How Prop 8 Bite CEO Brendan Eich in the Butt and Became a Game Changer For Closet Homophobes

                                                                                   

When Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich was shown the door after being outed for giving $1,000 to Proposition 8's campaign to ban same-sex marriage in California, it was a turning point for both the gay rights movement and for Silicon Valley.

Even before Eich, co-founder of Mozilla and a top name in the tech world, resigned last week after a few days in the position - in the face of boycott threats against his company's Firefox Web browser - his opponents were under attack by conservatives and even some in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community for conducting a "witch hunt" against someone with whom they disagreed.

"It is the new McCarthyism," said Howard Epstein, a San Francisco Republican activist. "If you donate, they will come after you."

But for tech companies like Mozilla, which rely on a growing base of mainstream consumers, criticism over Eich’s donation to the 2008 campaign is a warning that the inbred network of Silicon Valley has to change its way of doing political business. 

"If you're a chipset manufacturer with just five huge customers ... you can have something going on in the back and no one will ever see it," said Wade Randlett, a longtime technology entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. "But folks who work for a fundamentally public-facing company need to understand that there is now no such thing as a safe, private position when you're in the public view."

The crackling speed with which the controversy over Eich’s donation went nationwide also shows just how fast fortunes can turn in a wired world.
                                                                               

Complaints began

Eich was one of about 70,000 people who gave money to the Prop. 8 campaign, and for years nothing came of it. But almost as soon as it was announced March 24 that he was being promoted from chief technology officer to Mozilla's top job, complaints about the contribution started to roll in.

Within days, OkCupid, an online dating service, suggested that users dump Firefox and conveniently provided links to such competing browsers as Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari.

Eich resisted suggestions that he apologize for supporting Prop. 8, but he resigned April 3, saying, "Under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader."

Mozilla officials said they tried to persuade Eich to stay and insisted that fewer than 10 of the company's 1,000 employees had called for his resignation in Twitter feeds or e-mails. However, in announcing his departure, the company said people are "hurt and angry" over the controversy and that it showed that "we haven't stayed true to ourselves."

Mozilla's underdog position in the intensely competitive Web browser business probably had company officials looking for a quick end to the controversy, Randlett said.

"This is not like in the '70s, when if your phone company made contributions to people you despised, what could you do?" Randlett said. "These (complaints) were coming from people who can change their browsers in a couple of seconds, with basically zero transaction cost."

Others, however, saw the Eich affair as a betrayal of the code of freedom that built Silicon Valley.

"The valley demands openness, but the first time they come across someone they disagree with, they crucify him," said Vivek Wadhwa, a fellow at Stanford University's Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance.

Other supporters

Religious supporters of Prop. 8 worry that the type of pushback that resulted in Eich's resignation could bar observant Catholics, Orthodox Jews, evangelicals, Mormons, Muslims and others whose beliefs are opposed to same-sex marriage from top corporate jobs, even though Prop. 8 passed with more than 7 million votes. The state constitutional amendment was thrown out by the courts.

"This is really very troubling, but, sadly, I wasn't surprised," said Frank Schubert, the Sacramento political consultant who ran the Prop. 8 campaign. "There's now no place in current society for holding a view that people have held for thousands of years."

Even gay rights groups like Equality California, which led the effort against Prop. 8, aren't anxious to get involved in the dispute over the efforts to oust Eich. Equality California said in an e-mail that the group didn't have much to add to the public conversation.

But Andrew Sullivan, an influential gay activist and commentator, slammed the attacks on Eich.

"The whole episode disgusts me - as it should disgust anyone interested in a tolerant and diverse society," he said in an April 3 post on his blog. "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."

But there's a difference between holding a personal view and supporting a political position, said Paul Song, executive chairman of the Courage Campaign, a progressive group that was a leading opponent of Prop. 8.

"No one is saying (Eich) can't donate to a campaign or hold his opinions, but it's different when you're the face of a company," Song said. "No one has the right to be a CEO; the whole idea of activism is asking people to make their feelings known."

Problems like Eich's arise not only from the opinions he holds, but from where he holds them, said Corey Cook, an associate professor of politics at the University of San Francisco.

Southern attitudes

While the Dixie Chicks singing group took a huge hit from their country-and-western fan base when they came out against the Iraq War and President George W. Bush in 2003, Cook noted, the Atlanta-based Chick-fil-A fast-food chain actually saw sales rise when LGBT activists called for a boycott over the company's contributions to groups opposed to gay rights.

Likewise, while Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's call for immigration reform may be opposed by any number of people using Facebook, it's the right stand on the right issue to those in Silicon Valley.

"There's always a question," Cook said, "about who works (at a company), who uses the product and what their concerns are."

John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail:jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfwildermuth
sfgate.com