The New Blacklist
By Pat Buchanan
TownHall.com
"There is a gay mafia," said Bill Maher, "if you
cross them you do get whacked."
Maher, the host of HBO's "Real Time," was talking
about the gay activists and their comrades who drove
Brendan Eich out as CEO of Mozilla. Eich, who
invented JavaScript and co-founded Mozilla in 1998,
had been named chief executive in late March.
Instantly, he came under attack for having
contributed $1,000 to Proposition 8, whereby a
majority of Californians voted in 2008 to reinstate
a ban on same-sex marriage. Prop 8 was backed by the
Catholic Church, the Mormon Church and the black
churches, and carried 70 percent of the
African-American vote.
Though Eich apologized for any "pain" he had caused
and pledged to promote equality for gays and
lesbians at Mozilla, his plea for clemency failed to
move his accusers. Too late. According to The
Guardian, he quit after it was revealed that he had
also contributed -- "The horror, the horror!" -- to
the Buchanan campaign of 1992.
That cooked it. What further need was there of proof
of the irredeemably malevolent character of Brendan
Eich?
Observing the mob run this accomplished man out of a
company he helped create, Andrew Sullivan blogged
that Eich "has just been scalped" by gay activists.
Sullivan went on:
"Will he now be forced to walk through the streets
in shame? Why not the stocks? The whole thing
disgusts me, as it should disgust anyone interested
in a tolerant and diverse society."
Yet, the purge of Eich, who, from his contributions
-- he also gave to Ron Paul -- appears to be a
traditionalist and libertarian -- is being defended
as a triumph of the First Amendment.
James Ball of The Guardian writes that far from
being "a defeat for freedom of expression," Eich's
removal is a "victory -- the ouster of a founder and
CEO by his own people, at a foundation based on open
and equal expression."
Eich's forced resignation, writes Ball, "should be
the textbook example of the system working exactly
as it should."
Ball seems to be saying that what the gay mob did to
Eich at Mozilla is what the heroes of Maidan Square
did in driving President Viktor Yanukovych out of
power and out of his country.
This is how the democracy works now.
Mitchell Baker, the executive chairwoman of Mozilla
Foundation, who escorted Eich out, said in her
statement: "Mozilla believes both in equality and
freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for
meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight
for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at
the same time can be hard."
George Orwell, thou shouldst be living at this hour.
What Baker is saying is that you have freedom of
speech, so long as you use your speech to advocate
equality.
And what do we do with those who use their freedom
of speech to express their view, rooted in religion
and history, that traditional marriage is not only
superior to same-sex marriage, the latter is a
contradiction of the natural and moral law.
And what of those institutions that teach and preach
that outside traditional marriage sexual relations
are wrong?
One such is the 2,000-year-old Catholic Church whose
1976 catechism, "The Teaching of Christ," describes
homosexual acts as "sexual vices" and "sexual
perversions."
Is that just yesterday's church and yesterday's
belief?
Well, one of the compilers of that catechism was
Donald W. Wuerl of Angelicum University in Rome, who
would appear to be the same cleric as Cardinal
Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., who is
now one of the inner circle advising Pope Francis I.
Yet, it is not only Catholic, Mormon, Evangelical
and Protestant churches that believe this, but the
Islamic faith, perhaps a majority of Americans, and
more than a majority of the world's peoples.
Up until last year, Barack Obama opposed same-sex
marriage.
What the Brendan Eich episode teaches us, where a
man was driven from a position he had earned,
because of his beliefs, and was abandoned and left
undefended by false friends and gutless peers in
Silicon Valley, is this:
In the new dispensation, opposition to same-sex
marriage disqualifies you from leadership and may
legitimately be used to bring about the ruin of your
career.
This is the new blacklist.
The old blacklist declared that if you were a member
of the Communist Party that toadied to Stalin, and
you refused to recant and took the Fifth Amendment,
you would not be permitted to work in Hollywood. We
are Americans, said that Hollywood, and we believe
in American values.
Now, nearly seven decades later, the Stalinists of
the '40s are martyr-heroes in Hollywood. And in
Silicon Valley conservatives and traditionalists who
oppose same-sex marriage are to be denied top jobs
and driven into social exile.
The new blacklist means that while diversity of
races, genders and sexual orientations is mandatory,
diversity of thought and opinion is restricted. In
Silicon Valley, they burn heretics.