We didn't act like you'd expect Mozilla to act. We didn't move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We're sorry. We must do better.
Brendan Eich has chosen to step down from his role as CEO. He's made this decision for Mozilla and our community.
Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard.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. Our culture of openness extends to encouraging staff and community to share their beliefs and opinions in public. This is meant to distinguish Mozilla from most organizations and hold us to a higher standard. But this time we failed to listen, to engage, and to be guided by our community.
As of this time, there is no named successor or statement on who will be taking over Mozilla's leadership.
(Score: 2, Informative) by AdamHaun on Thursday April 03 2014, @11:33PM
There's no reason to do so other than animus towards gay people. This was demonstrated quite thoroughly in Perry v. Schwarzenegger (the Prop 8 trial). Transcripts are freely available [afer.org], and include great testimony from several expert witnesses chronicling the history of animus towards gays and lesbians, how the modern anti-gay rights movement's rhetoric ties in with that history, the benefits of marriage, and the lack of evidence for any problems due to gay marriage. None of the questions you're asking are new, and all of them have been discussed ad nauseum by people far more informed than those in the comments section of a news site. :-)
Nonetheless, I'll try to answer your specific questions.
States don't grant anyone the right to marry. Marriage is recognized as a universal right, both in U.S. law (Loving v. Virginia, 1967) and internationally (UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948). Limits on marriage are akin to limits on other basic freedoms -- they exist, but there needs to be a good reason for them. By law and custom, marriage is a special relationship. It involves things like formalized joint property ownership, inheritance rights, power of attorney for medical decisions, and responsibility for and authority over children. Recognizing property, authority, and responsibility is absolutely within the purview of a government and legal system. State marriage is widely recognized by people, organizations, and nations in a way that private contracts aren't.
I don't have a good reason why they shouldn't. But it's not as straightforward to implement. For a monogamous gay marriage, you change "husband and wife" to "spouse and spouse" on the marriage certificate and everything else is functionally identical. Adding a third person requires a more complex legal arrangement. Also, at least in the polyamorous relationships I've seen in real life, some pairwise relationships are weaker than others. Not every person in the group necessarily wants to be fully legally married to every other. I think poly marriage would require something more complex than a married vs. unmarried distinction.
Denying child marriage is not oppression because children are unable to consent to such an obligation. My vague understanding is that polygamy has historically not been so great for the women involved. I suppose one could call banning polygamy "oppression", although it lacks the sort of violent persecution that homosexuals still face today.
Calling entire cultures inferior comes with a lot of colonial-era baggage. There's a lot more to Indian culture than child marriage. (Counting "Islamic culture" as a unified thing is questionable.) But I do think child marriage is wrong, and I do think the people who implement it are wrong for doing so. I agree that it's a cultural problem in places where it's widespread. But every culture has problems. They're complicated issues. There was a good National Geographic article [nationalgeographic.com] about child marriages a while back. Some people benefit from the status quo and don't care who gets hurt. Some people fight for change. Some people want change but feel that their hands are tied.
Adam Haun
(Score: 1) by youngatheart on Friday April 04 2014, @02:22AM
You're quite right. I didn't read much on the topic, I wasn't personally drawn with any passion into the debates but I do follow this site's discussions with much more interest. Thank you for presenting some abbreviated versions here.
I remain unconvinced on the state's interest in marriage. I'd agree in recognizing the law and customs, but those same laws and customs often deny gay rights, which is the point. The question for me isn't what they accomplish, but why it is good and necessary that they accomplish it that way. You can throw the traditions out the window because they deny gay marriage on the one hand and I think they are a poor way of accomplishing those tasks as well.
"Adding a third person requires a more complex legal arrangement." Changing state laws to allow gay marriage may not be as complex, but it isn't easy or convenient, which leaves both without support on that basis. And your statement "some pairwise relationships are weaker than others. Not every person in the group necessarily wants to be fully legally married to every other." applies to hetero-sexual marriages equally in my own experience. Ditto for the idea of historical role of women. Certainly the violent persecution of homesexuals isn't the same, but I don't think changing the laws to allow gay marriage fixes that either.
If my state supported child marriages, I'd certainly fight to change that. I'm not fighting to change it in India. It may be immoral or wrong in my worldview, but I feel a much stronger obligation to work at a state level than at an international level. Likewise, I'm inclined to allow states to set their own laws on the subject and most interested in the laws that affect me and my family.
The only defensible reasons a state has for granting special rights to married people are tradition and procreation. I don't think either is sufficient in our society. Procreation is close since it can only happen accidentally in heterosexual unions, but adultery can occur lesbian unions and in hetero unions alike and that is already handled by the law, and I'm inclined to view it as similar. Lack of sufficient reason to change the status quo provides equal justification for not recognizing gay marriage or for ignoring marriage all together in the law. If I were writing the laws, I would draft a list of rights inherent with current law and say that anyone currently married is now in a civil union with the right to petition for a different contract for up to five years, and that anyone who gets married after the legislation passes must agree to a civil union contract including the same responsibilities and rights if they want it to be sanctioned by the state. But nobody seems to want that. Traditionalists seem to think that the word marriage needs to come from the state and gay marriage proponents seem to think that changing the name of the contract lessens the rights. Perhaps they're both right, but I'm hard pressed to understand why.
The single unyielding topic that I've avoided up until now is the Christian Bible, which condemns homosexual unions. It either is subject to being ignored completely or used as the authoritative yardstick to morality. I'm content to separate church and state and say that those who feel bound by that moral code should adhere to it, and the state should ignore it. I'm willing to concede that it may be the infallible word of God, but until God personally states it is his will that the states should adhere to it, I will see the state as an institution of man with the limitations of providing for society rather than the morality of its citizens. If you are God, then I'll accept whatever ruling you have to offer on the topic, but I doubt you are and will require substantial proof if you wish to make that claim.
(Score: 2) by metamonkey on Friday April 04 2014, @03:52PM
The purpose of state licensing of marriage is to facilitate state-mediated divorce.
90% of contract law involves arguing over whether or not a valid contract ever existed. The state gets dragged into divorce disputes because there are property and child custody issues at stake, and that's basically the point of government: settling property disputes without violence. Since the state is required to adjudicated these disputes, the family court system short-circuits the process and requires that people be licensed before entering the agreement so they can check the roles and make sure Bill isn't still married to Alice before he marries Sue, that everyone is of the legal age of consent, that no one is being coerced, etc.
The state has an interest in marriage because it is required to have interest in divorce. Really, that's all gays get when they win "the right to marry." They're really winning gay divorce.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.