Throwing stones from a glass house

Last week, the Editorial Board discussed the ousting of Mozilla Firefox CEO Brendan Eich by OKCupid for his contributions to anti-gay marriage groups. Immediately after our editorial was published, there was a new development in the story.

Apparently, OKCupid CEO Sam Yagan donated about $500 to anti-gay politicians in 2004. And oh, how the plot thickens.

In fairness, Yagan’s donation was a smaller amount and less recent than Eich’s. Yagan said he was not aware the politician he was supporting was anti-gay rights.
However, if Yagan was going to make a fuss about Eich’s minimal contributions to a California law eight years ago, he needed to have made sure he had all his bases covered.

Coming out with excuses after the information was leaked was not the way to go. Now it looks like OKCupid was trying to capitalize on a movement without doing any real work.

Let’s all just be honest, the pop-up message about Eich’s views was a little passive aggressive. Since Yagan’s own skeletons have come out of the closet, it invalidates the work OKCupid was trying to do. It’s good to keep in mind all of these donations to laws and politicians happened years ago and were extremely small contributions. But turnaround is fair play, and hypocrisy never looks good on anyone.

Lesson learned here is, don’t start a witch hunt. Yagan wanted to do some good, so he dug. In digging, he came up with a non-scandalous donation made years ago. Instead of ousting an awful person from a public position, he made Eich a martyr. He also gave people a reason to look into his past.

If you give people a reason to dig, they will. More often than not, they will find something.

The same debate comes up again. If the CEO is a bigot, but doesn’t let his bigotry inform his professional decisions or company policy, it doesn’t really matter what his personal views are. People can recognize what is appropriate and what isn’t. They know how to keep their personal and professional spheres separate.

And at the end of the day, the fact OKCupid was the crux of this scandal speaks volumes. Maybe we shouldn’t rely on a dating website for our political views.

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