If Brendan Eich cannot be CEO of Mozilla is Hillary Clinton disqualified from being president?

  The controversy surrounding Brendan Eich’s departure as CEO of Mozilla took an interesting turn last week when prominent gay author, Andrew Sullivan, spoke out against the tactics used by gay marriage supporters.

  Here is part of what he wrote on April 3rd:

Will he now be forced to walk through the streets in shame? Why not the stocks? The whole episode disgusts me – as it should disgust anyone interested in a tolerant and diverse society. If this is the gay rights movement today – hounding our opponents with a fanaticism more like the religious right than anyone else – then count me out. If we are about intimidating the free speech of others, we are no better than the anti-gay bullies who came before us.

  That is similar to the position America’s Watchtower took when this story first broke, if you are interested you can read that post here.

  But Andrew Sullivan did not stop there and now he has written a new article, which can be read here, in which he basically asked that if the criteria used to judge Brendan Eich is also applied to Hillary Clinton than she should not have the support of the gay community or of gay marriage advocates.

Some of the very same people who have jumped up and down with delight as Brandon Eich lost his job will doubtless be backing Hillary Clinton for president in 2016 if she runs. The “Ready for Hillary” ranks are crowded with gay men – and good for them. 

But it’s worth considering some consistency here. If it is unconscionable to support a company whose CEO once donated to the cause against marriage equality, why is it not unconscionable to support a candidate who opposed marriage equality as recently as 2008, and who was an integral part of an administration that embraced the Defense Of Marriage Act, signed into law by Bill Clinton? How do you weigh the relative impact of a president strongly backing DOMA – even running ads touting his support for it in the South – and an executive who spent $1000 for an anti-marriage equality Proposition?

  Hillary Clinton opposed gay marriage up until the year 2008, that just happens to be the same year Brendan Eich made his now infamous $1,000 donation which supposedly disqualified him for the position of CEO of Mozilla.

  And he continued:

Hillary Clinton only declared her support for marriage equality in 2013. Before that, she opposed it. In 2000, she said that marriage “has a historic, religious and moral context that goes back to the beginning of time. And I think a marriage has always been between a man and a woman.” Was she then a bigot? On what conceivable grounds can the Democratic party support a candidate who until only a year ago was, according to the latest orthodoxy, the equivalent of a segregationist, and whose administration enacted more anti-gay laws and measures than any in American history?

  He then went on to say that there was one difference between Brendan Eich and Hillary Clinton but it is not what you think. While Brendan Eich actually has apologized for any pain his position may have inflicted that Hillary Clinton, and Bill for that matter, have never apologized for their previous position on gay marriage.

  He then ends the article thusly:

Human beings are complicated and flawed – gays as well as straights; and a liberal civil society does not attempt to impose on all of them a single moral code, or consign large numbers of them to the “bigot” category because they may be laggards in a civil rights cause. That way lies madness. And the end of a liberal and tolerant society. If you can forgive the Clintons, you should be able to forgive Eich. And have a little magnanimity and restraint before you snatch moral defeat from the jaws of political victory.

  So to summarize: Both Hillary Clinton and Brendan Eich opposed gay marriage in 2008 and Hillary did not declare her support for gay marriage until 2013. Mr. Eich has apologized while Mrs. Clinton has not. And yet Eich was scorned while Clinton is held up on a pedestal. This does not seem to be too consistent to me, if Brendan Eich was disqualified to be the CEO of Mozilla should not Hillary Clinton also be disqualified to be the CEO of America?

  And while we are at it; should not Barack Obama, who only recently evolved in his position on gay marriage, also be held to the same standard?