A fine line between fighting prejudice and being prejudiced

What's that?  Is that the sound of the sky not falling?  It has now been approximately twelve hours since homosexual marriage has been legal in England and Wales and no malevolent portents have materialised.  The churches have their own definition of marriage (along with their own definition of what constitutes a city) and the state has its own.  This was always inevitable  - it was just a matter of timing.  Brian Sewell is his usual contrarian self, saying that gay marriage is not just irrelevant but illogical (essentially on the basis that marriage is a Sacrament and one of the key tenets of Sacrament is procreation) and that gay activists have wasted their energy on a symbolic change (from civil partnership) blunting their battle against prejudice. Sewell always likes to throw a hand grenade into the debate, even if he get damaged in the blast.

Gay marriage simply legalises common-law relationships that have been going on for millenia - some Roman emperors went about it, there are strong suspicions that Edward II and James I were of an at least bisexual persuasion.  And these are just the higher-ups.  The only king of such a nature who did have some form of the sky falling down on him was William II 'Rufus' where the tower of the place where he was interred collapsed soon after the ceremony - as a clerical chronicler (and therefore critic of Rufus) noted dryly "It might have collapsed anyway."

I'm with the Bishop of Norwich (who presides over a jurisdiction containing more non-Christians than anywhere else in the country) who said that having two definitions of marriage is untidy but life is full of untidiness yet still goes on unruffled.  It was a lazy way for politicians to claim progressive points but it doesn't devalue my marriage.  

Sewell was correct in that prejudice needs to be fought and is the primary battle.  How that campaign is tackled is another matter.  I always laugh when I see headlines like "BBC criticised" (a few adverse words from a handful of people on the BBC's own internet comment board) or "FIFA under pressure" (a few non-entity politicians express their opinions on the corruption within football's governing body).  To make it copy worthy of news, molehills are repeatedly made out to be mountains.  So when I see Mozilla staff call for new CEO Brendan Eich to stand down, I decided to check to see exactly how many staff are making that call.  Turns out to be three - hardly a full-scale rebellion in an organisation the size of Mozilla (which promotes open source software such as Firefox).  These malcontents may see Twitter as the most effective tool in their industry but it's not quite in the league of a no-holds-barred letter to the San Francisco Chronicle.  It all stems from a $1,000 donation that Eich made in 2008 on a referendum on gay marriage in California to a group against gay marriage.  This was never hidden but became widely known in 2012.  He subsequently recanted about any pain he had caused and emphasised his commitment to equality.  All his recorded public pronouncements have not criticised gay people (though anything he said was guaranteed under the US Constitution) and as chief technology officer, he stayed in post.  Now he has been promoted because of his capabilities.  Yet to those who take an extreme view, he is forever blacklisted, he can never change, he is effectively the heir to the late Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church infamy.  An important aspect of Christianity is that people can change - for better or worse.  These 'liberal' Sullas though want to purify their digital republic and are McCarthyite in their proscription, seemingly only satisfied if Eich was an unemployed Joe-Smo or self-abased himself before them.  I fully support Hampton Caitlin's decision to sever contact with Mozilla (though how important was his independent development company that he co-founded with his husband is another question mark) - millions of decisions are taken all over the world every day that prioritise the personal over the commercial.  Caitlin may find Eich odious and can't do business with him.  Fair dos.  Business is about relationships as well as profit.  But if Eich's "hateful views" are not detrimental to anyone's prospects in Mozilla, then he is entitled to them if he possesses them.  He should be watched like a hawk as prejudice cannot be allowed to damage another's career but the best way to achieve gay equality is to allow meritocracy to flourish.