It's very dangerous ground to label political donation as "intolerance." It's inimical to civic and democratic political processes in a free society. In fact, I would label it as intolerant.
If a person is taking actions that are nonviolent and legal, and they do not advocate the active destruction of our system of self governance, they should be allowed to coexist. This is what tolerance means. We need to let people oppose us and take positions we don't like. That is what it means to live in a free and democratic society. So long as those people don't act like sore losers, they get to take part.
While it was done legally, the actions that got Brendan Eich fired for a donation he made six years ago strike me as the actions of "sore winners." Brendan Eich's behavior, while a PR disaster at the end, consisted of running a company with policies friendly to homosexual relationships.
Mr. Eich was the one behaving magnanimously in this situation.
Why the attempt to make it sound like this was ancient history? The donation was made six years ago because that's when California's Proposition 8 happened.
Also, wouldn't a company with policies friendly to homosexual relationships be more likely to have a higher percentage of people who support such policies and not want a CEO that could potentially change those policies?
More germane to democratic industrialized 1st world nations, is how people choose to refrain from violence to structure society.
Someone who donated in support of a proposition to kill all the Jews is probably rightly labelled antisemitic, even if they are always polite face-to-face. And yes, surely, such a proposition wouldn't be constitutional
The "problem" is with your broad definition of intolerance, which you attempt to support with your (self-admitted) straw man involving a hypothetical proposition which would fit the legal (not just customary) definition of hate speech.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech
There is a societal problem with supporting a proposition which could be defined as hate speech, which is directly dangerous and illegal. There is no societal problem with propositions which are constitutionally untenable. We have political mechanisms for dealing with that.
there's a problem with your framework and I don't see a trivial solution.
No, there was a problem with your straw man. Remove that, and you'll find that your position reduces to, "Society should not tolerate speech from people who are wrong." The problem is how such a thing would be adjudicated.
There's a problem with your framework. You don't see the solution because your position is effectively against free speech. You are only for speech you personally label as "tolerant." In a truly free society, one must be free to be wrong. That's the only way it can work.
Second, you deny that there is anything incomplete about your framework, and then you pull in hate speech - which 1) it was by no means clear that you had intended to include (adding "unless hate speech" seems to me a materially different position than without it, and real people probably hold both versions), and 2) it is not entirely clear that Prop 8 shouldn't be considered an example of hate speech (though context being what it was, it is entirely clear that we shouldn't be prosecuting people retroactively for it).
"There is no societal problem with propositions which are constitutionally untenable."
There is no inherent societal problem by virtue of a proposition being constitutionally untenable. Many constitutionally untenable actions entail a tremendous societal problem, though - consider the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII. Many would consider temporarily depriving a class of people of rights they'd previously been afforded "a societal problem". In many cases, I think they're clearly correct. Here, I think they're correct but somewhat less clearly (partly due to proximity).
'No, there was a problem with your straw man. Remove that, and you'll find that your position reduces to, "Society should not tolerate speech from people who are wrong." The problem is how such a thing would be adjudicated.
There's a problem with your framework. You don't see the solution because your position is effectively against free speech. You are only for speech you personally label as "tolerant." In a truly free society, one must be free to be wrong. That's the only way it can work.'
First, it should be clearly noted that no one is calling for criminal penalties. These things are adjudicated by individuals deciding who they are and are not comfortable dealing with.
Second, I didn't propose a framework. You'd made an assertion, and I was trying to get at the lines you were drawing around that assertion.
Third, in a free society, you deal with the consequences of your actions - including speech. It's worth noting that this is why capabilities for anonymous speech are so important. There are some consequences we should clearly be going out of our way to preclude; governmental retribution is antithetical to free speech, violence needs to be prevented, &c. But "I said something people don't like, therefore they don't like me as much, therefore they prefer to do business with someone else" is an entirely unavoidable consequence of a free society - the alternative is to force people to do business they don't want to do.
Finally, again, there was no straw-man, and granting that introducing the notion of hate speech solves the issue (of which I'm skeptical) there was a flaw in the framework you'd laid out: the lack of mention of hate speech as an exception.
When we say "coexist," we do not merely mean "physically exist on the same planet." We mean "exist and be civil with one another." People used to refuse to patronize restaurants that permitted negroes. We do not describe those people as being in favor of peaceful coexistence; we say that they were intolerant and opposed to coexistence.
> But we are under no obligation to patronize an organization that puts people whose worldviews are at odds with ours in ways that damage people we care about. I feel no ethical compulsion to associate with or enrich (because his salary's paid for by my eyeballs if I use Firefox) people who want to hurt people I love. He's welcome to sell his services to people who don't care about that, but I won't buy.
As the OP suggests, this sounds suspiciously like the viewpoint used to justify driving gays, blacks, etc. out of society. "Oh, I'm just exercising my freedom of association." It didn't justify those people — why are you so sure it justifies you?
Using your freedom of association as a weapon against people you disagree with has generally not been viewed kindly by history. I think you're on the right side of the gay marriage debate, but you're on the wrong side of the "How do we coexist with people who disagree with us?" debate.
As was said earlier, if Eich were actually out to get gays, I would understand this reaction. But he isn't out to get gays, and hasn't done anything against them in six years. He was being perfectly tolerant of gays when people decided to come after him. You're punishing him for his viewpoint, not stopping him from "hurting people you love," which he wasn't doing.
Your definition of "civil" and mine are not the same. I find it intensely uncivil to try to strip marriage rights from multiple friends of mine. I do not find it uncivil to say "this dude's a jerk and I won't give him money"--as I said in a cousin post, I don't go to my corner store because the owner's a jerk, this is not materially different to me.
> As the OP suggests, this sounds suspiciously like the viewpoint used to justify driving gays, blacks, etc. out of society. "Oh, I'm just exercising my freedom of association." It didn't justify those people — why are you so sure it justifies you?
You can't choose to be Not Black. You can't choose to be Not Gender Dysphoric. You can choose to be Not Bigot. The line of demarcation is super, super obvious from where I stand.
> You're punishing him for his viewpoint, not stopping him from "hurting people you love," which he wasn't doing.
Have you looked at his donation records? He has a pattern of backing politicians who are notable in their "culture war" self-presentation, who make a point of speaking about how terrible homosexuals are. Pat Buchanan. Thomas McClintock. Linda Smith. Proposition 8. (He didn't even live in Smith's state, let alone her district, when he chose to give her money. That speaks loudly to me.)
Donating money to anti-gay causes and anti-gay politicians is very much, by my lights, an action. Many of them. And don't mistake me: they're actions he is completely within his rights to take! But the same thing that gives him the right to do that frees me from the obligation to enrich him by using the product of the organization he leads. And I do not choose to undertake that obligation for him.
Have a group come after you and get you fired, and see how much "peaceful coexistence" you get from that.
Second: Is he being harassed at home? Is he getting swatted? Are people throwing rocks through his windows? Then those people should be arrested, because that's a crime. But quitting your job because you can't deal with people who are pissed off over your desire to hurt people is not something I will shed tears over.
This is no different from refusing to patronize the corner store near me because the owner's a jerk. Neither he nor Eich are entitled to my business.
