Why I Don't Care About Brendan Eich's Prop 8 Donation

The social media universe is all a'twitter about Brendan Eich's recent promotion to CEO of the Mozilla Corporation (MoCo). Brendan Eich is, as you probably remember, the guy who invented the JavaScript programming language. Eich was at the time, an engineer at Netscape, moving over to the "Mozilla Organization" in 1998 and then the Mozilla Foundation (MoFo) in 2003. By this time he had risen to a position of technical leadership and was, in fact, one of co-founders of the official Mozilla Foundation 501(c)(3). As the Mozilla Foundation morphed into the Mozilla Corporation for tax reasons, Eich eventually landed as MoCo's CTO.

The thing that has the twitter-verse up in arms is Eich's contribution in 2008 to a Pro-Prop-8 organization. For people outside California, Proposition 8 (aka Prop 8) was the "marriage is legally defined in California as being between one man and one woman" proposition that went before the electorate and (somewhat surprisingly) passed. Prop-8 has since been overturned by the courts and all is as it should be.

But there are a lot of us queers in the tech industry and it turns out we have access to political donation rosters (actually, everyone has access to these rosters, they're public information.) And we apparently have reasonably good memories. In 2012 someone noticed the donation and a brouhaha emerged. When Eich was named MoCo's CEO yesterday, the brouhaha re-emerged with some people saying we should boycott Mozilla. Rarebit, for instance, removed their color puzzle app from the Mozilla Marketplace in protest.

In the interests of full disclosure, I worked for MoCo for a brief period of time in 2013 and met Mr. Eich several times. I did not work especially closely with him, nor did we discuss politics. But I had enough encounters to develop this impression: Brendan Eich is a Geek (and I mean that in the good way.) He is, like many in Sili Valley, slightly nerdy, a little more focused on tech subjects than on intra-personal skills. He's not rude, it's just clear he would annoy the living hell out of Emily Post.

I've seen Eich interact with people at MoCo, including people I know he knew were gay. He didn't appear to treat them in any way differently.

And yes, it is troubling to find the CEO of Mozilla's name on a list of people who donated to political causes that sought to deny basic human rights to a minority population. But I personally believe the issue is not so much an issue of homophobia than it is ignorance. I honestly believe Brendan Eich grew up in an environment that reinforced ideas of the moral superiority of "traditional" relationships and he never gave it a second thought.

It would be very nice if Mr. Eich would come out and say something like "Totally sorry about that Prop-8 donation. Upon further reflection, I think it was an inappropriate thing to do." But honestly, I don't think he's under any obligation to do so.

Corporations aren't people, nor are they responsible for the beliefs of their employees. By boycotting Mozilla (the corporation) because one employee did something politically objectionable, you are asking the corporation to police not only the behaviour of it's employees, but also their beliefs. I find Eich's support of Proposition 8 objectionable, but it is more objectionable to ask corporations to deny promotion to individuals who exercise their right to support political efforts outside the corporation.

If you're looking for reasons to hate on Mozilla, there are several to choose from: FirefoxOS' "race to the bottom" strategy, declining market share or questions surrounding the post-2014 funding from Google now that MoCo competes with Android, etc. But having a CEO who thinks my marriage was abhorrent? That's just life in a pluralistic society.

Chapter 3 of my still unnamed Space Vikiing saga

"Hierophant of Discord," Fram said while slapping down his card, "ditch 'em if ya' got 'em!"

An audible sigh came up from Gerstlauer; he had bid blind, not knowing if Fram could cover him.

Gunnr played next, wincing as she threw down the Queen of Discord. She had been saving it to win the next trick and now her plans fell apart. Fram and Gertlauer giggled like kindergartners at the site and broke into full-on laughter as Gert threw down the King of Claw.

"You bid zero with the King of Claw, you have huge balls, my friend!" Wido, the fourth of the card players, cracked at the sight.

Gunnr retorted sourly, "He bid blind. He couldn't have known. His balls are of normal size." The only one of the four to take the loss personally, she complained "come on, let's finish it and get back to work."

"Gunnr, it's just a game. Many days you take us for five times as many points as you lost here," sagt Fram, just becoming aware of her sourness. "But yes, we have three minutes before work resumes. My last two cards are shit," he said, throwing them down face-up on the table leaving Wido and Gerstlauer to argue over who took the last
two tricks.

Gunnr was up and walking back towards her work-station at the forge control. Every bit of her body language screamed tenseness.

Fram caught up with Gunnr, who had already made it several meters from the table. Summoning every bit of grandfatherly softness he could, "what's wrong?"

She waved him away, "Don't try that grandfather business on me! You're not _that_ old," she shot back with surprising venom for someone who had worked with Fram for almost a decade.

It was true Fram wasn't quite old enough to be her grandfather, but could easily be her father. Genetics on the colony were such to make it impossible, of course. But genetics don't stop people from familial attachments; the entire colony would be in a sorry state if it did.

Growing concerned with Gunnr's mood, he tried a different tack, "Gunnr. You have to be here every moment of every day. I won't have you risk injury on my rig 'cause your head is a million miles away."

"No Fram. It's okay. I'm fine." she protested.

Fram was trying to figure out if he had asked her two or three times. Traditions varied amonst the colonists, but all bought into the concept of the heroic self-sufficient individual. Common manners were to deny any sort of help two or three times before admitting you were in need. Fram was old enough to realize what kind of crap this tradition was. He had seen too many people get into too much trouble 'cause they were too proud to let someone help them. The simple fact of the matter was the colony's existence was too tenuous for pride to get in the way of survival.

"Gunnr. I am your work foreman and your friend. I will stay here all day playing stupid manner games, but I will not leave until you tell me what is wrong."

Gunnr leaned in close and whispered a few words in Fram's ear.

All Fram could say in reply was, "Holy shit."

"Yeah," she replied, "you want me here, still?"

"You want to take a day or two off? We're way ahead on our quota, we can manage without you a couple days."

"No Fram, I think I want to be here. Working will take my mind off it." Gunnr replied.

"That's fine. But I want to slow down a bit; no sense tempting fate," Fram said, his eyes darting back and forth the way they do when he's crafting a plan, "Tamsen will ask why we're slowing down though, so let's make up a story of instrument failure or something."

In the eight years Fram had known Gunnr, the hug she gave him was the first time he had know her to do anything even slightly feminine. Taken aback a little, "I love you too, sweetheart," was the only thing he could think to say as he hugged her back.