The Chief Executive of Mozilla Firefox , Brendan Eich, has been forced to resign following a targeted campaign by LGBT groups, who opposed his $1000 donation in support of a Californian law upholding marriage between one man and one woman.
“This is very serious indeed. In a land where free speech and freedom of religion has been historically treasured, we see a man hounded out of office because of his support for real marriage," says Andrea Williams of Christian Concern.
Mr Eich, who co-founded Mozilla and created the JavaScript programming language, made his donation in 2008 to support a campaign to uphold California's Proposition 8 law, which prohibited same-sex 'marriage'.
Following his appointment in March this year, the dating website, OkCupid, urged a boycott of Mozilla Firefox and directed its users to select other internet browsers. Those who visited the website using Mozilla's free Firefox browser saw a message reading: "Mozilla's new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples. We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OKCupid."
The website, ActRight, has launched a petition asking people to support “the free speech and conscience rights of the Mozilla CEO and everyone's right to free political action free of harm and harassment”.
Sign the petition here >
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