My Tweets On Andrew Sullivan's Piece On Eich
This is the resignation and public shaming of Eich, who gave money to a campaign I deplore -- the Prop 8 campaign against gay marriage. This began, writes Tamara Tabo at Above The Law, with OKCupid:

Dating site OkCupid rerouted all of its users accessing its site from a Firefox browser to a message that began, "Hello there, Mozilla Firefox user. Pardon this interruption of your OkCupid experience. Mozilla's new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples. We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid." The message goes on to read, "Equality for gay relationships is personally important to many of us here at OkCupid. But it's professionally important to the entire company. OkCupid is for creating love. Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure."

Sullivan's tweet and the link from it:

@sullydish A civil rights movement w/o toleration is not a civil rights movement; it's a cultural campaign to destroy opponents.

My tweets.

@amyalkon .@sullydish @instapundit Thank you. I'm very pro gay marriage & dislike his support for 8 but feel strongly that we must foster free speech

‏@amyalkon
.@sullydish @instapundit "A civil rights movement without toleration is ... a cultural campaign to expunge and destroy its opponents"

@amyalkon
.@sullydish @instapundit I'm reminded of activists who showed they were better than the Phelps by standing w/"Sorry for your loss" poster

Sullivan writes at the above link:

Brendan Eich was regarded as someone whose political beliefs and activities rendered him unsuitable for his job. In California, if an employer had fired an employee for these reasons, he would be breaking the law:

1102. No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity.

Now Eich was not in that precise position. He resigned as CEO under duress because of his political beliefs. The letter of the law was not broken. But what about the spirit of the law?

The ability to work alongside or for people with whom we have a deep political disagreement is not a minor issue in a liberal society. It is a core foundation of toleration. We either develop the ability to tolerate those with whom we deeply disagree, or liberal society is basically impossible. Civil conversation becomes culture war; arguments and reason cede to emotion and anger. And let me reiterate: this principle of toleration has recently been attacked by many more on the far right than on the far left. I'm appalled, for example, at how great gay teachers have been fired by Catholic schools, even though it is within the right of the schools to do so. It's awful that individuals are fired for being gay with no legal recourse all over the country. But if we rightly feel this way about gays in the workplace, why do we not feel the same about our opponents? And on what grounds can we celebrate the resignation of someone for his off-workplace political beliefs? Payback? Revenge? Some liberal principles, in my view, are worth defending whether they are assailed by left or right.

From The New York Times' Nick Bilton and Noam Cohen:

While he was being portrayed as an opponent of gay people, Mr. Eich said he believed in inclusiveness within Mozilla and had never discriminated. A different issue was at stake, he said -- the right not to be judged for one's private beliefs. This right was vital to a collaborative software project like the Firefox browser, he said, because it harnesses the work of volunteers and contributors from around the world in a competition with large corporations like Google and Microsoft.

"If you can't leave your other stuff at the door you're going to break into other groups," he said in an interview. "We have to be one group."

Mr. Eich said he had a number of gay supporters within Mozilla who didn't agree with his personal beliefs, but supported him as chief executive. He said the issue of his donation came to light in 2012 at a conference. When a friend who would have been barred from marrying by the successful Proposition 8 effort learned of his donation, "I could see the pain in her eyes. I'm sorry that people felt a lot of pain," he said. Proposition 8 has since been struck down in federal court.

The conflicting values between free speech and gay rights were a riddle that was hard for many Mozilla officials to solve, and there is no indication that Mr. Eich behaved in a biased manner at work.

A comment at the NYT from someone who feels as I do:

adc, Minneapolis
As someone who strongly supports marriage equality, I think firing Mr. Eich is terribly unjust. Mr. Eich supported prop 8 in a private capacity; there is absolutely no evidence that his private beliefs affected anyone under his management. Opposition to gay marriage was mainstream just a few years ago. Will we now fire anyone who previously expressed opposition to LGBT rights? As a society, we are better off acknowledging that people of conscience may disagree on critical issues like this one, even if such people are wrong. Taking retribution for being on the wrong side of an issue, particularly one where public opinion has changed very quickly, is not in anyone's interest.

Another NYT commenter:

Beachwalker, Provincetown
As a consultant who has worked for over 20 years to help businesses support workplace equity for all groups, including LGBTQ staff, and as a lesbian, I am troubled by this story. Since when is it ok to have a litmus test about personal political beliefs? My father was persecuted during the McCarthy era and lost much of his employability due to litmus tests in use then. I don't want to see them return, no matter who advocates for them and who gets excluded due to them. If Mr. Eich says he can separate his personal political stance about same sex couples' access to marriage from his leadership of Mozilla, including being able to support its LGBTQ inclusive policies and benefits, then he should be able to lead the organization, in my view. Personal political beliefs are just that - personal. I hope the LGBTQ community will think again about pushing leaders and organizations into this sort of decision.

This mob going after Eich puts a chill on free speech, and sets a dangerous precedent. We need to hear from those who disagree with us. We need their views exposed to sunshine because this is the only way we can fully debate them, which is how we make change. This also, as @radleybalko suggests, is a good argument for privacy in political donations.

And again, let me remind you that I have this view of Eich while, as I've joked in the past, being so for gay rights, and especially the right to marry the person they love, that I should probably have a wife instead of a boyfriend.