I got a speeding ticket from the thought police

First, some housekeeping: in the last 6 months, I have completed courses for a digital photo and video certificate through my local tech school, which should improve employment prospects; unfortunately, it also put a moratorium on job searching while I've been stuck in place. But done now: woo! I've also been promoted to full-time as a newspaper copy editor, which is a welcome development, and spent several months as a freelance writer on Elance before gradually backing out due to coursework and increased work hours; I may return now that classes are done.

I've not been posting much, obviously, in part because for a while I took a break from following much of the news (as much as one can while working as a copy editor). I think I was a little burned out after the high-grain focus of the govt. shutdown and Healthcare.gov rollout (I think I intended to write a blog post about that; at any rate, I had a draft with no text but the title 'who left the three stooges in charge' when I opened blogger after my long hiatus), and I've also been much more engaged in following local politics; our city government in general and mayor in particular have been up to shenanigans, most of which have been exposed and reported by us. In any case, I've lately been getting back on the horse, as it were, and resuming my regular perusal of national and international news, and once again am starting to encounter thorny issues about which I need to ponder. And as always, one of the best ways to test my own thinking is to write about it and see if my thinking holds up.

There are three recent incidents that I've been pondering: the brief and tumultuous tenure of Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich; the racist spurging and subsequent ostracization of LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling, and the homophobic tweeting and shunning of Miami Dolphins player Don Jones. The third will undoubtably be a flash in the pan, and I'll not be surprised if the Wikipedia section I linked to is gone in short order, but it was big enough news to make it onto Google, and it ties into the other two.

The questions I'm puzzling over are to what extent, if any, the consequences these three gentlemen have faced for their positions are just, and whether or if at all their rights (moral, rather than legal) have been abrogated. I'm certainly far from the only one who is connecting these dots and asking these questions, but I've yet to see anyone come up with a result I'm fully satisfied with, so let's see if I can do better.




Regarding Brendan Eich, who resigned several weeks after his appointment as CEO in the face of an outcry from across the internet regarding his past support for California's gay marriage ban, there are a couple relevant questions: are the opinions he seemingly espoused acceptable, is the manner in which he espoused them acceptable, and are the consequences he faced for doing so proportionate and just? I'm going to go with meh, absolutely, and probably not, respectively; of the three cases, I feel most that this is a case of mob injustice, and the fact that mob injustice is directed in a direction I agree with, which is not usually the case, does not change either the mob or the injustice parts of the outcome.

If I've not specified it before on this blog, let it be noted for the record that I'm in favor of gay marriage. I think the arguments against it are specious and generally a front for less salutary motivations, and I think in any case that the state has no place or authority in dictating the private relationships of its citizens or of rewarding one permutation over another through taxation and bureaucracy. So am I in favor of Prop. 8, to which Michael Eich donated $1,000 in 2008? No. Do I therefore disagree with Mr. Eich on this topic? Yes. That much is pretty clear.

But there is a spectrum of disagreements. I believe that the Dallas Cowboys are the best football team and should win the most games, and a great many people disagree with me. Are they worthy of my moral condemnation for believing thus? Nah. Likewise, I believe that having sex with people without getting their permission is a bad thing to do, and some (fewer, but still far to many) people disagree with me about that, too. Are they worthy of my moral condemnation? Hells yes. Where on this scale does gay marriage fall? Somewhere in between. I do think that denying gay people the right to marry causes them harm, both emotional and financial, and that there are few if any valid reasons to do so. Since my operative definition of morality is to do as little harm and as much good as possible, this puts opposition to gay marriage on the less-than-moral side of the line. On the other hand, I think that compared to other forms of discrimination in the last century or so, marriage discrimination on its own is pretty damn tame, and I'm furthermore sympathetic to the fact that many people hold this belief out of a sincere and well-founded religious conviction; the bible is quite explicit about whether it is cool for dudes to do it with dudes and gals with gals. I think that religious positions that take those verses as a current and valid injunction are harmful and misguided, and I think less of people who hold to such positions, but I acknowledge that there is at least a reason other than latent homophobia for people to oppose it. So yes, I disagree with Eich's position, and yes, I believe it is an immoral one, but overall, I think this is a relatively minor character flaw, taken in isolation (which, for the purposes of this controversy, it absolutely was).

What about the way he expressed his objectionable belief? He donated money to a political campaign. (Not a huge donation either; $1,000 is a reasonable amount even for people not earning a C-suite salary). I'm going to be honest here: would God that everyone I disagreed with limited their advocacy to political donations. He did not: publicly (or even privately) insult, belittle or disparage any individual or group; he did not use his position of considerable authority as an executive of a large company as a bully pulpit or to place pressure on others, and he conducted all his actions within the framework of political discourse. All he did was use his own money, earned by providing a valuable and, arguably, morally net-positive service, to further the democratic expression of his point of view. Setting aside the objectionability of the opinion he is supporting, in donating to a political campaign in a voting district of which he was a resident (as opposed to billionaire donors buying elections across the country) he did absolutely nothing wrong.

And the consequences? What. The. Hell. Nobody gave a rat's ass about this 2008 donation until 2012, and even then only a partial ass until he was chosen as CEO in 2013. In those 5 years, the course of public and legal opinion had completely dismantled Prop. 8 and overthrown all its objectives; the position he supported had already been resoundingly beaten. There also was no apparent connection between his personal opinion about gay marriage and his role as Mozilla CEO (notwithstanding OKCupid's attempts to draw one). His opinions on this are a nonissue to whether he is able to effectively provide the free, effective internet that is Mozilla's primary service or provide leadership to its employees, just as belief or lack thereof in the tooth fairy is irrelevant to being qualified for student council. Nor was Mozilla endorsing any or all of his personal opinions by choosing him as CEO.

So I ask, was this really a sin worth hounding him out of his job? It was announced as him voluntarily resigning, which I suspect is the case, but only because it was as clear to him as anyone else that he could not continue in the face of this uproar. Mozilla is a very important company, but not a sexy or flashy one, and the bad press they got during this debacle probably outweighed their total media footprint in the previous five years by an order of magnitude in both quantity and impact. Eich had to go. And why? Because he held an unpopular and probably immoral opinion and had, in the past, exercised his perfectly normal right to put his money where his beliefs were and support a political campaign.

People often misuse the word tolerance, complaining that people who support this or that social justice issue on the grounds of tolerance are then showing intolerance to their beliefs by disagreeing with them. Normally, this is crock, since tolerating something does not in the slightest have to entail agreeing with it, or require you to hide that disagreement. In this case, though, it's justified. If an executive was boycotted, petitioned, and forced to resign because at one point he had made a donation to an atheist or pro-choice or pro-gun control campaign, the same people who were outraged with Eich over this would be aghast, even though to many people in America, those positions are just as immoral as we believe opposing gay marriage to be. The power of public opinion is a mighty weapon that can do a lot to highlight and address issues of injustice, but only if we use it against actual injustice, and not just against people who believe something we dislike.

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I started this blog post when the Sterling thing was in full storm; by now, the vultures have departed, the carcass picked quite clean. Even so, here are the relevant factors as I see them:

• Sterling's opinions were abhorrent, moreso than those Eich apparently held. All we can deduce about Eich is that for whatever reason, he felt in 2008 that homosexuals should not be able to get married. Sterling, on the other hand, made it clear that he believes black people to be less than him, unwelcome in his presence, and that those in his organization should feel grateful that he provides for them and otherwise keep quiet and out of his way. Not only is this opinion more unfashionable, having been deemed socially unacceptable for going on 30 years, but it was laid out explicitly and in such detail that no other interpretation really can be imagined.
• I suppose one could argue that Eich's beliefs could make a gay employee feel unwelcome at Mozilla, but that would be a pretty thin-skinned employee. As mentioned above, nobody has said anything to suggest that Eich ever used his position at Mozilla to enforce or even voice his opinions on the topic. I don't suggest that gay people should be happy that other people disapprove of their sexual orientation, because that would be idiocy, but I really can't imagine that knowing this about your CEO - whom only a fraction of the company actually interacts with - should impact your employment decision-making. Sterling, on the other hand, employs numerous black people, including his coach, many of his players, and innumerable members of the athletic and administrative staffs that support them. His comments make clear that not only does he disapprove of their color, but that he actively considers them to be less worthy of voice, presence and respect than white people. There is no possible way for him to exercise effective leadership (even to the rather tenuous degree he apparently had been known for) after this hit the public.
• There is, however, a but. Sterling's remarks were made in the company of his intimates, under a reasonable assumption of privacy, in a situation of apparent emotional strain and turmoil. While this doesn't excuse his beliefs, it certainly allows the possibility that he might have exaggerated, as all of us have during a heated emotional conversation at one point. More important, I think, is that reasonable assumption of privacy. Marc Randazza, one of the first amendment lawyers whose blogs I sometimes read, has explained why he thinks it is reprehensible for these private comments to be the basis for public judgment. I think he has a good point; if nothing else, I'd like to know if anyone in CA law enforcement is investigating his charge that this recording was illegal, and if not, why not. I can sympathize with his belief that Sterling, for all his jackassness, is the victim of an abhorrent invasion of privacy. To a certain extent, this doesn't matter; once the recording was out, as mentioned above, his position as a leader of the Clippers was irrevocably compromised. But it does seem that many of the third-party voices dog-piling on him would do well to consider what words they have spoken to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, and think long and hard about living in glass houses.

And so, while Sterling's opinions are indeed awful, and the league and team are justified - indeed, have little choice - in acting accordingly, I can't help but feel that the public excoriation, where everyone who is anyone throws in their two cents to prove how righteous they are, is distasteful and ultimately sets a rather awful precedent for the next poor schlub who gets drunk and says something unwise where a recording device can hear him. Because sooner or later, that poor schlub will be all of us, and even if our particular beliefs and position make it less cringe-worthy than Sterling's fall from grace, it surely won't feel that way to us at the time.

***

And last, but not least, is the Don Jones tempest in a teapot, where he had the utter breakdown of good sense to tweet 'horrible' after the NFL drafted it's first openly gay player (which, because gays are a weird and strange species that must be studied and recorded for posterity, was recorded and highlighted live on national TV. Maybe by the time I'm 40, the media will be over this crap?) I've less to say about this one, because it seems pretty cut and dried; Don Jones was an idiot and deserves all the crap he found himself in. If nothing else, a member of the Dolphins should be smarter; right or wrong aside, that is one organization that cannot afford any bad press about its tolerance and respect for players in the wake of the Richie Incognito dustup. I wish the team had used another phrase - suspending him until he "completes educational training for his recent comments" has a very Stalinist ring to it, which quite understandably raised the hackles of some commentators, and as a former teacher I'm uncomfortable with the idea that education is something that people are subjected to because they fucked up. That, however, is semantics. The team had every right to take action to protect it's brand, and Jones lacks the sense God gave a shellfish if he didn't see that coming.

But this isn't a case of political correctness run amuck, either. Jones' comment, while brief, was pretty clear - "horrible" is not a word subject to much misinterpretation - and the clear gist is that for Jones, dudes who like dudes are not welcome in his profession. That's a pretty textbook case of intolerance, especially since one's preferred use for one's plumbing has very little to do with ability or fitness to play football, and is deserving of scorn. Furthermore, by expressing this on Twitter, which people somehow seem to keep forgetting is by definition a public venue, he shed any trace of a claim to privacy that might apply to Sterling or Eich. Certainly, the context of Sterling's comments and the Incognito scandal made this a more widely seen and scorned case of intolerance, but that doesn't mean that the people so scorning him were wrong, just that he was that much more stupid.

And last but not least, while he has faced public humiliation and been penalized both financially and in his standing in the organization, Jones has been given another chance. Eich and Sterling weren't so fortunate. It is right that we call out injustice and intolerance when we see it. But it also is right that barring extreme cases where a person's actions make them unfit to continue in their position (I would argue that Sterling fits here), a person be given the opportunity to respond to criticism and, if necessary, make amends.

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I certainly wouldn't suggest that a single formula can appropriately respond to ever case of free speech gone awry - if there was, the Supreme Court would have shared it with us centuries ago. But based on these three test cases, it does seem that there are a few questions that should be asked when some poor soul stumbles into the crosshairs of the media outrage machine.

• Is the belief or opinion expressed actually wrong, or just unpopular?
• How, when and where was the belief or opinion expressed? (I'm not sure it's possible to judge/not judge based on this, but at least it should inform how vehemently and publicly the speaker is rebuffed.)
• Is this opinion relevant to the position or authority the expresser holds?
• Will the opinion thus expressed prevent the expresser from exercising that authority or position?

To apply to the examples above: Eich's belief is wrong, but was expressed inoffensively and appropriately, has no application to his role as Mozilla CEO, and wouldn't have compromised him in that role were it not for the internet outrage machine. 1 out of 4 says leave him alone. For Sterling, the belief expressed was explicitly wrong, but was expressed in private and should have stayed that way. However, once so outed, Sterling's highly degrading views of other races are very relevant to the people in his organization, and make it impossible for him to run a workplace welcoming for all his employees. 3 out of 4 says he has to go. And for Jones, the belief expressed is wrong, was expressed publicly and offensively, is relevant to his position in the sense that player bullying and tolerance of teammates is a hot-button issue for the NFL generally and the Dolphins in particular, BUT ... his actions, while wrong, are not so damaging that he will not be able to recover and show due respect to teammates and other players now that his idiocy has been pointed out to him. 3 out of 4 says we have a problem, but number four tells us that our response needs to be proportionate to the offense, which it was. 

I'm not sure what final conclusions to draw from all this. It might be that more pondering will crystalize things, but I've been sitting on this post for over a month, and the public eye has long moved on; I figure best to strike while the iron, if not hot, is at least not so cold that my other hand sticks to it. I will say that considering this will be helpful to me the next time someone public says something awful OR someone gets all up in someone else's business for saying/thinking/doing something awful. Because while I value the power of modern media and connectivity to allow groundswell movements of organization and expression, I think it's pretty clear that the court of public opinion is not always right and is not always just. Two out of three ain't bad, but I doubt that makes Mr. Eich feel better about being run out of town on a rail. We can do better; we need to do better.

P.S. I'm trying something a little different. Rather than leave the blog fallow for months on end until inspiration strikes, I'm going to try to blog something - anything - about once a week. My target day is Monday, since that's normally my day off, although on weeks where my work schedule changes, Tuesday will do just as well (and shut up; I haven't gone to sleep yet, so it's still Tuesday). We'll see if I can keep a regular schedule and what that leads me to think about. Should be entertaining.