Brendan Eich, Prop 8, Mozilla, and the "moral hazard" of his ouster

I'm not sure I understand this shame tangent. Is boycotting a form of shaming now?

The Github resignation is awfully interesting:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/21/github-founder-resigns-after-investigation/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=2&

And then this anonymous blog post:

https://medium.com/p/d96f431f4e8e

One thing that stood out to me in the times post is that the woman apparently tweeted: “Pushing women with strong opinions out of your company because they disagree with you is wrong”.

Very odd statement to make. People with strong opinions get pushed out of companies all the time. Maybe your ideas are bad. Maybe they don't jive with the vision goals of the leadership. Either way it sounds like the boss didn't have good control of his ship, but I find it odd how the woman played her cards.

Bloo Driver wrote: "So yes I agree there is an abstract problem, but I just get the sense some folks are trying to anchor it to an actual problem to try and yank that abstract out of the Negative Zone and into reality. I don't appreciate that my stance of "Eich's consequences are fair and reasonable" is being equated by this article and people using the same line of reasoning to say that I'm being the bully now, the intolerant one, how dare I, what monsters have we become, etc."

I can understand that, and I would agree--this guy is not an effective leader at this point of the people Mozilla decided to hire. Especially because techo-libertarians are not the darlings of the liberal cause that they think they are.

"And, unfortunately, discussing the abstract problem at all sets me on edge a little bit, because it shifts the conversation broadly away from what actually happened, the actual problem, and so forth. It gives ammunition to people who want to be the ones who totally flip the paradigm upside down and make it no longer about the actual inequality. So while the discussion here, for example, may not be doing that broadly, articles like this certainly do."

Okay, but I would say what actually happened is so narrow a problem, it's barely worth discussion in the first place.

SixteenBlue wrote:

I'm not sure I understand this shame tangent. Is boycotting a form of shaming now?

Based on how boycotting Chik'fil'A became trying to put a good, Christian company out of business for a political point-of-view and was reprehensible of gays and their supporters... I'd say people who don't agree with boycotting what they support has always been shaming in the eyes of some.

edit-- NS Mike, Demosthenes, and RoughneckGeek: I'm not sure what you're trying to say, because I don't see where I'm in disagreement with what you all are saying, or what anything you three say has to do with the idea of Socially Free Speech.

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

edit-- NS Mike, Demosthenes, and RoughneckGeek: I'm not sure what you're trying to say, because I don't see where I'm in disagreement with what you all are saying, or what anything you three say has to do with the idea of Socially Free Speech.

Maybe we don't agree on what socially free speech is? Can you clarify? Because I certainly don't see how the comic is irrelevant to it.

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

Okay, but I would say what actually happened is so narrow a problem, it's barely worth discussion in the first place.

Word.

In its simplest form, a boycott is meant to exert direct financial pressue on someone to change their behavior. However, I think it has changed into a way of focusing attention on something a company is doing, which exerts the indirect financial pressue of negative publicity. Like how strikers on a picket line are not just relying on the economic effects of the work stoppage to put pressure on the employer, they're trying to get the employer to settle quickly to avoid the loss of customers due to the embarrasment of being picketed.

I don't think either is the full story of the Chick-fil-A boycott--that was also 'please change, but even if we can't change what you do, we don't want you to have any of our money because of what you do with it' situation.

edit:
_____

Bloo Driver: cool. I think even a lot of people who are in disagreement about the larger issue can agree that if you split your company like this guy did, he has to go.

_____

NSMike: what I mean by socially free speech is speech that, while you have no *legal* protection from others exercising their first amendment rights in response, it would be a dick move to hit someone with social punishment as a consequence for what they said. I don't think the comic is saying anything about that issue, because if it is, he'd be saying people who boycott Cosmos or want to see it cancelled are right that Neil deGrasse Tyson is an A-hole. I'm pretty sure the author of the comic is not saying that.

When did anyone imply that either party was correct? Or even had to be?

I think I'm thoroughly confused.

Here's a thing written by one of the people who signed the letter I linked yesterday making a case for why comparisons to interracial marriage here aren't really a great fit and may do more harm than good.

NormanTheIntern wrote:

Here's a thing written by one of the people who signed the letter I linked yesterday making a case for why comparisons to interracial marriage aren't really a great fit and may do more harm than good.

That might be a compelling article if even one of his assertions was correct, but none of them are.

1. Marriage has always been gendered. - Probably not true, but even if it were, so what?

2. Religion, unlike racism, is constitutionally protected, and opposition to gay marriage has deep religious roots. - Racism had, and in some cases still has - deeply religious roots.

3. There is no political emergency. - Is he f*cking serious? We have to have our civil rights absolutely trampled into the dirt before we can get immediate action on equality? F*ck that guy, he's an asshole.

NormanTheIntern wrote:

Here's a thing written by one of the people who signed the letter I linked yesterday making a case for why comparisons to interracial marriage here aren't really a great fit and may do more harm than good.

1. Marriage has always been gendered.

So? Marriage for a long time was more of a social convention of inheritance and politics. Marriage for romantic love was rare to the point of non-existent in many cultures. THINGS CHANGE.

2. Religion, unlike racism, is constitutionally protected, and opposition to gay marriage has deep religious roots.

The KKK actually considers itself a religious order. This was a fun side effect of AZ's near law. Remember that? We actually would have codified religious racism as OK if that abomination had gone through. Your religious rights are not under attack. No one is stopping you from praying, going to church, or getting married in your religious way as you so choose. Other people having the ability to make the choice too is not stopping your choice. Next? Your religious rights, however, do not trump the rights of others. If your religion rights is under attack because non-members are doing things you don't approve of but not making you do them... then you don't understand what your actual religious rights are.

3. There is no political emergency.

Yeah, all those gays being treated as lesser humans than their straight counter parts isn't that big a deal. *eyeroll*

I love how you both nailed it so perfectly at the same time.

NSMike & RoughneckGeek: let's move the discussion over here:

http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/1...

2.:
IMAGE(http://cdn.phillymag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/1_61_g320.jpeg)

3.: Was there a real "political emergency" to get the DOMA legislation established?

Gorilla.800.lbs: I'd say there was, because you've got a generation of committed homosexual couples approaching retirement/old age/age-related illness/death from natural causes/etc. We've never had that before. Because so much of that is governed by Federal law like DOMA, we were facing a situation where the first cohort of homosexuals building a life together openly in society was running right into all those issues. From what I've read, DOMA could have wrecked their domestic lives.

Cheeze, I think you read that backwards.

Cheeze: I am not sure if I understand you right. You seem to be saying that DOMA somehow protected those gay couples lives from being wrecked, as opposed to, well, doing what it actually did -- explicitly diminish their rights and hold them down.

NSMike & Gorilla.800.lbs: no, I'm saying DOMA was going to wreck their lives as their lives became more and more entangled with Federal law. From what I read, a lot of life for people who get older and/or sicker has to do with Federal law: pension retirement benefits for your spouse, Social Security's Survivor benefits, health care benefits that cover one's spouse, etc.

edit: in case I'm not being clear, DOMA meant that whatever rights your state may have given you, those rights were no good in dealing with the Federal government. And Federal law governs a lot more of our domestic lives than we realize, especially as we get older.

OHHH I'm an idiot. I read "established" as "abolished."

NormanTheIntern wrote:

Here's a thing written by one of the people who signed the letter I linked yesterday making a case for why comparisons to interracial marriage here aren't really a great fit and may do more harm than good.

From the article:

1. Marriage has always been gendered.

What a horrible argument. An argument of "it's always been that way" is a losing proposition right out of the gate. Marriage has pretty much ALWAYS been a property contract, except that many societies recently decided that marriage being a property arrangement was unacceptable. Equality in marriage is a very, very recent phenomenon and the shift to an equal status in marriage was a dramatic change in what marriage is. It is ridiculous to hang your argument on "it's always been that way" because then you have to allow for the notion that it is perfectly okay to revert back to marriage as a property arrangement where a husband could rape his wife with pure impunity. You simply cannot have it both ways. Either marriage is allowed to change or it isn't.

God help us all if we go back to the days of corverture.

Something tells me I don't want to Google that last word.

Wikipedia wrote:

Certain aspects of coverture (mainly concerned with preventing a wife from unilaterally incurring major financial obligations for which her husband would be liable) survived as late as the 1960s in some states of the United States.

"I mean, the lady love to shop. Can't have THAT coming back to bite me in the ass, am I right fellow legislators?"

*facepalm* Seriously, no legal abilities at all? Bah!

Come on, guys. Humanity has always had slavery.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Come on, guys. Humanity has always had slavery.

Oh, so it really is okay to be a bigot, just as long as you are a bigot about gay people.

It was only a few weeks ago that America was lecturing the gay community about its intolerance for intolerance, for objecting to a bigot (in fact, an anti-gay activist, Brendan Eich) running a major American corporation (in this case, the Mozilla Foundation).

Republicans, including gay conservatives, were particularly upset that anyone would judge a man’s job performance, especially the man running a company, by his personal animus towards minorities, many of whom would be his own employees. So long as he didn’t discriminate against his own employees, he was free to be a bigot, they told us.

Now, they’re all eating crow.

Today, even conservatives are saying (on CNN) that the NBA simply must investigate whether the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team, Donald Sterling, made racist remarks to his girlfriend, who is black and Mexican.

Apparently, Donald Sterling made the mistake of buying a basketball team rather than taking over a high-tech company.

Where are the calls by conservatives to just let Sterling be Sterling? It's his personal thoughts, don't you know, and he should be allowed to have them without any consequences to his job or anything else. Isn't that was those opposed to Eich taking a powder because of his anti-gay views were championing?

Oh, that's right.

Two guys are having butt sex, so everybody panic.

Phoenix Rev wrote:

Oh, so it really is okay to be a bigot, just as long as you are a bigot about gay people.

It was only a few weeks ago that America was lecturing the gay community about its intolerance for intolerance, for objecting to a bigot (in fact, an anti-gay activist, Brendan Eich) running a major American corporation (in this case, the Mozilla Foundation).

Republicans, including gay conservatives, were particularly upset that anyone would judge a man’s job performance, especially the man running a company, by his personal animus towards minorities, many of whom would be his own employees. So long as he didn’t discriminate against his own employees, he was free to be a bigot, they told us.

Now, they’re all eating crow.

Today, even conservatives are saying (on CNN) that the NBA simply must investigate whether the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team, Donald Sterling, made racist remarks to his girlfriend, who is black and Mexican.

Apparently, Donald Sterling made the mistake of buying a basketball team rather than taking over a high-tech company.

Where are the calls by conservatives to just let Sterling be Sterling? It's his personal thoughts, don't you know, and he should be allowed to have them without any consequences to his job or anything else. Isn't that was those opposed to Eich taking a powder because of his anti-gay views were championing?

Oh, that's right.

Two guys are having butt sex, so everybody panic.

Am interested to see Norman's thoughts on this.

I'm curious if the folks that think there was a moral hazard with Eich think there's there a moral hazard with what's happening with Gurbaksh Chahal?

Chahal is the founder and CEO of RadiumOne, an online ad network that's getting ready to go public. Chahal got in trouble last year when his girlfriend accused him of domestic violence. During the investigation, the police found a camera hidden in Chahal's bedroom and seized the recordings. Those videos showed Chahal kicking and hitting his girlfriend nearly 120 times in a half hour and led to him being charged with 45 felonies. Unfortunately, a judge ruled the videos were acquired without a warrant allowing Chahal to plead out to a misdemeanor and only get three years probation and 25 hours of community service.

Some folks have been taking asking RadiumOne's board of directors to remove Chahal and TechCrunch announced that it is dropping the company as a sponsor of the Disrupt New York hackathon and publishers like Conde Nast are "reviewing" their relationship with RadiumOne.

Well, unless this was a case of American Sign Language gone horribly wrong or he's the Kwisatz Haderach, I don't think he's being pressured to leave because of anything he said. I mean, it looks like the guy came within a warrant of being a 45 time felon, a good number of which I assume are violent or sexist or both. I don't think there's anyone who believes Socially Free Violence is the same as Socially Free Speech.

(edit: minor point--as mentioned on the first page, it's not a 'moral hazard'. Let's not let another useful term turn into semantic mush)

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

Well, unless this was a case of American Sign Language gone horribly wrong or he's the Kwisatz Haderach, I don't think he's being pressured to leave because of anything he said. I mean, it looks like the guy came within a warrant of being a 45 time felon, a good number of which I assume are violent or sexist or both. I don't think there's anyone who believes Socially Free Violence is the same as Socially Free Speech.

(edit: minor point--as mentioned on the first page, it's not a 'moral hazard'. Let's not let another useful term turn into semantic mush)

Agreed and I don't see how these two cases are similar in the slightest. I can only think of a handful of situations where a company or organization won't drop a violent criminal like a hot potato.

Speech can be violence.

Revisiting Violence Against Trans People
(Toni D'Orsay, Dyssonance, 2014-04-25)

In 2002, the World Health Organization complied a landmark study of worldwide violence. This was the The World report on violence and health. Representing a consensus of experts and scientists, peer reviewed multiple times over, and acting as the new foundation of broader support and understanding of the forces involved in tracking harmful, violent behavior, the report made it clear that there is a far more universal form of violence which is just as deadly as the aforementioned brutality. At this point, the WHO, a part of the medical and legal aspect of the United Nations, representing the vast majority of the nations, and principle informing body to the other well known aspect of the UN relating to Human and Civil Rights, is not broadly or widely disagreed with by professionals, although often lay people, uninformed or misinformed by such trite and false aphorism such as the “sticks and stones” childhood rhyme, remain unaware of the violence they are engaged in.