Talk about being caught in the middle.
Mozilla makes the world’s second-most popular desktop browser, Firefox. Soon, however, that ranking may be in jeopardy.
Last week, a handful of Mozilla’s LGBT employees and supporters (we counted six, no doubt there were more) announced their disappointment with their new CEO, co-founder Brendan Eich. Eich, as the world now knows, donated $1000 to support Prop 8 in 2008.
LOOK:Â Mozilla Anti-Gay CEO Story Explodes After OkCupid Blocks Firefox Users
A small software company, Rarebit, founded by a binational same-sex couple harmed by Prop 8, quietly announced they were boycotting all things Mozilla. That boycott spread via social media, and sites like The New Civil Rights Movement, which was among the first to report on it.
Soon, under mounting pressure and bad press, newly-promoted CEO Brendan Eich announced that Mozilla does not discriminate, and the company defended itself by first pointing to its health insurance benefits for domestic partners, then later by announcing that as an organization, Mozilla supports same-sex marriage. Eich never renounced his opposition to marriage equality — not ever.
But some marriage equality supporters were satisfied, while others were not.
Meanwhile, hidden in Eich’s statement was a tiny, minor apology for the hurt his actions in opposition to marriage equality had caused.
Now, the co-founder of the National Organization For Marriage and one of the most-active anti-gay activists in the world, Robert P. George, has demanded his fellow conservatives boycott Mozilla and Firefox.
“The employees of Mozilla evidently think that people like me, and perhaps you, are not morally fit to be employees of their company,” George wrote on his Facebook page Sunday night. Of course, he was referring to an unknown quantity of Mozilla employees, but facts rarely get in Robby George’s way — consider his position on marriage equality, and the fact that he was highly-involved in the Regnerus anti-gay parenting “study.”
“They are attempting to force out their CEO because he made a financial contribution in support of the ballot initiative to uphold marriage in California as the union of husband and wife. The CEO isn’t out yet, but he has already caved to the pressure, apologizing for “causing pain” by supporting marriage. … That won’t be enough. His ‘sin’ is unforgivable under the new morality. He’ll soon be gone.”
“So I have just deleted Mozilla Firefox from my computer,” George says. “If I’m not morally fit to be their employee, I’m not morally fit to use their products. If you are a faithful Catholic, Evangelical, Eastern Orthodox Christian, Mormon, Orthodox Jew, Muslim, or member of any other tradition that believes that marriage is fundamentally the institution that unites a man and woman as husband and wife to be father and mother to any children born of their union, providing those children with the inestimable blessing of being brought up in the committed bond of the man and woman whose union brought them into being, or even if you believe in marriage thus understood quite apart from membership in any community of faith, I would ask you to do the same,” he writes.
Of course, over 55 percent of Americans support marriage equality, and “faithful Catholics” support it at a rate higher than the average American. Not only that, but there are many faiths, including Christian denominations, that not only do not oppose same-sex marriage, but actually marry same-sex couples in their churches.
George’s NOM co-founder, Maggie Gallagher, in a National Review blog post yesterday warned that Brendan Eich “now joins a growing number of people who face threats to their livelihoods unless they support gay marriage.” (She didn’t go quite as far as George in calling for a boycott.)
So, there’s really nothing left to do.
Firefox must immediately be relegated to the small portion of internet citizens who neither support nor oppose marriage, period. In short, if you believe in marriage for different-sex couples or for same-sex couples, you cannot (to use the words of Robby George) “morally” use Firefox.
It’s actually come to this.
Â
Hat tip: Lifesite News, via @PapalPutz