Should people lose their jobs because we disagree with them?

In a post on Mozilla’s blog, chairperson of the Mozilla Foundation Mitchell Baker talked about how Mozilla believes in freedom of speech. Tell that to Brendan Eich, the now-former CEO of Mozilla who dared to exercise his freedom of speech.

In 2008, Eich donated $1,000 to California’s Proposition 8. Six years later, people found out about it. Employees publicly asked him to resign. Dating site OKCupid blocked Mozilla users from accessing their site and launched a smear campaign against him. The tolerant gay rights activists eventually succeeded in forcing him to resign — in the name of tolerance, inclusivity and free speech.

The lesson, evidently, is that you can have political opinion and beliefs all you want, just don’t exercise them or act on them.

Eich is hardly the first victim of the rabid gay rights lobby. When Prop 8 was being debated, anyone who was in favor of traditional marriage was a potential victim of harassment and vandalism, thanks to the L.A. Times, which put a database online of everyone who gave to the fight over Prop 8, whether for or against. People were intimidated and bullied.

An L.A. film festival director was forced to resign — and all because they disagreed with a very loud minority.

Back to Mozilla, did Eich’s anti-gay views keep him from doing his job? Was he unfair to the gay people he apparently hates? Nope — even Baker admitted that, saying “I never saw any kind of behavior or attitude from him that was not in line with Mozilla’s values of inclusiveness.”

Eich himself refused to talk about it because, according to him, “[I] don’t want to talk about my personal beliefs because I kept them out of Mozilla all these 15 years we’ve been going. I don’t believe they’re relevant.”

So the issue at hand is not how he acted at work or how he carried himself. He kept his personal beliefs personal, and acted professionally in the workplace. The tolerance train that ran over Eich did so because they didn’t like the way he thinks. He committed a thought crime, so he must be destroyed. Eich didn’t say that gays should be sent to camps. He didn’t say that they couldn’t work for Mozilla, and he didn’t say that anyone caught donating to pro-gay causes would be fired. He lost his job solely because liberals and gay rights activists didn’t agree with his beliefs, beliefs that half of the country also hold.

Unsurprisingly, GLAAD has responded with joy, saying that Mozilla’s actions are heralding in a corporate America that is “inclusive, safe, and welcoming to all”. Right — safe and welcoming to all, unless you commit the crime of thinking differently than GLAAD and their ilk, in which case you’re a horrible person who should be destroyed.

It really makes you wonder if they don’t get the irony of touting the values of inclusiveness and equality, as they rob a man of his income because he has different beliefs than they do. It’s all done in the name of tolerance, remember?

We now live in a country where brilliant men can be driven out of a company because they hold the “wrong” political beliefs, and it’s done in the name of tolerance and equality. What exactly should we call this a victory for? The gay rights mob should stop and take a hard look in the mirror and think about their tactics. They tried this before with Chik-fil-A, and it blew up in their faces, and support now seems to be swinging back towards Eich (and rightfully so).

Maybe they should reconsider using mafia-esque tactics — it may not be the best way to get what they want.