4 April 2014

Homozilla


Brendan Eich has lost his job because he does not support Gay Marriage, I do support Gay Marriage, so does that make me eligible for his job?
To be clear, I don't think this is the victory the LGBT community seems to think it is. 


Practicality
Has everyone that donated to the Anti-Proposition 8 movement lost their job? Has the LGBT community sought to boycott the products and services provided by companies where these people work? 

If the answer to these questions is no then it would seem that Eich has been singled out not because of his beliefs (that first came to light over two years ago) but because of his promotion. Is it any more abhorrent to the LGBT for him to believe what he does as CEO than if he were a junior clerk? No. 

If the answer to those questions is yes, then we have a situation where the LGBT is using a list to target people based on their beliefs. I don't want to get into a Godwin's law thing here, but I think it is clear that we wouldn't accept this sort of behaviour from any community of people.

Mozilla has a setup like any other corporation, with paper-clips and desks and HR policy. What Eich believes is not illegal. If you have genuine concerns he might act unfairly regarding LGBT people, there is an HR policy for that internally and a law for it externally. If he was a Scientologist would he have been hounded out? If he was a creationist would you abandon Firefox? If he was an atheist would you raise hell about his lack of moral guidance?

You might not like his belief, but getting him fired has done nothing for anyone. Rather than use a high profile opportunity to promote equality, to engage a wide audience with promotion of a message of understanding,  the LGBT community has used it for a public wielding of their strength to cast out one individual.

Believability 
Has the removal of Eich changed his opinion or advanced the cause of Gay Marriage? No. As the LGBT community surely knows, what you do to the one in the community is felt by all and it is exactly this group solidarity premise that has advanced equality rights for all groups in the last 120 years.

So costing Eich his job is likely to fuel anti-gay sentiment amongst those that already believed it but now they have another poster child to hold up when they whisper their dark augury about the gay mafia.

Belief is an inside thing, like gayness, whereas work is an outside thing.  You rate employees on their work not on their internals. By immediately seeking his removal, the LGBT community has shown the same sort of horrid knee-jerk reaction that occurs when gay people have been hounded out of their positions, not because they were incompetent, but because of who sets their innards a tremblin'.

The difference between gayness and belief is that through reasoned argument and concise, well honed debate, beliefs can be changed. It happens all the time. 

The real shame of this whole situation is that if rhetorical scalpels had been used; something useful may have been carved out. Instead the increasing propensity for the use of sledgehammers has again been trotted out and what has it left us?

Stupid splinters of uselessness broken noise.


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