Robert George, NOM Co-Founder, Slams Mozilla And Brendan Eich For Response To Anti-Gay Donation News

Why Gay Marriage Opponents Are Being Encouraged To Boycott Mozilla, Too
Brendan Eich, chief technology officer and senior vice president of engineering for Mozilla Corp., speaks during the 2013 Uplinq Mobile Developers Conference in San Diego, California, U.S., on Thursday, September 5, 2013. The Uplinq conference gathers mobile developers, maunfacturers, network operators, component suppliers and technology providers to learn, connect and lend a view into what's coming next. Photographer: David Maung/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Brendan Eich, chief technology officer and senior vice president of engineering for Mozilla Corp., speaks during the 2013 Uplinq Mobile Developers Conference in San Diego, California, U.S., on Thursday, September 5, 2013. The Uplinq conference gathers mobile developers, maunfacturers, network operators, component suppliers and technology providers to learn, connect and lend a view into what's coming next. Photographer: David Maung/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Brendan Eich, Mozilla's newly-appointed CEO , sparked the ire of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights advocates last week after news of his donation to an anti-gay marriage campaign in 2008 came to light.

In an interesting twist, Eich and his company are now apparently being targeted by a prominent anti-gay figure. Robert George, who is the co-founder of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), penned a lengthy Facebook post denouncing Eich and Mozilla for their respective statements in the wake of the controversy.

George, who claimed to have deleted Mozilla from his computer after the news broke, wrote:

If you are a faithful Catholic, Evangelical, Eastern Orthodox Christian, Mormon, Orthodox Jew, Muslim, or member of any other tradition that believes that marriage is fundamentally the institution that unites a man and woman as husband and wife to be father and mother to any children born of their union, providing those children with the inestimable blessing of being brought up in the committed bond of the man and woman whose union brought them into being, or even if you believe in marriage thus understood quite apart from membership in any community of faith, I would ask you to do the same. Why contribute to the prosperity of those who would exclude you?

Calling on his followers to cancel Firefox and other Mozilla products, George continued:

I have no problems with employers having morals clauses in people's contracts. But if someone believes in adultery, and a Christian or Jewish or Muslim school or other institution won't employ them because they commit adultery, I wouldn't expect them to contribute to the collection plate or pay a subscription at the church, synagogue, or mosque. So why should we buy and use Mozilla products?

You can read George's full remarks here and here.

Earlier this week, officials for the popular dating site and app OKCupid criticized Mozilla for appointing Eich.

"Equality for gay relationships is personally important to many of us here at OkCupid. But it’s professionally important to the entire company. OkCupid is for creating love," the company wrote in a letter viewable only to those who tried to enter the site using a Mozilla Firefox Internet browser. "Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure."

Last week, Eich offered a personal response to the controversy in a blog post, noting, "I am committed to ensuring that Mozilla is, and will remain, a place that includes and supports everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, age, race, ethnicity, economic status, or religion."

A spokesperson for Mozilla followed suit by releasing a statement in defense of Eich's appointment, saying the company was "deeply committed to honoring diversity in sexual orientation and beliefs within our staff and community."

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