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from the i-guess-they'll-unfriend-mozilla dept.
The controversy around Mozilla's new CEO Brendan Eich continues. Eich made a personal $1000 donation to California's Yes on Proposition 8 campaign in 2008. Now, dating site OkCupid has started redirecting Firefox users to a page explaining Eich's views against marriage equality, and asking users to switch to IE, Chrome, or Opera.
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.
Visitors are then provided links to alternative browsers, or they can continue to the site by clicking a hyperlink at the bottom of the page.
(Score: 2) by mth on Tuesday April 01 2014, @12:29PM
Personally, I can't think of any good reason to be opposed to gay marriage. But is that such a terrible opinion that a site should ask its visitors to boycott Mozilla for something the CEO did privately?
I think the best way to get gay marriage accepted is to show that it leads to more happy people and doesn't in any way diminish the value of traditional marriage, not by shunning people who oppose it. The more pressure you put on the issue, the less likely that people will change their mind.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday April 01 2014, @03:26PM
Well put. You don't convince people to change their viewpoint by calling them horrible and bigots, but by explaining respectfully and in detail why they should change their mind.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 01 2014, @06:39PM
No, you don't change their minds with either approach. [boston.com]
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."
--Jonathan Swift.
The only thing you can hope for is that you convince the fence sitters looking on. Calling a bigot a bigot makes it clear to the audience. You'll never persuade the entire audience, you will alienate some of them, but you'll also convince some of them by being straight-up and direct with no room for doubt.
(Score: 2) by Angry Jesus on Wednesday April 02 2014, @04:23AM
Personally, I can't think of any good reason to be opposed to gay marriage. But is that such a terrible opinion that a site should ask its visitors to boycott Mozilla for something the CEO did privately?
OkCupid's business is the online facilitation of relationships, many of which are gay. So it seems pretty much on point for them to have a public and vocal opinion on this topic.