OkCupid urges users to boycott Mozilla's Firefox over anti-gay CEO

Mozilla's new CEO has come under a lot of fire lately because of his negative stance on gay marriage. In fact three of Mozilla's board members resigned over his appointment to the CEO position. Today the entire company is catching more flack due to Brendan Eich's anti-gay politics, with OkCupid notifying every Firefox user of his stance on gay rights and urging them to use another browser that is headed up by a more equal rights friendly CEO.

OkCupid is not outright banning Firefox users from accessing its site though, and has a small link at the bottom of the letter that lets users pass through to the full site. Mozilla takes issue with the new CEO over a $1000 donation he made to support proposition 8, the bill that would have banned gay marriage in California. OkCupid says that if gay marriage were banned world-wide more than 8-percent of the relationships it has created would be illegal.

Eich has released a statement on the matter saying, "I know there are concerns about my commitment to fostering equality and welcome for LGBT individuals at Mozilla...I am committed to ensuring that Mozilla is, and will remain, a place that includes and supports everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, age, race, ethnicity, economic status, or religion." and so has Mitchell Baker, chairwoman of Mozilla. "Acting for or on behalf of Mozilla, it is unacceptable to limit opportunity for *anyone* based on the nature of sexual orientation and/or gender identity. This is not only a commitment, it is our identity"... "Speaking as the Chairwoman, I want to speak clearly on behalf of both the Mozilla Corporation and the Mozilla Foundation: Mozilla supports equality for all, explicitly including LGBT equality and marriage equality."

OkCupid's full statement can be found below.

" "Hello there, Mozilla Firefox user. Pardon this interruption of your OkCupid experience. Mozilla's new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples. We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid.

Politics is normally not the business of a website, and we all know there's a lot more wrong with the world than misguided CEOs. So you might wonder why we're asserting ourselves today. This is why: we've devoted the last ten years to bringing people-all people-together. If individuals like Mr. Eich had their way, then roughly 8% of the relationships we've worked so hard to bring about would be illegal. Equality for gay relationships is personally important to many of us here at OkCupid. But it's professionally important to the entire company. OkCupid is for creating love. Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure.

If you want to keep using Firefox, the link at the bottom will take you through to the site. However, we urge you to consider different software for accessing OkCupid.

However, we urge you to consider different software for accessing OkCupid: [such as]

Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera

Thank you,

OkCupid

Background on Mr. Eich and Mozilla

In 2008, Mr. Eich supported the passage of California's Prop 8, a statewide initiative to ban gay marriage, with a $1000 donation. Granted, his contribution is now six years in the past, and people can change. But Mr. Eich's boilerplate statements in the time since make it seem like he has the same views now as he did then. Mozilla recently promoted him to CEO, hence the issue only now coming to our attention. His donation was known to Mozilla at the time of his promotion, and, furthermore, CEOs are rewarded based on their company's performance. The CEO is the visionary for a company and its products. We are sad to think that any OkCupid page loads would even indirectly contribute towards the success of an individual who supported Prop 8-and who for all we know would support it again. We wish Mozilla's institutional commitment to freedom and openness were better reflected by their choice of leadership. "