

OKCupid seeks to block Mozilla Firefox over gay rights - teh_klev
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26830383

======
xarball
I'm actually really offended by this... as a programmer, simply because it's
imposing so much on me when I already support their conclusion. I just think
okcupid is taking this too far.

The Firefox browser is not inherently evil because one man in their
organization has less than agreeable political views, especially when it comes
down to the work of everyone who has helped with their mission! It's a damned
good browser, and shouldn't be dismissed on the grounds of one man's political
views alone.

I'd sooner boycott okcupid for this suicidal mission of clawing at and
destroying everything in the world that's related in the slightest to
something that offends them.

I will not support _them_ in their gallant wrecklessness!

Put simply: You have your own life. Same-sex partners can get married, adopt
kids, and live your life the way you want to. But now you want to tell me what
to do with mine, and what browser I should use? I don't understand how that
makes any sense -- because it sounds like they're just twisting the practical
problem in their favor, which doesn't relay the underlying message of _letting
people live their lives, without being oppressed or told what to do_.

~~~
freyrs3
This recent trend toward intermingling technology with social activism really
scares me. Whether it be slapping a code of conduct on every project under the
sun or refusing to support a browser because of some loose affiliation with an
disagreeable individual, this has really reached an unhealthy level of
coupling as of late. Most fields of study or work at least embrace the need to
keep the commons apolitical since progress ( as in human progress ) depends on
our ability to cooperate, interact, and share work regardless of the issues
that divide us.

I particularly agree with your choice of words, this mentality is just plain
reckless.

------
apsec112
I am a big supporter of gay rights (and am myself bisexual), but I oppose this
sort of thing, for reasons explained very well by the venerable Scott
Alexander:

"Constitutional freedom-of-speech is a necessary but not sufficient condition
to have a “marketplace of ideas” and avoid de facto censorship. But people
also have to understand that the correct response to “idea I disagree with” is
“counterargument”, not “find some way to punish or financially ruin the person
who expresses it.” If you respond with counterargument, then there’s a debate
and eventually the people with better ideas win (as is very clearly happening
right now with gay marriage). If there’s a norm of trying to punish the people
with opposing views, then it doesn’t really matter whether you’re doing it
with threats of political oppression, of financial ruin, or of social
ostracism, the end result is the same – the group with the most money and
popularity wins, any disagreeing ideas never get expressed.

Atheists may one day be the group with the most money and popularity, but that
day isn’t today and right now it’s neither moral nor in our self-interest to
encourage using greater resources to steamroll opponents. It’s certainly not
in gay people’s self-interest either. Why shouldn’t companies owned by
Christians fire all gay people on the grounds that they are promoting sin?
Right now it’s because we have a mutual truce in which we agree businesses
should employ people based on their skills and merit rather than to reward
their political allies and punish their political opponents. Once you
undermine that, gay people are in a pretty precarious position.

So I would turn your own hypothetical scenario in Part 2 of your post back on
you. Suppose Robertson had indeed, been a gay rights supporter – or a gay
person! – who said on national news he thought everyone should stand up for
gay rights. But his company was going for the fundie demographic and decided
to fire him for his statement. Would you be so quick to attack everyone who
was disappointed in this action, so eager to stand up for the right of
companies to fire anyone they disagree with?"

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/28/a-comment-i-posted-
on-w...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/28/a-comment-i-posted-on-what-
would-jt-do/)

~~~
stormbrew
There are two problems with this:

\- Everyone's voice (when it comes to money) is not equal. CEOs and
corporations defacto have a greater voice in the public sphere than other
people. The primary way for average people to counteract this is through
controlling where, what, and who they spend their money on. By painting this
as unethical you remove the voice of everyone who can't spend $1000 on a
political campaign, which is usually a group that aligns with groups that are
disproportionately harmed by policies like Prop8. It is not my responsibility
to support a bigot with my money (or eyes that turn into money) in the name of
some higher ideal of clean discourse the other side doesn't even play by.

\- No argument of moral equivalence can survive that rests on one side having
real and practical harm done to it and the other none at all. No one's rights
are infringed by gay marriage existing and many many people's rights are
infringed by prop8. It's inherently oppressive to say that those people harmed
by it should sit idly by and wait for the people picking up their hand,
smacking it into their face, and saying "why are you hitting yourself?" to
have a change of heart when there are no consequences for their public effort
to harm them. One side gets to hit, the other side has no right to hit back?
That's wrong.

And on a somewhat tangent, I have not seen anyone call for him to be fired.
Him being an employee of Mozilla is not a problem. Even being a founder or the
creator of javascript. Being a CEO is not the same as being an employee,
though, and carries with it a connection to the ethical core of a business.
This has far more to do with him being appointed than with his political views
directly.

~~~
apsec112
Right now, the United States is about evenly divided between people who
support and oppose gay marriage. If everyone on the gay-marriage side "refuses
to support bigots", and everyone on the anti-gay-marriage side "refuses to
support sinners", then we wind up with two totally separate economies and
social groups that don't talk to each other at all. _This is very bad._

You really, _really_ don't want to live in a country where Blues can only eat
in Blue restaurants and live in Blue apartments and wear Blue clothing, and
Greens can only eat in Green restaurants and live in Green apartments and wear
Green clothing. See: Northern Ireland, Iraq, Syria...

"I am a pro-choice atheist. When I lived in Ireland, one of my friends was a
pro-life Christian. I thought she was responsible for the unnecessary
suffering of millions of women. She thought I was responsible for killing
millions of babies. And yet she invited me over to her house for dinner
without poisoning the food. And I ate it, and thanked her, and sent her a nice
card, without smashing all her china.

Please try not to be insufficiently surprised by this. Every time a Republican
and a Democrat break bread together with good will, it is a miracle. It is an
equilibrium as beneficial as civilization or liberalism, which developed in
the total absence of any central enforcing authority."

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-
co...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-community-
and-civilization/)

~~~
stormbrew
And welcome to reductio ad absurdum. If we boycott this one thing we will
boycott all the things and then we will live in a 70s dystopic film where the
people who wear KFC shirts can't talk to the people who wear McDonalds shirts!

Somehow we've gotten along just fine so far with the existence of boycotts
without turning into a world where half the people are boycotting half the
other people.

Again, no one is saying boycott Mozilla because they hired a bigot. They're
boycotting Mozilla because they chose a bigot as their chief executive knowing
full well this blowback might happen (since it happened on a smaller scale
with the CTO appointment in 2012). That means it doesn't matter to them, and
for people to whom this issue matters a great deal that is unacceptable.

Nor, incidentally, is anyone saying you should poison the guy's food.

It is not "mean" to choose what you spend your money on.

------
grey-area
People and the things they make are quite different entities. The opinions of
the creators of a web browser are unimportant if that web browser has no
opinions on gay marriage.

This is an interesting debate (should you boycott a thing, because you
disagree with the person who made it?), but it is asking the wrong question.
It reminds me of Lenin's feelings about Beethoven - how could a bourgeois
create such wonderful music! Instead of questioning the framework of thinking
which led him there, he claimed to avoid listening to the music in case it
made him bourgeois.

Many human creations which we value as a culture were by outspoken and
sometimes abusive people - Gill Sans, Francis Bacon, Picasso, Lewis Carroll,
Wagner, Caravaggio etc. I think their work should stand alone, separate from
any other views they might have had, and be judged on its own merits and the
messages _it contains_ , not on other messages their authors promulgated or
actions they took.

------
lemonade
I think it would be more suitable to not allow any Javascript to be used on
the website. As an avid NoScript user that is how I like my sites anyway ;)

------
abhinavk
Are they also planning to ban use of JavaScript on their website because you
know, Brendan Eich created the language.

~~~
zimpenfish
Presumably that was before he actively donated to a campaign hoping to deny
people basic human rights?

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "Presumably that was before he actively donated to a campaign hoping to
deny people basic human rights?"

I'm 100% for equality but what basic human rights are being denied to
homosexuals in America? They are being denied some rights that heterosexuals
have but if they are being denied 'basic human rights' I'd really like to know
(seriously) as I can't come up with any.

~~~
zimpenfish
Do you not think it's a basic human right to marry who you want? To get the
legal protections of that institution? To be allowed to visit your lifelong
partner in hospital, for example?

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "Do you not think it's a basic human right to marry who you want?"

Not a basic human right, no. Food, water, shelter, those are basic human
rights. Marriage is a made up concept.

>> "To get the legal protections of that institution? To be allowed to visit
your lifelong partner in hospital, for example?"

Again I wouldn't classify these as 'basic human rights'. It's disgraceful that
people can't avail of these benefits because of their sexuality and that
should change. Like I said, I'm 100% against discrimination based on sexuality
I'm just objecting to your use of the term 'basic human right'.

I think the real issue here isn't that gay people can't get married in some
places - it's that anyone who does get married gets benefits that non-married
people don't get. For example if a heterosexual couple who had been in a
lifelong relationship never got married they would also face the dilemma you
presented of not being allowed to visit each other in hospital.

------
binarymax
Huh? Does the BBC do April fools? I can't make this fit in my head as a
joke...so I am left pondering how OK Cupid gets by while boycotting
JavaScript, if they are so wound up about Mr Eich

~~~
spicyj
Not a joke:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7504296](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7504296)

------
bobzimuta
IDGAF. Tools are tools.

Should I throw up messages to users on Chrome that Google's CEO feels x or
supports y (given any x or y I can find on the first page of search results)?

Or maybe I should warn iOS users about Foxconn's treatment of factory
laborers.

I've written code for the benefit of Reddit and seen its use pop up in a white
supremacy subreddit. Do I care? Should I censor or ban its use? No.

Congrats okcupid, you've won the prize for worst proselytization attempt.

------
taylodl
The most galling thing is they directed people to use an alternate browser,
such as Internet Explorer. I'm sorry - whatever sins Brendan Eich may have
committed pale in comparison to the evil Microsoft - THE CORPORATION - has
wrought on the world over the course of the past 25 years.

------
neverminder
OKCupid decides to help the competition. I hope match.com sends them a cake.

~~~
mcv
It's all the same company anyway.

------
mrt0mat0
No. JUST NO. This is getting out of hand. You want to change the way people
think, you do it through public discourse. You want to change the laws, you do
it through votes. You lost a vote. Try again next time when you have more
support. Don't hate a person and try to ruin their life because you think the
world needs to function how you see it. I don't care anymore if I get
downvoted. This HAS TO STOP. We HAVE TO STOP THIS. These people are hypocrites
and I'm sick of it. I may vote against gay rights laws because they think they
can manipulate the system. Sounds pretty stupid, doesn't it. Well, it's the
same goddamn thing!

------
praeivis
OKCupid should stop use JS instead.

------
facepalm
Even some gay people are against gay marriage. I can think of rational reasons
to oppose it without being opposed to homosexuality in general. For example
you could view marriage as having the main point of supporting children.

I'm not saying I agree with that view, just that perhaps this is an issue
where there is no absolute truth, just different priorities. And then the
democratic process decides the outcome, but people on the losing side should
be respected.

I don't know anything about Brendan Eich, it just seems to me that labeling
him homophobic is probably rather thoughtless and might be unwarranted.

------
jedanbik
I think it's brilliant. None of my single gay friends out of tech knew about
this guy before OKC made the announcement, but now? Now they know. Now they
are informed.

~~~
bobzimuta
What will really happen? I'm looking forward to the conversations over coffee.

Janette: So Bob, I asked you for coffee because I need to talk to you about
something serious.

Me: ... Ok?!

Janette: What browser do you use? Is it Firefox?

Me: Uh, yeah. Why?

Janette: Well, the CEO ... ... ...

Me: Fack off.

~~~
jedanbik
Food for thought: [http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/dissent-unheard-
of](http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/dissent-unheard-of)

