20 weeks), surely you can agree there is something wrong with this particular case, and with laws which legally allow it. I think a lot of people who have no problem at all with abortion early in pregnancy – something which I personally support being legally readily available – think abortion of a healthy baby at 37 weeks should not be legal (and yet, under Victoria's laws, it is).

> Given that it’s a single record for common medical procedure my first thought would be that we don’t have enough information to know that it wasn’t a data entry or classification error.

So, it is in an official government report, prepared by a committee, whose members include specialist obstetricians, paediatricians, professors of midwifery, etc. Don't you think they would have noticed an outlier like this, and investigate it? The committee that prepared the report has access to the identifying details of the case (name of hospital, full name of patient, patient's date of birth, date of procedure, medical record numbers, etc). They certainly have the ability to inquire with their colleagues at the hospital where it was performed (we don't know that detail, but they do) and double check it is correct (Australian medical privacy laws have an exception for collection of government statistics, so that would not have been issue). Furthermore, there was enough controversy about it after the report's release, they surely would have investigated that data point afterwards if they hadn't already done so beforehand. If it was something as simple as a data entry error, I'm sure they would have been happy to publicly announce that. Given all of this, I think your suggestion is unlikely.

> The narratives portraying these situations as doctors happily killing viable babies have a long history of turning out to be gross misrepresentations of very painful medical situations.

I'm sure there is some very painful story behind it. My own guess is it is probably something like a young teenager (such as a 13 year old) pregnant due to rape/incest and who is actively suicidal. Obviously that's a very horrible situation, but even if my guess is right, I don't think it should be permissible to kill a healthy >=37 week baby, whether pre-birth or post-birth, even in such a horrible situation.

I think they really should have released more details about it – of course they can't publicly release any personally identifying details, but a few extra details might put the data point in greater context.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Ginsberg#Association_wit...

Seems like the ideal candidate to me.

Whilst the UK obviously isn't exactly the same politically as the US (though they have a huge amount of political cross-polination) I get the distinct impression that pedo advocacy by people of the right tribe is treated as far less of an offence than holding views that are actually widespread but go against the woke consensus.

Anyway, we're now way off topic, which is why I didn't want to go into this kind of detail in the first place.

But lets not mix things up here. People that are conservatives and even homophobic in my experience have more to do with the cultural views of a giving period that they were raised and i think that in some cases, we must not take things lightly, but also give some time for them to rethink their values.

And im pretty sure that kicking these people on the teeth wont help them to get integrated at all. The only thing they will learn in to lie better and be a better hypocrite.

Here public/private boundaries are very important. So if the guy is tweeting about this point of view and damaging the image of the company, of course, this would be a good motive to fire him.

But if he believe this in private, dont force others in the company to follow his socio-political views and is good in what hes doing, even if you dont like his political views, we should not fire anyone because of this.

Pedophiles on the other way are people with very harsh psychological problems that may lead them to commit a very serious crime. You dont need to resort to this sort of rethorical trick to make me understand, as i already did before (you already have my empathy here as im on your side).

Really, with time we learn that we are all handicapped here and there, and by becoming more humble about that, we learn that we need to accept and work with people with a lot of different views, backgrounds and actions or else we are all getting cancelled.

We need to be more careful about social sidelining people, because we will just turn some people that were mildly into something to become real radicals and also at the same time losing good hands that would otherwise help us into build a better future.

What make the most harm to the society: A guy contributing in private, financially, to entities that lobby for policies that goes against gay people or a CEO and board with impeccable and fair social and political views but that end doing actions that harm the core of a company that is best know for their engineering culture, good products, open source and freedom values?

Because Mozilla will be vaporized in the coming years.. does it really worth it?

Not sure at what level within a company that becomes a relevant question. It's not for store clerks and store managers. It is for the CEO.