People should be allowed to be wrong

I support marriage equality, and I am deeply troubled by the tone of recent discourse in the Mozilla community.

People should be allowed to be wrong. People should be capable of working together on common goals despite their differences in other areas.

I appreciate that in California us “liberals” and “progressives” have things pretty good and can afford to take on long-neglected issues like equality of legal marriage rights for everybody in a loving, committed relationship regardless of gender or sexuality. I think that’s great, and I’m proud to live in a state that has been willing to take on the issue. It feels like we live at the forefront of history on basic freedoms for all sorts of often hated and misunderstood groups.

But the world isn’t a single-issue voter. The world is BILLIONS OF PEOPLE, most of whom believe things you or I find highly offensive and vice-versa.

If the tables were turned it might easily be atheists like me, or gays like many of my colleagues and friends who are on the wrong end of the stick — as we and they often have been for generations.

I choose instead to reject the stick as a tool and embrace tolerance and forgiveness.

Some may accuse me of false equivalence. All I know is that destroying someone’s career doesn’t feel like a victory.

Now can we all get back to writing software that improves peoples’ lives?