tolerance

Are all men and women entitled to their own opinion?   Rightly or wrongly?  Wise or not?  Can we allow dissenting opinion?  … even if it’s perceived foolish?

In 2008, Brendan Eich gave $1000 in support of California’s Proposition 8, an amendment that defined marriage as solely between a man and a woman, which was later judicially struck down.  Last month, Eich was appointed as CEO of Mozilla Firefox, the world’s second largest Web browser.

Upon Eich’s appointment, the popular dating site, OkCupid, called for their visitors to boycott the browser.  Their boycott had nothing to do with Eich’s resume nor professional qualifications; in fact, Eich actually invented the programming language Javascript and co-founded Mozilla.  OkCupid’s boycott was based solely on that $1000 donation.

As written by OkCupid:  “Politics is normally not the business of a website, and we all know there’s a lot more wrong with the world than misguided CEOs. So you might wonder why we’re asserting ourselves today. This is why: we’ve devoted the last ten years to bringing people-all people-together. If individuals like Mr. Eich had their way, then roughly 8% of the relationships we’ve worked so hard to bring about would be illegal. Equality for gay relationships is personally important to many of us here at OkCupid. But it’s professionally important to the entire company. OkCupid is for creating love. Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure.”

On Thursday, Brendan Eich resigned as CEO.

Mozilla released the following statement:  “Our organizational culture reflects diversity and inclusiveness. We welcome contributions from everyone regardless of age, culture, ethnicity, gender, gender-identity, language, race, sexual orientation, geographical location and religious views. Mozilla supports equality for all.  We have employees with a wide diversity of views.”

The White House was asked about Eich’s resignation in Friday’s daily press briefing:  “Does the White House think that there should at least be tolerance… and that there should be other views heard?”  The White House said they’re not “in a position to weigh in on decisions made by a private company.”

Never mind that the White House regularly weighs in on decisions by private companies.  Never mind that the White House has consistently called out both companies and citizens to point out agreement and/or disagreement.  And never mind that in 2008, the year of Eich’s donation, Pres. Barack Obama was also against gay marriage.

Friends, there are good people on all sides of our nation’s most intense issues.  There are also “bullies” on all sides of these issues.  Bullies are not confined to middle school playgrounds; bullies are people — regardless of age — who by definition, use their influence or power to intimidate others, forcing them to do what they want.  Bullies see holders of dissenting opinion as “enemies.”

If we are going to be a tolerant nation — if we are going to be a nation that “reflects diversity and inclusiveness” — then that means we also tolerate the person who thinks differently than we do.

Otherwise, we are not as diverse, inclusive, nor near as wise as we like to think.

Respectfully…

AR