[amadeus]

Sorry, you're just wrong. There is no language in prop 8 that has to do with the concept of civil unions. All it DID do was define marriage as being between a man and a woman.

Any debate about marriage and a government's role in it is sidestepping the issue. It's a civil rights issue, and he chose to put money in an attempt to create discrimination for a certain kind of people.

There's no excuse, he doesn't deserve death threats, but he deserves everyone talking about it and making it a big deal.

[gfodor]

If you are someone who believes gay people should be allowed to form civil unions, but are offended by the idea that those unions be called marriages, supporting prop 8 is consistent with those views even though it doesn't mention civil unions.

I have no idea why Brendan donated $1,000 to support prop 8, and I'd be skeptical that he'd do so if he didn't actually have much stronger beliefs than the civil unions point. But I still feel like this entire situation where a donation to a widely supported political cause, context free, can cause your life to be ruined is chilling.

[ScottBurson]

> If you are someone who believes gay people should be allowed to form civil unions, but are offended [emphasis added] by the idea that those unions be called marriages

... then you still see gay people as fundamentally different from and less than straight people.

There's no way out of this.

EDITED to add: Also, what's happening to Eich isn't happening just because he made that donation.

As furious as I was about Prop. 8, I could understand someone supporting it in 2008 just because gay marriage was a new and strange issue to them at that time. What I have more of a problem with is someone who has spent the intervening 5+ years working shoulder-to-shoulder with gay people in an atmosphere in which acceptance of them was espoused and apparently practiced, and in a world in which gay marriage was being debated vigorously and often, and yet has not reconsidered his beliefs. That, I think, really says something about who they are.

All that said, I don't really feel I have standing to object to his being CEO of Mozilla. I think what this comes down to is that many Mozilla employees felt they couldn't work for him.

[amadeus]

You're still stretching the point.

If you have an issue with the term marriage, then you're coming at it from a religious perspective. There's separation of church and state, it's a constitutional thing.

If you want to redefine something as a Civil Union, then you help create and vote for that specific legislation. There was/is no logical or rational reason to vote for Prop 8.

[phaus]

>Sorry, you're just wrong. There is no language in prop 8 that has to do with the concept of civil unions.

Let me start by saying that I find both scenarios (pro-civil union/anti gay marriage and plain old anti gay marriage) equally reprehensible, but your logic is flawed. I'm an atheist married to a young-earth Christian, so I get to hang out with quite a few other young-earth Christians. The logic behind prop 8 is that if you clearly define marriage as a union between one man and one woman, with no exceptions, then you are leaving homosexuals with no other alternative than to form some kind of alternate terminology, such as the civil union. You have to look at the entire situation outside the context of the actual proposition, such as the views that Christians are openly expressing outside of the legislative process. There are Christians that are 100% against allowing homosexuals to form any sort of a bond with one another, but there is still a significant percentage that would be somewhat OK with a 'civil union.' There's no way to tell which view Mozilla's former CEO held without talking to him.

Like I said, I disagree with him either way, but its disingenuous for you to pretend that you know exactly what he's thinking.

[bethling]

But we can look to states like Washington - where there were 2 votes - 3 years apart on gay unions. One established domestic partnerships with all the state-granted rights and responsibilities of marriage. The other legalized same sex marriage.

They both passed with nearly identical results. To me that indicates that a pretty large percentage (at least in Washington) of the electorate that opposes same-sex marriage, opposed anything - no matter what it's called.

Yes, there are some people who really are concerned about the name of the relationship, and he might be one of them. However, based to the Washington results, they seem to be in the vast minority of those who oppose same sex marriage.

[katbyte]

> The logic behind prop 8 is that if you clearly define marriage as a union between one man and one woman, with no exceptions, then you are leaving homosexuals with no other alternative than to form some kind of alternate terminology, such as the civil union.

I just don't get this, so please explain if you can as you seem to have some insight here: why does marriage have to be between a man and a women? Why can't gay people be "married"? Why does it affect anyone else if they do?