I think that if you donate to pro-gun-control causes and a significant number of your employees own guns that you wish to ban ownership of and find it personally important to own those guns, you might be a poor choice of CEO.
(Gun control isn't quite analogous here for a few reasons, one major one being that employers care a lot about who you marry, for insurance and family-leave reasons, and employers tend to care little about what guns you own. But if you can construct some situation where, I dunno, you interrogate employees about their guns or they want to open-carry at work, it's a little closer.)
Remember that nobody cared about Eich's views when he was CTO. He could have remained CTO for years, and the question of his suitability as chief executive wouldn't have arisen.
> employers care a lot about who you marry, for insurance and family-leave reasons
Employers don't care who you marry; they care if you marry. Although, those matters are related.
Similarly, employers doesn't care if you or others own a gun; they care if you are alive and healthy. And those matters are related. [Insert debate here about the direction of that relationship.]
> Employers don't care who you marry; they care if you marry. Although, those matters are related.
Sure. And if you are married to someone of the same gender, you reach the situation where the question of if you are married has different answers to different people.
Or more precisely, your employer doesn't care if you are married, either; many states had processes for extending insurance benefits to either registered domestic partners or unregistered people that you just state an intention to live with long-term in a marriage-like way. Your employer cares that the social good promoted by insuring a family and not just the individual employee is a) actually being used when appropriate and b) not being used contrary to their wishes when not. If the employee's and employer's idea of social good and social ill are at odds, the employee should think twice about whether this employer is a good long-term (or even short-term) place for them.
The fact that this question arises with a significant number of Mozilla employees made Mozilla and Eich a poor match.
> the question of if you are married has different answers to different people.
No one has a different answer to this question.
This isn't baptism. If one group could have one answer and another group could have a different answer, there would have no need for Prop 8, et al. The conflict arose because there is only one answer to which people have entered into a state-administered legal contract.
OK, fine, let's be even more pedantic. The question is whether you should be able to get or remain married to someone. The purpose of Prop 8 is to make things that were previously recognized as legal marriages no longer legal marriages. If you're in one of the affected marriages and your CEO is trying to cause your marriage to become invalid, you may not share long-term goals.
(I can't tell, are you disagreeing with my point or just picking at the words I'm using to make it?)
FYI, the validity of existing marriages was never really on the table.
> I can't tell, are you disagreeing with my point
I'm disagreeing with "gun control isn't quite analogous here for a few reasons".
What if a leader opposed gun rights, thus removing employees' ability to protect themselves? Or what if a leader supported gun rights, thus making employees' communities more violent?
What if a leader opposed abortion rights, thus imposing an inappropriate level of control on women and their bodies? What if a leader supported abortion rights, thus showing a fundamental disregard for human life?
What if a leader supported minimum wage, thus showing a poor grasp of economics? What if a leader opposed minimum wage, thus hurting his employees financially?
What if a leader wanted increased defense spending, thus recklessly endangering the well-being of the world? What if a leader wanted decreased defense spending, thus recklessly endangering the well-being of the world?
What if a leader has Communist sympathies?
Or let's bring it back to marriage: What if a leader supported rights to polygamist marriage? What if a leader opposed rights to polygamist marriage?
The usual response to this is "Well, OBVIOUSLY X is the right thing." Despite the fact that the country at large does not have anything resembling consensus on these issues. (Just as the supposed "obvious" answer to Prop 8 was evidently very non-obvious to most Californians in 2008.)
I am distinctly not claiming "Obviously X is the right thing." I am claiming that if a leader believes that obviously X is the right thing, and a significant number of employees believe that obviously !X is the right thing, and the issue is likely to affect the productivity or long-term happiness of employees, the leader is a poor choice. This claim does not in any way express an opinion on which of the two groups is right. (Also, the poor choice may still be the best of the available choices.)
I don't think it's noteworthy that a CEO doesn't vote the same way as some employees; I think it's notable that a CEO was fired for it. How many companies have done that?
> billions of people who are ill-suited to be CEO of Mozilla.
Specifically (and this is really important -- you can't leave this out) because of their political affiliation.
If it was gun control specifically targeting people based on race, sexuality, etc then yes.
I think the idea that even legally we look at things differently when they're targeting a specific group is pretty well established and the difference in your example lies there.
You seem to be proposing a standard based solely on discrimination.
I doubt that is the standard you mean to propose.
If someone say, ardently supported removing virtually all rights to free speech, in your mind does that fit into Prop 8 unacceptability or gun control acceptability?
I'm not against gun control, but the argument here isn't a slippery slope one. This is very close to believing or not in gay rights.