O caso Brendan Eich (II)

Brendan Eich and the New Moral Majority, por William Saleton (Slate):

Many self-styled liberals are celebrating Brendan Eich’s resignation as CEO of Mozilla. They say the company had every right to remove Eich for supporting a 2008 referendum campaign against gay marriage. It’s a matter of free enterprise and community standards, they argue. (...)

That’s the argument: Each company has a right—indeed, it has a market-driven obligation—to make hiring and firing decisions based on “values” and “community standards.” It’s entitled to oust anyone whose conduct, with regard to sexual orientation, is “bad for business” or for employee morale.

The argument should sound familiar. It has been used for decades to justify anti-gay workplace discrimination. (...)

[T]he rationales for getting rid of Eich bear a disturbing resemblance to the rationales for getting rid of gay managers and employees. He caused dissension. He made colleagues uncomfortable. He scared off customers. He created a distraction. He didn’t fit.

It used to be social conservatives who stood for the idea that companies could and should fire employees based on the “values” and “community standards” of their “employees, business partners and customers.” Now it’s liberals. Or, rather, it’s people on the left (...) in their exhilaration at finally wielding corporate power...