You are dead to me, Firefox. Tell your mama.
“Will he now be forced to walk through the streets in shame? Why not the stocks? 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”
—-Blogging pioneer and gay rights advocate Andrew Sullivan, writing yesterday about Mozilla’s craven capitulation to gay rights bullies who demanded the removal of new CEO Brendan Eich “who had the gall to express his First Amendment rights and favor Prop 8 in California by donating $1,000.”
Corporations, as the Duck Dynasty flap depressingly illustrated, tend to be spineless, irresolute and principle-free. This instance of that tendency, however, is more alarming and harmful than most. Capitulating to arrogant, self-righteous, power-hungry forces on the left or right only makes them more voracious: we will know who to thank first when boycotts abound demanding that anyone who questioned Al Gore’s climate change hysteria be sacked.
Thank you, Mozilla.
The company didn’t just cave. It grovelled. Mozilla Executive Chairwoman Mitchell Baker wrote that the company “prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past week, we didn’t live up to it….We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it’s because we haven’t stayed true to ourselves.We didn’t act like you’d expect Mozilla to act. We didn’t move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We’re sorry. We must do better.”
Well, too late for this Mozilla-user, at least. It’s going to be a pain in the neck, because now I have to find another system, and I may even have to pay for it. I, however, hold companies to reasonable standards of fairness and ethics, and if a company’s conduct is so nauseating that seeing its logo every day when I sit down in front of my computer screen is going to make me retch, I have to do something.
Every other Mozilla user is free to make his or her own choice; for the moment, at least, it’s a free country. Any company that fires a man for a private contribution expressing his opinion regarding a public issue six years ago—at a time when the President of the United States was on record as holding the exact same opinion—because irresponsible, hypocritical and dishonest gay rights Furies have declared that “those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure,” is contemptible by my standards.
_________________________
Pointer:
Source: Andrew Sullivan, Consumerist
Ethics Alarms 
These gay loving fanatics obviously learned the wrong lessons from the life of Fred Phelps.
What’s love got to do with it? This latest sacrifice to the ayatollahs of sexual anarchy is about figuratively raping an individual out of his employment – an assault on economic justice as brazen and hypocritical as “Obamacare.”
“Those who seek to deny dignity of employment and instead enforce misery, shame and frustration are our (and their own worst) enemies.”
Stupid hippies! The Inquisitors of Queer reminded me once again of the break I made from fellow hippies, back at the height of the “Free Love” era, mocking them with sarcasm: “I HATE people who don’t love each other!”
I find Chrome to be very nice, and far more stable to boot. I changed more than half a year ago, and couldn’t be happier.
I’m constantly tempted to make the switch to Chrome’s increased stability and decreased memory hog-dom, but I just can’t turn my back on the Ad-Block and NoScript tools for Firefox.
Chrome’s ad-blocking is pretty robust…
I have long used Chrome with the ScriptNo plugin (looks like it has been renamed ScriptSafe) which works like NoScript. AdBlock is available for Chrome as well, although I don’t find it necessary when blocking scripts.
I knew it had AdBlock, the last time I checked I didn’t see a script blocker (which is really what I’m more concerned with anyway, ads are annoying, scripts can get nasty). I’ll check it out, thanks.
We’ve been using Chrome for a year.
No complaints.
To replace NoScript, try HTTP Switchboard — it’s like a mix of NoScript and Request Policy.
Don’t forget that it was the IRS’s illegal release of sonar lists to progressives that led to this.
Does Eich have any sort of cause if action?
Not true, this was a California referendum and Eich’s name was on the list supplied by the California Secretary of State. Under California law donors who contribute more than $100.00 to political campaigns (including campaigns for/against propositions) are public information. The IRS leak was a separate issue and Eich wasn’t listed in that leak.
Those who cheered on guys like Dan Savage and were happy to say fuck this, fuck that, fuck everyone’s beliefs that don’t square with ours, and so on have no one to blame but themselves for the fact that it came to this. The innate problem with ruthlessness in pursuit of a goal when not everyone agrees what the goal is or how to get there is that eventually those who disagree with others may find the ruthlessness turned on them. Heaven help those on the losing side of a battle with the ruthless, for there is no more fearful feeling than to be at the mercy of merciless men.
This isn’t a battle for equality anymore. This is a battle for dominance. When people’s private donations and publications from years ago are being scoured in an attempt to force them from their jobs, when private entities can’t enforce a non-partisan rule for their events without accusations of hatred that cost them sponsors, when people in the public eye can’t answer questions about personal views or values in an interview honestly for fear that tomorrow they’ll be pilloried and accused of hatemongering, when businessowners are being sued to force them to provide services that their consciences clearly have a problem with, then we have moved way beyond tolerance.
For THEM, Steve, it’s always been about dominance.
No, some of them are into…
You know, this isn’t the place…
The place was nearly the vampire threads.
There will always be some people who are like a dog with a bone, they keep running and digging until something is buried. The fact that the bone in this case is the First Amendment is irrelevant.
COTD by Steve-O, in my opinion.
Now, now, Steve-O, remember: we enlightened, tolerant people must be intolerant of intolerance because tolerance of intolerance is intolerant and if you’re intolerant of our intolerance of intolerance then you’re bad…or something.
Alex: A great career awaits you in public broadcasting!
Someone enlighten me: is this all caused by the OKCupid statement and the ensuing publicity, or was there further pressure before or after that?
Because if not, way to go, OKC. You’ve got yourself a case-in-point section in whatever medium we wind up using to document Internet history and Western culture in the next century. Woohoo. Let us know how that love legacy works out for you.
We use Firefox pretty much exclusively at work.
Lucky you. We’re required to use nothing but IE.
That might be the first time anyone ever said they were lucky to have to use IE…
Hey, IE isn’t terrible anymore….
I remember their coming out with an impressive TV ad, not long after I got hooked on Chrome.
No no, I said WW was lucky for using Firefox exclusively at work. WE, on the other hand, use a browser so outdated that GMail yells at me for it.
It’s almost like living among the Puritans and the witch burners innit?
From victimhood to victimizers, then all the way back to earned victimhood: There are people who NEED so badly to profit from having been hated, that they are now acting DELIBERATELY in ways so as to PROVOKE others to hate them anew. I hate to see them succeeding.
Of course you know what kinds of lies the snarkosphere will shout:
“You never STOPPED hating!” (to distort, rationalize and deflect)
The proper reply to that is, “Fuck you, I hate whoever I want, whenever I want, however I want.”
At least the Puritans attempted to live by the strict standards they imposed on everyone, and the witch burners had the decency to admit that, yes, they were hunting and burning witches. I find the modern progressive to occupy a rung below either.
Crypto-Nazis, the jerks at OkCupid. I’m sorry that Mozilla felt the need to grovel in the mud.
Well, I’m never raising THAT subject again….
???
Meaning “what should I replace Firefox with?” Talk about off topic…
You pointed out unethical conduct by the people who run Firefox… It makes perfect sense people would seek to replace it.
http://www.stentorian.com/propagan.html
Clearly, the people behind this campaign are not very good propagandists.
Attacking people is the worst method of getting people to support your cause, whatever it is.
still, this does beg the question of the differences in the motivations between the rank-and-file and the leadership. The rank-and-file no doubt believe that recognizing same-sex unions as marriages is beneficial to society. But what motivates the leadership? Does the leadership truly believe that this benefits society? Or do they have a baneful motivation?
Does anyone here remember the infamous Prop 8 map? It was at eightmaps.com as recently as a year or so ago, but seems to have been taken down since.
Using public records of those who donated to the Prop 8 campaign, it superimposed names, phone numbers and addresses of the donors on a Google-like map, with messages encouraging site vistors to “pay them a visit.”
While the site is down, the digitized information is no doubt still available somewhere in a searchable database, waiting to be used again. As many people know, as someone said here, the fight has nothing to do with “marriage equality.” It has everything to do with power and politics, domination and control. It is also about revenge.
Ugly as this episode is, I believe that it is just a taste of what is to come, with many more people being flushed out and forced out of their jobs by the unfathomably vindictive gay rights movement. If we let them, that is.
And we should not let it happen, otherwise it will be the norm for political discourse.
Sullivan, of course, neglects to mention how he was urging the gay community to view Mormons as “mortal enemies” after Prop 8 was passed.
(Link: http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2008/11/mormons-vs-gays/208881/)
My hypocrisy detector just went KABLOOIE. Sullivan helped CREATE the lynch mob mentality… I find his complaints about it now to ring… hollow.
After Proposition 8 passed, there were violent protests in front of churches and actual invasions of them by pro-homosexual mobs. The Mormons were targets- but they weren’t alone. Catholic and evangelical churches, along with those with predominantly black congregations, were also targeted. However, they didn’t dare try that with the mosques! Like most cowards, they only went after those who were unlikely to react with violence, being Christians.
I’m aware of that.
What is more topical is that Sullivan has not, while decrying what happened to Eich, apologized for his role in egging on the virtual mobs against Mormons and Prop 8 supporters.
He’s trying to have it both ways.
They often do. That’s because they can so often get away with it.
Yes, thank you. I wrestled with whether to point out that Sullivan was a creator of exactly the phenomenon he now deplores is such absolute terms.
The fact is, Sullivan did do that – and it should be pointed out he helped create this monster.
The general conduct of supporters of gay marriage since Prop 8 passed , from the actions of Vaughn Walker, to their virtual lynch mob, to the fact that they embrace bullying. coercion, thought control, and thuggery, has been a litany of unethical actions.
I initially opposed gay marriage due to the fact that proponents were primarily using the courts to impose it on the people. I saw nothing good coming from that – and feel that the ruling in Roe v. Wade helped make our politics toxic, particularly the Bork and Thomas hearings. Gay marriage would add similar toxicity. Sadly, in the next few years, the Supreme Court will likely impose gay marriage on all fifty states.
After Prop 8, it came down to something else: The enactment of gay marriage and other gay rights laws would give the type of thugs who sent anthrax hoaxes to Mormon temples and who have run people out of jobs for opposing their political agenda even more power.
I was raised Mormon, and I have a number of family members who are more active in the faith than I am. The fact that people like Sullivan could very well hold power over them due to the court rulings that are highly likely to come down the pike frightens me, and frightens me greatly, Jack.
It’s not a phobia if the fear is reasonable.
The backlash against same sex marriage could turn violent, especially if the larger society condones bullying and thought control. And the rank-and-file, not just the leadership, could be targets of violence. And there are probably a minority of people just waiting for an excuse to engage in violence.
(I should also add that Vaughn Walker defied binding precedent.)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2598231/Gay-teacher-writes-books-challenging-homophobia-resigned-parents-complained-did-not-want-teach-children.html
The only distinction between what happened to the teacher and what happened at Mozilla is that the teacher is alleged to have taught his opinion to students in the classroom.
If the CEO of a software company that produces a popular web browser had Leviticus 20:13 quoted with every new version of the browser and every update, would calls for the CEO’s resignation be as controversial?