On April 3, newly appointed
Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich stepped
down. Following Eich’s appointment as CEO of the internet browser company,
a number of its employees took to Twitter and began tweeting their displeasure
over this appointment. In addition, three members of Mozilla’s Board resigned
following Eich’s appointment. At issue was political contributions that Eich
made in 2008 in support of California’s
Proposition 8 which opposed same-sex marriage.
The question is why anyone other
than a Mozilla shareholder or a Mozilla shareholder cares about this. What
exactly is the problem here? Mozilla has the right to have any CEO that it
chooses. Brendan Eich has the right to take the job when offered but also has
the right to step down from the job if he so chooses. Mozilla employees have
the right to their opinion. The government is not involved in this situation in
any way, so neither the First Amendment nor any other Constitutional right is
at play.
Conservatives have been
complaining about a politically correct “lynch
mob” mentality at Mozilla. Oddly, these types of critics tend to be the
very same kind of people who champion the rights of corporate entities. So why
should Mozilla not have the right to do what it did? If the employees of a
Christian company demanded that their CEO step down and the company forced that
executive to do so after it was revealed that he or she had donated $1,000 to
Planned Parenthood, would right wing critics whine about that? Doubtful.
Should Mozilla employees have
been more tolerant? Perhaps. But they have a right not to be tolerant. The
truth is that people on both the left and right of the political spectrum tend
not to be tolerant. Would critics of Mozilla and its employees prefer that the Nanny
State step in and mandate that
social libertarians “play nice” with traditionalists? Or vice versa? Hopefully
not.
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