OKCupid, a dating site, has effectively blocked Firefox users [“effectively blocked” = impeded normal access to; you can click through after reading a protest message] in protest of the money new Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich gave six years ago to the Prop 8 campaign. Excerpt from OKCupid’s statement:

“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.”

The idea here is to make Brendan Eich so toxic over his $1,000 personal donation six years ago to a cause supported by over half the people of California that he cannot make a living in an industry he helped to build. There is no evidence that he has discriminated against or will discriminate against any gay person at Mozilla. (See his personal statement.) That does not matter to the McCarthyites. It’s his thought that is criminal here. He must be blacklisted.

A reader points out:

Imagine the shoe on the other foot and Mozilla blocking OK Cupid, or any other site, because . . . well, pick the reason. Enabling “convenient, local, web-enabled sex” perhaps? Not in a billion years! Bad omen, this. A new one every day.

I don’t know anything about Eich’s religious views, but his opinion on marriage is held by the Roman Catholic Church, many Protestants, the Orthodox Church, the Mormon church, Orthodox Jews, and Muslims. Are none of these people entitled to work at Mozilla, in the opinion of the witch-hunters? Or are they only welcome to work at Mozilla if they never, ever express their opinion about marriage in public, or even scarier, never, ever can have expressed at any time in the past their opinion about marriage in public?

Could Barack Obama, who was officially against gay marriage until 2012, work as CEO of Mozilla, according to the witch-hunters?

Are you now or have you ever been against same-sex marriage? Your job and your ability to make a living may depend on your answer to this inquistion inquiry. It’s happening to Brendan Eich, and it’s happening to more and more people. It’s not going to stop until some people, especially liberal-minded liberals (like some of the liberal, pro-SSM readers of thei blog, I’m pleased to say) put a stop to it. This is what the increasingly Stalinist cultural left is bringing us for the sake of liberty and diversity: the purification of the public square of all trace of anyone who doesn’t think exactly like they do, and who always has done. Because as we all know, Error Has No Rights.

Brendan Eich’s case is a perfect example of the Law Of Merited Impossibility: They would never punish someone like Brendan Eich for exercising free speech, and when they try to take his livelihood away, boy, will that SOB deserve it.

UPDATE: I agree with Pete Wehner’s criticism of Franklin Graham here:

I just don’t think a fair-minded reading of the Bible would correspond to the central place (and threat) Graham gives homosexuality. The people who have to answer for the weakening of marriage in American society are overwhelmingly heterosexuals, including professing Christians, rather than gays. And when speaking about God’s judgment on America, why is homosexuality at or near the top of the list of offenses while indifference to the poor, not caring for the stranger and alien in our midst, vanity, self-righteousness, our idols and the counterfeit gods we create, a judgmental spirit and avarice are left off? Surely Graham knows that the greatest hostility that occurred was between religious leaders and Jesus, not those viewed as outcasts and sinners.

I’m not suggesting, as some liberal Christians do, that we jettison the teachings of the Bible. I am suggesting that we all make more of an effort to put things in their proper place and order; that we better balance moral beliefs with humility, winsomeness and joy, and generosity of spirit.

Similarly, I think that many on the pro-gay Left (secular and religious) give way too much emphasis to that one issue, to the exclusion of others. Brendan Eich could be a greedhead, he could be a porn fiend, he could have treated a succession of wives cruelly, or be guilty of any number of vices. But because he gave $1,000 to support privileging traditional marriage — not, note well, to overturning civil unions, but rather keeping the definition of marriage that society has always lived by — that makes him unfit for corporate leadership. This, even though he has pledged to live by his company’s diversity policies. If Franklin Graham makes too big a deal about homosexuality, so do his radical opponents. We all have to live in the same world together. Some of us manage to be decent people, despite believing and doing the “wrong” things.