I don't want to live in a society where people with bigoted and regressive views are merely considered as a difference of opinion. Human rights are absolute.
Eich is a huge, HUGE proponent of the open web and helped co-found Mozilla. He created Javascript. He is a huge reason the web is so open and browser technologies made all of our lives better. He is also part of the reason Mozilla is so inclusive.
Everything is a balance. His contributions to Mozilla, the open web, technology, fairness and many other things outweighs his one misstep by far. And if that is not possible then we live in a black or white, totalitarian mindset state. People can be wrong and it shouldn't outweigh everything right they have done. Especially since this happens in the midst of major social change, there will be some waves.
I was referring to the GP's sweeping "society" comment. State-sanctioned discrimination is not a difference of opinion issue. I don't care if people genuinely believe that gay people are immoral so long as their belief is not being used to legitimately undermine the human rights of a whole group of people with no rational justification other than fear and prejudice. I don't like that society and don't want to be part of it - thankfully I'm not, New Zealand legalised gay marriage and has none of the stupid religious conservatism in our politics that the USA has.
Eich, in this wider societal context, means very little.
Actually, I would argue that actively campaigning for somebody be fired from their job for political views is much more bigoted, since you would surely have to be concretely convinced of the superiority of your own beliefs to think that means justifies the ends:
Bigot: a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices
So it's either your way or the highway? For thousands of years, his opinion was considered the de facto. Are people now suddenly bigoted hate mongers for supporting the same view that President Obama supported just a few years ago?
So was slavery, what's your point? State sanctioned discrimination is not just a difference of opinion issue, to reduce it to that is patronising and insulting in the extreme to the people being discriminated.
If you're naive enough to think that people only started caring about gay rights because some leader of a country where you have to prove you go to church to get elected finally started espousing reason, then you're more ridiculously naive than your posts suggest.
What about the human right to hold your own beliefs? Are you saying I am no longer allowed to believe what I want, I have to believe what you tell me is right?
Nobody is saying that. But if you for example believe that slavery is right because Bible says so, well, we have a problem here, don't you think?
Actually I'm starting to wonder about the whole idea that you can't fire someone based on their religious beliefs (at least I understand this is the law in the US).
What if I discover one of my employees donated to a political group that is trying to bring back slavery. I definitely wouldn't want someone like that working for me. But I can't let them go because their religious book says slavery is fine and their religious views are protected?
Is it really surprising considering that a lot of the people here are white racist sexist homophobic males with barely any social skills who laugh at how much they can relate to the "forever alone" meme?
You know, after spending enough time reading HN comments I started thinking tech attracts the worst kind of people. Only recently I realized it's simply not true -- actually I'm kind of happy nobody compared homosexuality to bestialism or pedophillia (well, I haven't really read all the comments on this topic, but I am going to give HN the benefit of the doubt).
It's just that the world is a pretty awful place -- unless you are the "default human being" (white, hetero, male). But it is getting better (very, very slowly).
I'm just happy that there are people like you (and this whole Eich episode proved there's a lot of such people) who make being in the tech industry (and generally being around other human beings) quite bearable.
EDIT: So many downvotes, wow.