The Chief Executive Officer for Mozilla (which provides the Firefox browser that I personally prefer to Internet Exploder), Brendan Eich, contributed $1,000 to a Fornicalia Proposition 8 campaign six years ago.  This was — shock of shock — in 2008, at a time when Mr Obama was still not supporting gay marriage himself.

Proposition 8 consisted of two brief sections:

Section I. Title

This measure shall be known and may be cited as the “California Marriage Protection Act.”

Section 2. Article I. Section 7.5 is added to the California Constitution, to read:

Sec. 7.5. Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

Proposition 8 passed in November of 2008 by a majority of Fornicalia voters.  And, oddly enough, it was ruled constitutional by the California Supreme Court in the Strauss v. Horton case in 2009.

Fast forward six years to April of 2014, as CNET.com brings us up to speed:

by Charles Cooper

Brendan Eich’s short stint as chief executive officer of the Mozilla Foundation came to an abrupt end this week. All things considered, his ultimate undoing might have been more a matter of his personal style than his personal opinion.

Eich’s resignation on Thursday ended a storm of controversy that whipped up after public records revealed he made a $1,000 donation in 2008 to an organization that promoted a ban on gay marriage in California.

Many, including Mozilla employees and independent Firefox developers, viewed Eich’s support for California’s Proposition 8 as condoning a mean-spirited campaign to prevent gay couples from enjoying the same rights held by other US citizens. (Until it was overturned last year, Prop. 8 had rescinded the right for gay couples to marry.) Dating site OKCupid even publicly urged Firefox-using members to switch Web browsers and called out Eich on its Web site as “an opponent of equal rights for gay couples.”

Others were just as upset that a supremely talented technologist — Eich invented the JavaScript coding language in 1995 — lost his job simply because he exercised his Constitutional right to free speech. After all, he wasn’t contributing to the Nazi Party. In a widely circulated piece, Andrew Sullivan gobsmacked Eich’s critics: “[Eich’s fate] should disgust anyone interested in a tolerant and diverse society…If we are about intimidating the free speech of others, we are no better than the antigay bullies who came before us.”

Andrew Sullivan, not one to customarily embrace Hard A-Starboarders, wondered where we were ultimately going with this.  So did Hard A-Porter Bill Maher, as he threw down the term “gay mafia” for the first DEM/AMM time:

Ultimately, the arguments go on in Silicon Valley and throughout the nation.

One dollar, one thousand, one million — apparently the size of the figure means naught.  You are damned if you not only place a quarter where your thoughts are, but if you even have the thoughts themselves.

Cooper focuses the crux of the biscuit here:

Everything is context, and when you’re sitting on top of the corporate pyramid — especially in Silicon Valley — there are always consequences to free speech. How this squares with the First Amendment, not to mention this industry’s counterculture roots, is a question that calls for a serious airing.

Please allow me to translate Fornicalia EmoSpeak.

The First Amendment can go straight to flaming fucking Hell.  Our foundational documents, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, mean nothing compared to the elevated and “spiritual” sentiments of Leftists.  They believe that emotions trump facts in every circumstance and, most certainly, in common and everyday situations.  Facts and statistics are nothing more than impediments to an enlightened state.

Another point of focus from the article:

“We never expected this to get as big as it has and we never expected that Brendan wouldn’t make a simple statement,” Rarebit said. “Seriously, we assumed that he would reconsider his thoughts on the impact of the law (not his personal beliefs), issue an apology, and then he’d go on to be a great CEO. The fact it ever went this far is really disturbing to us.”

An apology.  Yes, there it is.  An apology for placing a mere $1,000 towards a campaign he felt — freely and lawfully — to support six years ago in 2008.

An apology that was demanded by Leftist Emos.

But then, apparently, the “gay mafia” intervened.

And instead of obfuscation, my view and the views of others like me regarding technology and Leftists and Silicon Valley and business in general acquired much more clarity.  Like a brand new windshield untouched by wind or rain or dust.

Bottom line: did the “gay mafia” go after Brendan Eich?  That depends upon whom you ask.  To some, the “gay mafia” doesn’t exist in the same universe that the “Amish mafia” doesn’t exist.  And therein lies the rub.

I’m certain you can do that math.

BZ