An opinion of the masses willing to vote is not necessarily an opinion of the masses. Regardless, even if it was a "majority" of people capable of voting, there's a reason the phrase "tyranny of the majority" exists.
There are a number of unnamed social ills and other problems that could still exist today in some countries or that would have likely lasted longer if we had waited for "popular opinion" to change.
I don't agree with forcing Eich out, but Mozilla should have known better than to pick a candidate that was going to be controversial to begin with. A person in leadership should be and often is held to a higher set of expectations.
> An opinion of the masses willing to vote is not necessarily an opinion of the masses.
So you're setting up an unfalsifiable claim, unless you have a way to gather the opinions of literally every single person that's guaranteed to yield accurate representations of their opinions.
"opinion of the masses" is a subjective interpretation of events; not a fact.
As to "passed by a majority", I would say, that depends on how you define a majority. A majority in the context of voting laws, perhaps. But I sincerely doubt it was actually representative of the entire population of California as a whole.
I also find it a bit ironic that someone would resort to name-calling in a thread attempting to defend the unpopular views of an individual as their right to have.
Under normal circumstances prop8 would __never__ have passed in California, of all places.
People keep screaming about "Tolerance goes both ways", but society needs to move pass discrimination based on race/gender/orientation. Donating money to help pass a law taking away someone else's rights is ridiculous and shouldn't be tolerated. So if I see a new prop9 banning interracial marriages should I consider it merely a point of view? What if prop10 says black people can't vote? How far do we consider "point of view" or "freedom of speech" before we decide enough is enough and we're not going to regress back to the 1920s?
So, if one is unhappy with the result of an election we can merely redefine what "majority" means by implying that certain parties who wanted to vote, didn't?
Note that I did not "redefine" majority, I was merely pointing out that the way the original poster used the word majority might imply different meanings to some people.
Nevermind that in English, the meaning of the same word can change based on context, or in speech, based on tone of voice.
> Prop8 was passed based on propaganda and a lot of out-of- state funding... Under normal circumstances prop8 would never have passed in California of all places.
"The campaigns for and against Proposition 8 raised $39.0 million ($11.3 million or 29.1% from outside California) and $44.1 million ($13.2 million or 30.0% from outside California), respectively"[1]
If money distorted normal circumstances, presumably it did so to a greater degree on the "against" side of Prop 8.
If you take Prop 22 as the earlier norm ("61% in favor to 39% against"[2]), that makes some sense.
I think it's a lot more likely, though, that the advertising probably only affected a minority of participants (if any) and Eich's support put him in company with the then majority of the state.
That doesn't mean it was the right thing. It does, however, have something to say about whether his support puts him beyond the pale for a leadership role.
Proposition 8 has nothing to do with Mozilla except for those who decided it was OK to go witch-hunting against the new CEO (as if Brendan Eich was not already in a very powerful position from the very beginning).
