Bad target for left

Time to alert the bloodhounds and riders, because there’s a hunt going on.
After a blog revealed Jelly Belly Candy Company Chair Herman Roland Sr. made a $5,000 donation to anti-trans initiative Privacy for All Students, I don’t think it’s fair to call it anything else.

Roland’s donation was brought into the public light in the same way as those of recently disgraced Mozilla Firefox’s former CEO Brendan Eich and OkCupid CEO Sam Yagan.

Though I certainly support gay rights and find the ideas behind the executives’ actions pretty odious, I believe we’ve truly taken this witch hunt
too far.

These men have a fundamental right to believe what they want to believe.
First of all, their donations represent personal beliefs rather than reflecting on the whole company they manage. In all three situations, it’s been the stealthy digging of journalists that has uncovered these less-than-savory facts about their past donation habits.

They haven’t made ham-fisted public statements about the “sacred family” or the “fundamental role of women,” like the owners of Chick-fil-A and Barilla pasta.
They haven’t extended their anti-gay, anti-trans rhetoric anywhere outside the privacy of their own homes and wallets.

I would hate to think I could get fired from a job I did well simply for having different views. Especially for views that only came to light after a particularly nosy person checked a list of donations for my name.

Second, it’s important to consider the context under which these donations were made. Both Eich and Yagan made the donations nearly 10 years ago.

I don’t know about you, dear readers, but I’m aware that I was a vastly different
person 10 years ago. Still in mourning because I never received my Hogwarts letter, I immersed myself in fanfiction and campy books about lady knights.

We shouldn’t assume that in 10 years’ time those executives haven’t changed as well.

Roland’s donation, however, was made last August, which complicates this argument. But I invite you to consider the atmosphere through which the campaign markets itself.

Frank Schubert, the well-known planner of Proposition 8, is the man orchestrating the Privacy for All Students campaign. It uses scare tactics and misrepresentations to frighten parents into thinking that transitioning children will “expose themselves” if given the choice to pick their gendered bathrooms and locker rooms in schools.

One can imagine such a donation being given after reading his pamphlets or listening to a particularly fear-mongering speech about good little sons and daughters seeing genitalia they “shouldn’t.”

All in all, I find this series of anti-gay “outings” to be counterproductive and reprehensible. Though I disagree with the donations made by Roland, Eich and Yagan, I don’t care what they think as long as they keep it professional and out of their businesses.

Hopefully, journalists will give up this witch hunt. It serves little other purpose than to shame and point fingers at folks who are well within their rights to exercise free speech privately.

­mcaranna@indiana.edu
@MarissaCaranna