{"id":24974,"date":"2014-04-04T07:20:31","date_gmt":"2014-04-04T12:20:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=24974"},"modified":"2014-04-04T08:58:35","modified_gmt":"2014-04-04T13:58:35","slug":"welcome-to-the-church-of-ssm-militant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/04\/04\/welcome-to-the-church-of-ssm-militant\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to the church of SSM militant"},"content":{"rendered":"

A National Review<\/em> editorial<\/a> on the Mozilla CEO’s short tenure after being outed as a supporter of a Californian anti-SSM ballot initiative:<\/p>\n

In 2008, Barack Obama and Brendan Eich both were against gay marriage. Senator Obama averred his support for the one-man\/one-woman view of marriage, while Mr. Eich, a cofounder of the Mozilla web-browser company, donated $1,000 to support Proposition 8 \u2014 a California ballot initiative that had the effect of making Senator Obama\u2019s avowed marriage policy the law in California, at least until a federal court overturned it on the theory that California\u2019s constitution is unconstitutional. Barack Obama inexplicably remains, as of this writing, president of the United States of America, but Mr. Eich has just been forced out as CEO of Mozilla because of his political views.<\/p>\n

The various tendencies that operate under the general heading of \u201cgay rights\u201d have had an extraordinary run of it in the past several years, in both the political and the cultural theaters. We now have a constitutional right to commit homosexual acts (Lawrence v. Texas<\/em>), while Facebook offers at last count 56 different gender options to its users (trans with or without asterisk, genderqueer, neutrois, and two-spirit among them). Having won the battle in California, the sore winners are roaming the battlefield with bayonets and taking no prisoners. Mr. Eich\u2019s donation had been a matter of public record for some years, but Eros is a jealous god, and he will have blood from time to time. Mr. Eich\u2019s elevation to the chief executive\u2019s position provided occasion for critics within his firm and without to make an example of him.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Again, it is in this case a matter of culture. The nation\u2019s full-time gay-rights professionals simply will not rest until a homogeneous and stultifying monoculture is settled upon the land, and if that means deploying a ridiculous lynch mob to pronounce anathema upon a California technology executive for private views acted on in his private life, then so be it. The gay agenda of the moment is, ironically enough, to force nonconformists into the metaphorical closet. If through the miracle of modern medicine you end up with five sets of mixed genitals, you\u2019ll get your own section in the California civil-rights statutes; cling to nearly universal views about marriage for a few months after it\u2019s become unfashionable, and you\u2019re an untouchable.<\/p>\n

Unless, that is, you\u2019re the anti-gay-marriage candidate that all the pro-gay-marriage people voted for in 2008, in which case you get a pass, apparently on the theory that everybody assumed you were being willfully dishonest for political reasons. (That assumption provides a relatively rare point of agreement between homosexual activists and the editors of this magazine.) There simply is to be no disagreement, no dissent, and no tolerance for other points of view.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Update<\/strong>: In Time<\/em>, Nick Gillespie<\/a> says there’s both good and bad aspects of this event.<\/p>\n

Welcome to the brave new world of socially conscious\u2026 web-browsing. In the past, consumers might patronize certain businesses (Whole Foods, say, or Ben & Jerry\u2019s) whose stated missions extended beyond increasing shareholder value and avoided others that might have politically objectionable CEOs or reputations for being anti-abortion (Domino\u2019s Pizza, say) or public positions opposed to certain forms of birth control (Hobby Lobby, for instance). Now we\u2019re boycotting free products such as Firefox and demanding companies dance to the tune called by customers. I think that\u2019s a good thing overall \u2014 but it may end up being just as difficult for consumers to live with as it will be for corporations.<\/p>\n

Whether you care about gay marriage or politically correct web experiences, Eich\u2019s resignation shows how businesses respond to market signals. \u201cMozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech,\u201d writes Mitchell Baker, the organization\u2019s executive chairwoman, in announcing Eich\u2019s stepping down. \u201cAnd you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just as the Internet has empowered consumers to find cheaper prices, more-extensive reviews, and a wider variety of goods than ever before, it\u2019s also made it easier for them to call out companies for all sorts of dastardly actions, screw-ups, and problems. I like that OKCupid\u2019s intervention wasn\u2019t a call for government action to limit people\u2019s choices or ban something. Indeed, OKCupid didn\u2019t even block Firefox users from its site \u2014 rather, it politely asked them to consider getting to the site via a different browser. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A National Review editorial on the Mozilla CEO’s short tenure after being outed as a supporter of a Californian anti-SSM ballot initiative: In 2008, Barack Obama and Brendan Eich both were against gay marriage. Senator Obama averred his support for the one-man\/one-woman view of marriage, while Mr. Eich, a cofounder of the Mozilla web-browser company, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10,53,13],"tags":[158,35,186,196,190],"class_list":["post-24974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-liberty","category-politics","category-usa","tag-barackobama","tag-california","tag-freedomofspeech","tag-lgbt","tag-samesexmarriage"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6uO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24974"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24984,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24974\/revisions\/24984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}