OkCupid is protesting Brendan Eich’s promotion to Mozilla CEO by reminding Firefox users of his anti-LGBT views.
Anyone visiting the dating website OKCupid may discover a little more than questionnaires about relationship preferences. When accessing the website from Firefox, the page now encourages visitors to switch browsers before continuing to the main page. The reason has nothing to do with technical problems, and it’s no April Fool’s prank: According to OKCupid, it’s to oppose Brendan Eich’s promotion to Mozilla Corporation CEO. While Eich is best known for his work on Mozilla and JavaScript, he’s also infamous for donating $1000 to California’s Proposition 8 campaign, supporting an amendment that defined marriage as solely between a man and a woman.
“Politics is normally not the business of a website, and we all know there’s a lot more wrong with the world than misguided CEOs,” the message reads. “So you might wonder why we’re asserting ourselves today … we’ve devoted the last ten years to bringing people-all people-together. If individuals like Mr. Eich had their way, then roughly 8% of the relationships we’ve worked so hard to bring about would be illegal.
“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.”
Firefox users can still access the main page, but first need to scroll past the message, links to alternative browsers, and background information on Eich. And OKCupid isn’t the only company upset with Eich’s promotion: App developers are among those boycotting Firefox, while some Mozilla employees have started calling for Eich’s resignation.
For anyone who doesn’t have a Firefox browser installed, we’ve posted the message below in full and will keep you posted on any updates.
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.
Politics is normally not the business of a website, and we all know there’s a lot more wrong with the world than misguided CEOs. So you might wonder why we’re asserting ourselves today. This is why: we’ve devoted the last ten years to bringing people-all people-together. If individuals like Mr. Eich had their way, then roughly 8% of the relationships we’ve worked so hard to bring about would be illegal. 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.
If you want to keep using Firefox, the link at the bottom will take you through to the site.
However, we urge you to consider different software for accessing OkCupid:
Google Chrome
Internet Exploder
OperaThank you,
OkCupidBackground on Mr. Eich and Mozilla
In 2008, Mr. Eich supported the passage of California’s Prop 8, a statewide initiative to ban gay marriage, with a $1000 donation. Granted, his contribution is now six years in the past, and people can change. But Mr. Eich’s boilerplate statements in the time since make it seem like he has the same views now as he did then. Mozilla recently promoted him to CEO, hence the issue only now coming to our attention. His donation was known to Mozilla at the time of his promotion, and, furthermore, CEOs are rewarded based on their company’s performance. The CEO is the visionary for a company and its products. We are sad to think that any OkCupid page loads would even indirectly contribute towards the success of an individual who supported Prop 8-and who for all we know would support it again. We wish Mozilla’s institutional commitment to freedom and openness were better reflected by their choice of leadership.
Source: OKCupid
