All Thoughts Being Equal

Okay, I (sort of) understand the rationale that drives so many conservatives to harp on "one man, one woman" marriage as the "bedrock of civilization" ( for often poor reasons ) and to position themselves as so-brave champions of the pure in a "war on marriage." For the highly religious it really does seem to stem from a bedrock-level worldview, something like the Great Chain of Being where there's a truly universal law that places God, husband/man, wife/woman, children, and everything else in a vertical hierarchy (in that order). I think that's bizarre and rather repugnant, but at least it does explain why we see such otherwise insane statements about how gay marriage will lead to a hermaphroditic universe . When gender-essentialism enters the picture, homosexuality truly is a Blue Screen of Death. But for the red-blooded conservative who wants to uphold strong family values but isn't that committed to the Great Chain of Being, here's ...

At this point the furor has mostly died down so I think I should frame this as a reply to Katrina’s earlier blog post on the topic . In a nutshell, Brendan Eich, former CTO and now former CEO of Mozilla Corp. (the for-profit arm of the Mozilla Foundation which produced the Firefox browser among other things), stepped down after it became known that he donated $1000 to California’s Proposition 8. This sent many people, particularly libertarians , into a tizzy of self-reflection, especially coming so hot off the heels of the absolutely ridiculous #CancelColbert campaign . On the one hand, a lot of people are fed up with the knee-jerk, bile-and-brimstone mob mentality of some extreme “social justice warriors”— I’m familiar with the type . On the other hand, this seems to be a case of the system working: consumers and employees in the company voiced their displeasure with the company’s choice of CEO, and he stepped down rather than drag the company through the mud.