"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
- Upton Sinclair

Unfotunatetly, we see the same kind of wilful blindness is other fields too.

Actually, there's no measurable effect from "the brain believing". Placebos have no effect on any actual measurable health outcomes, they only have an effect on self-reported health outcomes. People say they feel better. People say their hangnail is cured. People say that they can feel that their cancer is in remission. However, when the doctors take the actual measurements, there is no measurable difference between the control group (who got nothing) and the placebo group, no matter how much the placebo group claims they are feeling better and no matter how much the control groups claims they are feeling worse.

The governor who did that likely wouldn't get re-elected if the law was important and popular. Would you care to provide a reason why free and fair elections are not a sufficent check against that behaviour?

In most cases it would dependent on the circumstances and whether the donation could be seen as compromising the figurehead's ability to lead. For example, the CEO of Chik-Fil-A will, most likely, be perfectly able to contribute to campaign against pornography, against religious freedom for non-Christians and against abortion without compromising his ability to lead, however, social conservatives would likely force him out for taking a stand on the opposite side of those issues (if they could, of course, I'm not sure how much ownership the CEO has). In this case, Eich donated money to a campaign whose sole purpose was to strip some people (including a number of the people working for him) of their rights, and it temporarily succeeded. That has to create some bad blood between him and the affected employees and that type of antagonism is not something to be taken lightly. Having done so and then having refused to recant his position, Eich had compromised his ability to lead and either they were going to go or he was going to go.

As I said, if he had been able to apologise and admit he had done something wrong, he likely would have been able to maintain the position, but if you can't publicly acknowledge that treating some of your co-workers as people deserving of fewer rights than yourself was a mistake, you aren't going to be able to lead them.

It wasn't just his political activism from 5 years ago that was the problem. If he had disavowed that behaviour, apologized to his employees and make an act on contrition (such as donating a significant amount of money to a pro-gay marriage organization or campaign) they could have buried the hatchet. However, apparently he still does not believe that his gay employees should be fully equal to the heterosexual ones. Effectively, he chose to step down rather than admit he was wrong.

You have it backwards, it's a religious ceremony around the secular activity of signing your marriage certificate. The religious ceremony has no legal standing if you don't sign the government's paper. Next you'll be telling us that only proper Christians should be allowed be married and that athiests, agnostics and those who worship the wrong god should also be excluded from marraige.

This is very simple, the amendment conflicted with a part of the constitution that wasn't amended, thus the amendment was determined to be improper and tossed out. It's actually the job of the courts to do that type of thing, though it would happen less often if politicans wrote fewer stupid laws.

Actually, I thought he was referring to the right-wingers who use the threat of a liberal bogeymen bringing back the "fairness doctrine" to cudgel you into voting for them.

As CTO he was in charge of making technology decisions, as CEO he's in charge of making decisions that affect the gay employees he considers to be less worthy than himself.

See the difference?

I thought that was why we allowed them to wear the shirts in the first place without kicking up a huge fuss... It's a convenient self-applied warning label.

Actually, he donated money to a campaign to strip some of his employees of the rights they had been granted by the state of California. That campaign temporarily succeed, those employees have a really good reason to oppose him. Additionally, he was put in a position where his personal views would likely be material to his performance of the office because he would be making the decision on whether his gay and lesbian employees would be treated the same as his straight employees and he is on record as opposing that equality. He has claimed he would not act on that belief in his position, instead of renouncing the view entirely so many people are (rightfully) skeptical that he would keep his personal prejudices separate from his professional decisions.

It is important to note that we did not hear any complaints about his prejudice until he was put in a position where his prejudice could materially affect the lives of his fellow Mozilla empoyees. It seems like many of the Mozilla employees were concerned not that he was a bigot but that we has a bigot who was put in a position to act on his bigotry (by design or by inconsideration).

Morally right? No, but that's because Eich's bigotry is morally wrong and the claim that OKCupid is anti-free speech would be a lie. He does, however, have the right to make such statements.

I keep seeing people say that the government should get out of the marriage business, but it seems like Religions should get out of the marriage business. Religions should be in the ceremony business, not the marriage business. Which is good because that's how things generally are. Too many people don't seem to understand that the religious ceremony is intended to make the signing of a piece of paper in front of two witnesses feel special. However, the marriage licence is provided by the state and is the same no matter what religion (if any) you subscribe to. That's not a bad thing, but too many people are making the mistake of confusing the ceremony with the actual marriage. For simplicity's sake being married in front of god conveys no legal status at all until you sign the government provided piece of paper.

The reason the government is involved and should remain so, is because there are significant and important legal implications to marriage. Beyond tax implications, there are legal issues such as inheretance (particularly important if the home is not in name of both partners), end-of-life care, hospital visitations, prison access, health benefit access, and the list goes on and on. Adn that's before we get to any provisions that are supposed to provide assitance to those raising children.

Actually, people who are unmarried and living together may be treated the same as someone who is married and living together (it's called common-law), though I doubt you could claim a common law status with your brother or sister, but that's because you are assumed to not be in stable long term exclusive relationship.

In which case the board made a decision that his views were counter-productive to the organization and they did what they had to. I'd prefer to think that he had the wisdom to see that his political history was damaging to the foundation, that he was foolish enough to require the board to force him out. Of course, there were other options he could have engaged in, he could have apologized, recanted his views and made a gesture of reconciliation (like publicly donating money to a pro-gay-marriage campaign). However, while I haven't been following the story too closely, it appears he tried to take the "I won't let my prejudices influence how I deal with my should-be-less-than-equal underlings" approach, which he couldn't pull off.

I am always amused at the self-righteousness of those who believe the tolerant should tolerate their intolerance.

They're almost amusing as those who believe that their free speech rights should be used to stiffle the criticism of others.

No apparent reason? Are you daft? Your primary evidence that blacklisting is happening is a handful of people complaining that it is not.

It seems you have some sort of problem with actually reading and understanding what other people write.