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Brendan Eich recently resigned from his short-lived position of CEO at Mozilla, as criticism rained down upon him for his opposition to homosexual marriage. Note that this occurred in California, where Proposition 8, the initiative to ban homosexual marriage, was passed by a majority in 2008. Pressure was brought to bear on him not because he held an extreme view, but because he held a view that the majority of Californians shared just a few years ago.
While CEO, Eich made it clear that his views on homosexuality would not influence his running of the company, so those urging his dismissal were doing so based on an ideological purity test. Eich had already been working at the same company as CTO, and there were no apparent issues with his performance. The leftist Guardian newspaper from Britain (theguardian.com) helped heap on the pressure by pointing out Eich’s campaign contributions to Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan, two previous contenders for the Republican presidential nomination. Eich’s detractors were simply complaining about his previous political actions outside the company.
Eich’s personal political convictions weren’t a good reason for him to step down from the CEO position at Mozilla. However, the fact that he did resign demonstrates his unsuitability for the job. A CEO must be able to handle office politics, and if he can’t be depended on to defend his own beliefs, how can he be expected to defend the company’s interests?
Commentary on the left on this issue tends to focus on “inclusivity,” and Eich’s political views are branded “non-inclusive.” However, because homosexual marriage is a contentious issue in California, any position Mozilla might take on homosexual marriage would be at odds with roughly half of California’s voters. The only way to accommodate both factions is for Mozilla to have a neutral stance on the issue – which is apparently the course Eich was planning to take. This was the simplest and perhaps only way to include both sides amicably.
After Eich removed himself from Mozilla, that organization released a statement saying it supports “marriage equality,” which implies support of homosexual marriage. It also quotes its Community Participation Guide, which says this in part:
We welcome contributions from everyone as long as they interact constructively with our community, including, but not limited to people of varied age, culture, ethnicity, gender, gender-identity, language, race, sexual orientation, geographical location and religious views.
If Mozilla is truly keen about welcoming people of all religious views, why has it felt the need to support a cause that is irrelevant to its core business and is opposed by virtually every American with strong religious convictions? If Mozilla were sincere about “inclusivity,” it would have had no problem keeping Brendan Eich as CEO.
This incident lays bare the truth about the progressive cry for “inclusion:” it is only ever issued so that conservatives make way for progressive causes. Because Eich really was the champion for inclusion, if he had the right skills to be CEO he could have defended himself more than adequately.
As a general rule, when a conservative is accosted by a progressive and exhorted to be “more inclusive,” a good response for the conservative is this: “I’m glad you value being inclusive, because that means you will be respectful and tolerant of my views and traditions.”
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