Brendan Eich’s Gravediggers

By Aaron Taylor | April 7, 2014

There probably isn’t anyone who hasn’t heard about the sacking of (now former) Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich over a personal donation he made to the Proposition 8 campaign. When it comes to the sacking itself, I couldn’t have said it better than Andrew Sullivan at The Dish:

Will [Eich] now be forced to walk through the streets in shame? Why not the stocks? The whole episode … 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.

Robert George sounded the loudest (and most hysterical) cavalry charge at First Things, suggesting that all orthodox Catholics, conservative evangelicals, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Orthodox Jews, and observant Muslims now need to watch their backs:

You can bet it’s not just Mozilla. Now that the bullies have Eich’s head as a trophy on their wall, they will put the heat on every other corporation and major employer. They will pressure them to refuse employment to those who decline to conform their views to the new orthodoxy … there will be other political and moral issues, too, that will be treated as litmus tests for eligibility for employment. The defenestration of Eich by people at Mozilla for dissenting from the new orthodoxy on marriage is just the beginning.

How is it, we might ask, that we now hear the loudest cries against “political and moral issues” being “treated as litmus tests for eligibility for employment” coming from conservative kulturkampf warhorses who have been strenuously advancing that very proposition for some time?

How is it, we might ask, that we hear the loudest cries against Mozilla’s decision to decide that it is an organization with progressive values coming from those who strenuously defend Hobby Lobby’s claim to be a “religious organization”? Would Robert George et. al. complain about the “defenestration” of a pro-gay marriage Hobby Lobby CEO? If a business selling “arts and crafts supplies, fabrics, baskets, silk flowers, needlework, picture framing, party supplies, furniture, and related items” can have views on sexual ethics, why can’t a web development company have urbane, progressive values?

As Jamelle Bouie notes at Slate, the “Mozilla situation seems emblematic of what conservatives want when it comes to the relationship between business, public opinion, and public sanction”—which is why their complaints over Eichgate sound hollow and cravenly opportunistic to everyone who isn’t a conservative.

Christians are waking up to the fact that they have very little moral capital with which to speak out against the defenestration of Brendan Eich. If we want to know why this is the case, we might start by questioning our collective acquiescence in allowing the culture warhorses to act as de facto public spokespeople for the churches on “political and moral issues”—the people who have spent so long digging Brendan Eich’s grave, and are now surprised to find him buried there.

Zechariah

Wait, that’s it? A few paragraphs and we’re done? I was hoping for a good analysis, but I think I’ve been clickbaited.
Christopher Hall

“Eichgate”? I’m so exhausted and sick of using “gate” as a suffix to anything to convey a sense of controversy. It’s just so hamfisted and hackneyed. I hope you used it ironically.

And yes, that’s all I have to contribute here.
http://europa-antiqua-arca.blogspot.com/ clavdivs

Since Hobby Lobby didn’t fire anyone for having an opinion, the comparison is invalid. Moreover, conservatives tend to argue more for truth than for tolerance. That’s another difference. Try reading the tortured logic of the Mozilla statement saying that Eich was fired because they believe in tolerance and inclusiveness. The socially conservative “culture warriors” you describe are at least honest enough to say that they believe in objective truth. That’s the difference.

I don’t think anyone at FIrst Things suggested that Mozilla cannot have opinions on political topics. I think the problem is that if they do so then they should come out (of the closet) and honestly say that they don’t want Christians working for them. Because that is what is implied. I think that’s their right, just as it’s Hobby Lobby’s right not to give their employees contraceptives. But to pretend to be “tolerant” and “inclusive” , when that only applies to certain left-approved groups, is to lie.
Ashleen

From a political theory perspective, one difference seems to be that the Hobby Lobby situation deals with the government and the appropriate relationship between government interest and religious beliefs, and the Mozilla situation deals with public opinion and public pressure (to quote the Slate piece). I read this article because I wanted to see if it explained in greater detail why these cases are analogous. Maybe you could write a longer piece with more of an argument for your position on why these things are really the same?
Gaston

The comparison with Hobby Lobby is far too stretched. They resemble each other in that a conservative is coerced into doing something they don’t like by a liberal.

The comparison with firing people also generally fails because the stated mission of any company gives it its identity. Form follows function. No one here is being fired for not sticking to the mission of the company. Eich was the CEO for one, but he was also clearly 100% for the mission of Mozilla as evidenced by how many admired him internally.

No. It would be something like the USCCB motivating the faithful to boycott and ask for the resignation of Jeff Bezos from Amazon for his pro-abortion donations (2.5 million).
http://alessandrareflections.wordpress.com/ Alessandra

I’m very disappointed with this article. It’s not what I expected to find here. Oh well. I guess some people have nothing better to do than to blame the actions of the gaystapo on decent social conservatives.

And calling George’s quote hysterical is what is hysterical. My guess is that Mr Taylor lives in a nice little bubble of comfort where he would never be sexually harassed or persecuted by the gay mafia, so he can show nothing but disdain concerning people who are alarmed.

Moreover, who has viciously attacked conservatives on discrimination issues? Liberals - who shouted again and again that this was an evil practice - the most evil in the world. Yet they do it all the time. The only difference here is that it happened to a conservative with clout, who then got media attention.

“Christians are waking up to the fact that they have very little moral
capital with which to speak out against the defenestration of Brendan
Eich.”

I think not only Christians, but a lot of people are waking up to the fact that they have much more moral capital than they thought with which to speak out against liberals and their nasty normalization of homosexuality, fake tolerance, and fake cries against discrimination. Mozilla’s statement was nothing short of Orwellian. The people calling Christians bigots and haters are the ones who are very bigoted and quite hateful.
Christians took a long time to get this, but some at least are finally getting it.
Mr Taylor seems a bit behind however.
JW

Thanks for this analysis. I see your point, but could you clarify what conclusion you would draw from this apparent inconsistency among social conservatives? Do you think such people should move toward a position of consistently defending diversity of opinion in the private sector and civil society, similar to certain civil libertarians? Or do you think they should stick to their attitude of upholding certain norms and when groups such as Mozilla uphold norms they disagree with they should accept the basic legitimacy of this practice (even if they do not accept the substantive content)?
psgrenier

By taking this particular tack on the issue, Aaron, you have avoided having to explicitly state your own stance. That is very tempting, given the atmosphere at large today. I sympathize with it. But if one is nervous about just coming out and saying what one thinks, is it worth writing at all?

You seem to be saying that the folks at First Things, or other conservatives, have been very aggressive in the past in defending sexual purity. A better example might have been the case of trying to impeach Clinton over the Lewinsky scandal. You seem to be saying that, given this past, they cannot now complain when a new morality (a ‘transvaluation of morality’) tries the same tactics against conservatives.

Do you mean to say, further, that we not only are, but should be ruled by a morally neutral proceduralism? Do you also mean to say that there is no moral harm in redefining marriage as a voluntarist contract between groups of individuals, abstracting from every other consideration? Do you mean to say that there not only is no relation between mores and habits, on the one hand, and positive law, on the other, but that there should be no such relation?

Brendan Eich’s Gravediggers

ethikaffe