No, it's not "exactly the same." I don't think anyone really benefited from this entire shit show, but stop trying to excuse and water down what Prop 8 supporters did.
Giving money to a bad politician is not the same as giving money to support a war of pure bigotry and hatred against gay people. Perhaps you weren't there in 2008, or perhaps you weren't a target. But the Yes on Prop 8 campaign deployed deeply disturbing and hateful rhetoric that relied on the worst tropes about gay people--that they want to corrupt your children into homosexuality. All this wasn't just to pass a law, but to permanently enshrine and sacralize hatred in the California Constitution.
Here's a question: many people, perhaps you the reader, oppose Eich's forced resignation because of freedom of speech concerns. Great, I'm with you! And why I think this was all a stupid idea that doesn't benefit gay rights at all. But why are we as a society up in arms about this firing in particular? Why are we not focused on ENDA, for instance, which protects you from being fired for saying you're gay? Why aren't we outraged that workers (illegally) get fired for saying they want to unionize? Or, more tech-focused, people getting fired for shit-talking their boss on Facebook? It seems that, as usual, freedom of speech is only a concern in the media if you're a rich, straight white man.
Is it really so hard for you to imagine that not everyone comes from the same background and upbringing? Moreover, is it so hard to believe that not everyone who supported prop8 was a gay-hating bigot who wants to see them all burn in hell or whatever?
With every political standpoint, there is a spectrum of supporters who support the cause - for varying reasons and varying intensity. It's very important to keep this in mind especially with issues like prop8 where the anti-prop8 branded the prop8 supporters as a whole as gay-hating bigots.
Here's the problem: we don't know where Eich fell on the spectrum. We don't know if he hated gays or if he was brought up in a traditional household where marriage is a religious ceremony rather than a love-based ceremony.
Hell, I recall some prop8 supporters whose only problem with gay marriage was that it uses the word "marriage", they were people who wanted civil unions to offer the same legal protections/rules as marriage, but wanted to keep marriage as man+woman so the concept of a marriage ceremony still had the same religious significance as it did before.
My whole point here is that we have no idea why Eich supported prop 8. There's a whole rainbow of possible reasons, many of them which are not quite as damning as people make out. Since we never heard the other side of the story, this whole fiasco looks like nothing more than a huge joke, but is actually a scary reminder of how passionate and defensive people can get over social issues.
If you're willing to donate $1000 dollars to a bigoted cause, you're a bigot. It doesn't matter if his religion tells him it's okay; he's still a bigot. It doesn't matter if gays make him feel squicky: he's still a bigot. If my religion told me "black people are children of Ham, therefore you should separate yourself from them" (an argument that was once used), you'd rightly call me a bigot. What's the difference here?
Prop 8 was incredibly hateful as a campaign: in case you weren't there, view some of these ads they ran [1]. It's seriously nausea inducing. He funded these ads, to deny gay people fundamental human rights. He never apologized for funding these ads, either.
I'm sorry, but Prop 8 passed. By 7 million people.
Boycotting Mozilla? Really? You need to talk about boycotting California. Making a scapegoat out of one single person for what an entire state did is fucking insane.
The number you're looking for is 599,602 people, not 7 million people.
Note that I've not said anything to support boycotting Mozilla or calling for Eich to get fired. I just don't like people laughing it off as just some good ole fun he was having.
Donating money--real money, $1,000--to a campaign of hate is bad, particularly considering the vile rhetoric it used those funds for directly. Bad bad bad. It's also bad to have voted for it, but just bad, not bad bad bad.
I don't think being a bigot means you're inherently a terrible person or that you should be fired from a position. That's situational. I say it was a bad move for the board to make him CEO in the first place--the rage and hurt that'd happen because of that was easily foreseeable--and I'm neutral/too lacking of information on Mozilla's organizational health on whether he should have been fired after he got the position.
Giving money to a bad politician is not the same as giving money to support a war of pure bigotry and hatred against gay people. Perhaps you weren't there in 2008, or perhaps you weren't a target. But the Yes on Prop 8 campaign deployed deeply disturbing and hateful rhetoric that relied on the worst tropes about gay people--that they want to corrupt your children into homosexuality. All this wasn't just to pass a law, but to permanently enshrine and sacralize hatred in the California Constitution.
Here's a question: many people, perhaps you the reader, oppose Eich's forced resignation because of freedom of speech concerns. Great, I'm with you! And why I think this was all a stupid idea that doesn't benefit gay rights at all. But why are we as a society up in arms about this firing in particular? Why are we not focused on ENDA, for instance, which protects you from being fired for saying you're gay? Why aren't we outraged that workers (illegally) get fired for saying they want to unionize? Or, more tech-focused, people getting fired for shit-talking their boss on Facebook? It seems that, as usual, freedom of speech is only a concern in the media if you're a rich, straight white man.