“Across the country, the LGBT community and progressive activists are heartened by Mozilla’s decisive action to remove Mr. Eich as the CEO of their for-profit and nonprofit ventures. It is a testament to the power of online grassroots organizing. The decision to hold its CEO to the same high standards of inclusion and equality that the company advocates, Mozilla once again reaffirmed its credibility as a thoroughly progressive institution. Let this be a clear message to those at other progressive institutions around the country -- homophobia and bigotry are not progressive values, and will not be tolerated.”CREDO
“We applaud Mozilla’s announcement and its strong stand for equal rights,” said Becky Bond, CREDO’s Political Director. “Mozilla is not just company, it’s a movement supported by tens of thousands of volunteers around the world. Mozilla is a non-profit organization fighting to keep the web open and free for all of us. They put people above profit, and fight for user choice and privacy. Mozilla’s mission is vitally important to every grassroots movement, including the work that we do here at CREDO.”
Eich only announced he was stepping down after it was revealed late Wednesday that he'd given money to Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign in 1992, and later to Ron Paul's campaign. Suddenly, in addition to defending a CEO who gave money to homophobic efforts, Mozilla would have to defend a CEO who supported Buchanan, a far right extremist and isolationist who's been accused of racist and anti-Semitic attacks, and who also was, rightly, driven off MSNBC -- though that took years longer to accomplish than the few weeks it took to purge Alec Baldwin.Hit the link and read Signorile's full response.
It all just became too much for Mozilla to bear, and who knows what else may have been dug up on Eich? None of this is about government censorship. It's about a company based in Northern California which has many progressive employees, and which has a lot of progressives and young people among the user base of its Firefox browser, realizing its CEO's world view was completely out of touch with the company's --and America's -- values and vision for the future.
Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past week, we didn’t live up to it. We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it’s because we haven’t stayed true to ourselves. 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.Baker concludes:
What’s next for Mozilla’s leadership is still being discussed. We want to be open about where we are in deciding the future of the organization and will have more information next week. However, our mission will always be to make the Web more open so that humanity is stronger, more inclusive and more just: that’s what it means to protect the open Web. We will emerge from this with a renewed understanding and humility — our large, global, and diverse community is what makes Mozilla special, and what will help us fulfill our mission. We are stronger with you involved. Thank you for sticking with us.Today's move comes ten days after Eich was named Mozilla's CEO. LGBT groups, gay Mozilla staffers, and gay developers immediately called for a boycott of Mozilla over Eich's apparently unrepentant donation to the Proposition 8 campaign in 2008. But when Eich issued a statement expressing solidarity for the LGBT community (albeit without publicly reversing on marriage equality or apologizing for the donation), calls for his resignation and boycotts of Mozilla spread into the anti-gay, Christian, and Tea Party worlds, creating a bizarre and unprecedented situation in which groups that are regularly tearing into each others' throats were suddenly and unwillingly thrust onto the same side. Almost everybody (noted exception: Brian Brown) wanted Eich gone - but for very different reasons.
I don't know. If it is, the vision of Mozilla will be lost. I don't think anyone else will carry the user-first agenda above all other considerations. I understand big commercial corporations can't do it. They have to ultimately answer to their shareholders. They can have founders with large shares and that can say they're willing to take a hit in order to be long-term thinkers, and I admire that, but in no way can they do what Mozilla does. We bled for the user. We did Firefox when nobody thought the browser was a competitive market or ever would be again. We did Firefox OS when people said there was no need for a mobile OS but there was obviously a gap below the market. And we're doing a user-centric approach to services that involve identity and choice and control of data. Mozilla has to uphold its principles, has to have integrity to advance its mission.Eich also mentioned that the company is planning to take actions to emphasize its support for the LGBT community, but he gave no specifics.
I feel strongly about what's happened, and I feel I'm still the best CEO for the job. I've got lots to contribute and I'll help us turn some corners. The corners that need me as CEO, not just founder or CTO, are a big mobile turn that involves services [and] user identity and agency in the cloud. If we get our message out about inclusiveness and how Mozilla cannot succeed without being truly globally inclusive, then we'll have trouble. I expect I'll be helpful there, too, in the long run. We're in a struggle now, but if we get through it, we'll be stronger for it. That's been true of all our struggles at Mozilla. When we pull everybody together for common mission, that's when we really succeed.
All government employees are protected by the U.S. Constitution against irrational discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. In addition, some measure of protection already exists under Title VII based on gender, which has been held to include gender identity and expression. The U.s. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and several courts have interpreted Title VII to protect transgender employees, and the EEOC has interpreted Title VII to cover sexual orientation discrimination. The Supreme Court has held that the EEOC's interpretation of Title VII are entitled to "great deference."Notice that New York shamefully continues to lack statewide gender identity protections, despite such a bill passing in the state Assembly six times. Maryland will join the 17 states with full LGBT employment protections when Gov. Martin O'Malley signs the transgender rights bill approved by the state legislature last week. There's only one way to turn the entire map green: ENDA.
