<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>nilkn</author><text>I think you&amp;#x27;re dismissing what has happened too lightly. The real issue here is mob mentality, and you&amp;#x27;re underestimating the ways in which it can be dangerous and insidious.&lt;p&gt;People aren&amp;#x27;t taking this seriously because in this case they disagree with Eich&amp;#x27;s opinion, so they feel it&amp;#x27;s all okay. They&amp;#x27;re letting that blind them.&lt;p&gt;What if Eich actually had the &amp;quot;right&amp;quot; opinion? And this is hypothetical at this point--I&amp;#x27;m not talking about gay rights anymore. Suppose you are an oracle and you know that the mob was wrong rather than right and Eich was right rather than wrong. Don&amp;#x27;t fool yourself into thinking that things would be different. They wouldn&amp;#x27;t, and this has caused extraordinary difficulty in righting many wrongs of the past, including slavery. It can severely impede the democratic process because people are afraid to hold dissenting opinions--not due to legal ramifications, but social ones.</text><parent_chain><item><author>Crito</author><text>Nobodies&amp;#x27; right to have different viewpoints is being taken away.  Nobodies&amp;#x27; right to donate to political causes is being taken away.&lt;p&gt;The only people in this entire story that were&amp;#x2F;are trying to take away the rights of others were the people who pushed for Prop 8.  The right to support legislation like Prop 8 remains intact.  The right to not be criticized by others for doing so has never existed in the first place.  There is no &amp;quot;right to not be criticized&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;[Edit] The voting swings on this comment indicate to me that it is controversial, so I will attempt clear some things up:&lt;p&gt;* Whether or not you believe that same sex couples &lt;i&gt;should&lt;/i&gt; be allowed to marry, the fact is that before Prop 8 they &lt;i&gt;did&lt;/i&gt; have the right to marry.&lt;p&gt;* The purpose of Prop 8 was to &lt;i&gt;remove&lt;/i&gt; this right, because the supporters of Prop 8 felt that it should not be a right.&lt;p&gt;* After this entire series of events, Brendan remains free to donate to similar political causes in the future.  He remains free to publicly hold these beliefs.  He remains free to be a CEO.&lt;p&gt;* The general public remains free to criticize Brendan for anything that they please.&lt;p&gt;* The rest of the general public remains free to criticize those criticizing Brendan for his political beliefs.</text></item><item><author>nostrademons</author><text>This line of reasoning is very troubling to me, because 20 years ago it was pretty much unacceptable in the U.S. to hold the opinion that gays were entitled to full legal rights, let alone the ability to marry.  That changed only because some very courageous people stuck their neck out, weathered all the flack and negative personal repercussions towards themselves, and gradually made the point of &amp;quot;Why not?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I fully support gay marriage and I personally think Brendan is on the wrong side of this issue, but I also fully support the right of people to hold their own opinions, even when other people find them unpopular.  If they weren&amp;#x27;t allowed to hold unpopular opinions, then pretty much all the social progress we made in the last century - racial equality, feminism, gay rights, etc. - would never have happened.</text></item><item><author>danpalmer</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think &amp;#x27;integrity&amp;#x27; in the face of an opinion that is becoming more and more unacceptable to hold in our culture is a good thing. Changing your views, and admitting you were wrong is the best thing you can do.</text></item><item><author>nostrademons</author><text>It speaks a lot to his integrity that he didn&amp;#x27;t.  Would you rather have a CEO who says one thing in public and then goes and does another thing surreptitiously, or one who stands up for his beliefs even when they&amp;#x27;re unpopular?</text></item><item><author>phillmv</author><text>From the recode recap - &lt;a href=&quot;http://recode.net/2014/04/03/mozilla-co-founder-brendan-eich-resigns-as-ceo-and-also-from-foundation-board/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;recode.net&amp;#x2F;2014&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;mozilla-co-founder-brendan-eich...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;“It’s clear that Brendan cannot lead Mozilla in this setting,” said Baker, who added that she would not and could not speak for Eich. “The ability to lead — particularly for the CEO — is fundamental to the role and that is not possible here.”&lt;p&gt;The most damning aspect of this was their a) inability to predict this would be an issue and b) their inability to deal with it once it did.&lt;p&gt;All he had to do was lie and say &amp;quot;I understand how my activities can be seen as divisive and wrong and inconsistent with my commitment to upholding the diverse values underpinning the Mozilla community and I apologize for my behaviour at the time. I will do everything in my power to make up for it and I hope the community can judge me based me on my record from this point onwards&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Then, find ways to anonymously engage in whatever political causes he supports, or wait till he&amp;#x27;s no longer CEO.&lt;p&gt;The tone deafness of his last interview was kind of the last straw.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO</title><url>https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/03/brendan-eich-steps-down-as-mozilla-ceo/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>malandrew</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ll tell you what we should do. We shouldn&amp;#x27;t give those rights to gay people &lt;i&gt;and we should take away those rights from straight people as well&lt;/i&gt;. The status quo is a clear discrimination of people who choose not to marry, but may have others in their lives where it would be mutually beneficial to opt into an agreement where they share some of those rights&amp;#x2F;benefits.&lt;p&gt;Each one of the rights currently afforded to people in a marriage or civil union should be split up and any two people for whatever reason should be able to opt into some, none or all of those rights.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m hoping that one day those pushing for additional rights afforded only to married people, straight or gay, get the exact same treatment that Eich did here.&lt;p&gt;Marriage shouldn&amp;#x27;t even be within the purview of the government, only religions.</text><parent_chain><item><author>Crito</author><text>Nobodies&amp;#x27; right to have different viewpoints is being taken away.  Nobodies&amp;#x27; right to donate to political causes is being taken away.&lt;p&gt;The only people in this entire story that were&amp;#x2F;are trying to take away the rights of others were the people who pushed for Prop 8.  The right to support legislation like Prop 8 remains intact.  The right to not be criticized by others for doing so has never existed in the first place.  There is no &amp;quot;right to not be criticized&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;[Edit] The voting swings on this comment indicate to me that it is controversial, so I will attempt clear some things up:&lt;p&gt;* Whether or not you believe that same sex couples &lt;i&gt;should&lt;/i&gt; be allowed to marry, the fact is that before Prop 8 they &lt;i&gt;did&lt;/i&gt; have the right to marry.&lt;p&gt;* The purpose of Prop 8 was to &lt;i&gt;remove&lt;/i&gt; this right, because the supporters of Prop 8 felt that it should not be a right.&lt;p&gt;* After this entire series of events, Brendan remains free to donate to similar political causes in the future.  He remains free to publicly hold these beliefs.  He remains free to be a CEO.&lt;p&gt;* The general public remains free to criticize Brendan for anything that they please.&lt;p&gt;* The rest of the general public remains free to criticize those criticizing Brendan for his political beliefs.</text></item><item><author>nostrademons</author><text>This line of reasoning is very troubling to me, because 20 years ago it was pretty much unacceptable in the U.S. to hold the opinion that gays were entitled to full legal rights, let alone the ability to marry.  That changed only because some very courageous people stuck their neck out, weathered all the flack and negative personal repercussions towards themselves, and gradually made the point of &amp;quot;Why not?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I fully support gay marriage and I personally think Brendan is on the wrong side of this issue, but I also fully support the right of people to hold their own opinions, even when other people find them unpopular.  If they weren&amp;#x27;t allowed to hold unpopular opinions, then pretty much all the social progress we made in the last century - racial equality, feminism, gay rights, etc. - would never have happened.</text></item><item><author>danpalmer</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think &amp;#x27;integrity&amp;#x27; in the face of an opinion that is becoming more and more unacceptable to hold in our culture is a good thing. Changing your views, and admitting you were wrong is the best thing you can do.</text></item><item><author>nostrademons</author><text>It speaks a lot to his integrity that he didn&amp;#x27;t.  Would you rather have a CEO who says one thing in public and then goes and does another thing surreptitiously, or one who stands up for his beliefs even when they&amp;#x27;re unpopular?</text></item><item><author>phillmv</author><text>From the recode recap - &lt;a href=&quot;http://recode.net/2014/04/03/mozilla-co-founder-brendan-eich-resigns-as-ceo-and-also-from-foundation-board/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;recode.net&amp;#x2F;2014&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;mozilla-co-founder-brendan-eich...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;“It’s clear that Brendan cannot lead Mozilla in this setting,” said Baker, who added that she would not and could not speak for Eich. “The ability to lead — particularly for the CEO — is fundamental to the role and that is not possible here.”&lt;p&gt;The most damning aspect of this was their a) inability to predict this would be an issue and b) their inability to deal with it once it did.&lt;p&gt;All he had to do was lie and say &amp;quot;I understand how my activities can be seen as divisive and wrong and inconsistent with my commitment to upholding the diverse values underpinning the Mozilla community and I apologize for my behaviour at the time. I will do everything in my power to make up for it and I hope the community can judge me based me on my record from this point onwards&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Then, find ways to anonymously engage in whatever political causes he supports, or wait till he&amp;#x27;s no longer CEO.&lt;p&gt;The tone deafness of his last interview was kind of the last straw.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO</title><url>https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/03/brendan-eich-steps-down-as-mozilla-ceo/</url></story>