Yesterday it was announced that Mozilla’s CEO had stepped down following other companies having boycotted the Firefox browser for his opinions opposing gay marriage. What unsettled me the most was the unswerving response from the public supporting this move.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26868536
Don’t get me wrong, I think he is Muppet. I support gay marriage, but I did find myself asking the question. How would we feel if a CEO had been dismissed for supporting gay marriage against the views of his customers?
For me the fundamental principle of the equality movement is about trying to get people to show tolerance for each other. It is about minorities saying you might not want to do what I do or be like I am, but you should tolerate me being able to do it freely.
Ultimately Eich actually displayed no intolerance to the gay members of his foundation. He did not discriminate against them. He merely exercised his right to freedom of speech and assembly in making a donation to a genuine political party that opposed gay marriage. By supporting his dismissal we actually act in more intolerant way than him.
The story for me would have been a victory for equality if it had read.
“Tolerance shown as Mozilla boss is allowed to stay having agreed to abstain from making his intolerant opinions public.”
All of this is not the worst of it though. What is worse is that the decision ultimately taken by Mozilla was a Capitalist one, pure and simple. Designed to protect the foundation’s profitability. It had actually been trying to be tolerant and follow the principles of the foundation in keeping the CEO in his place for so long. They finally essentially admitted their own members were intolerant and took the Capitalist decision to oust the CEO. They then committed a double hypocrisy of trying to sugar coat it by claiming to have done it because he was showing intolerance to gay marriage.
The problem for libertarianism is that it has won. It has convinced the majority that Gay and lesbian people are to be accepted by the majority and now have the backing of the law — which I totally agree with. However, this is not what the triumph of the equality movement was all about. It was to convince the majority that tolerance is key, not agreement. Something that we have all just failed at.
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