Hmm, ok so definitely not communicating successfully.

First, I don't know if Brendan is pro-Gay, anti-Gay or agnostic. My assertion is that with one data point (a contribution to the prop 208 campaign) is, by itself insufficient deduce his actual feelings.

My exposition on the strategy of passing it in order to change the country was not in a vacuum. Several people, myself included, who very much support a bias-blind right to marriage, agreed that adjudicating the issue would be both faster and more effective than legislating it. Prop 208 needed to pass in order for that to happen. And yes, there were people who argued in favor of more legislative work. But the history of this issue inside of California looked to be a predictor of a national debate on the issue. "fixing" it in one state is necessary but insufficient to ensure the rights of the married. Had Brendan been a member of that group I could have represented his actual position, but since he was not, I can only share that folks on the list of donors included people opposed to the concept of a marriage ban but with a strategy of getting it adjudicated and settled. The argument was made and rebutted that supporting it might make it the law of the land when we opposed it, the counter argument is that it is either constitutional or it isn't. If it is constitutional then our modest group did not have the financial resources to counter a very vocal and well funded religious constituency so opposing it might kill it for now but it would keep coming back again and again. If it is not constitutional then by getting it on the books now, we start the clock on the adjudication process sooner rather than later, and can sponsor the prosecution effort to make that case. At the end of the day one has to know the shape of the problem and where to fix it, until prop 208 started winding its way up to the Supreme Court there was no definitive statement on if the problem could be fought that way or not.

The second point was that making a job choice based on the politics of the people you may or may not work with means you may miss out on some great opportunities. One of the reasons given for anti-discrimination hiring practices is that discrimination isn't about the quality of the work someone can do, and by discriminating you miss out on quality workers you would hire in a non-discriminatory way. Granted it's not the primary reason, or even a major reason, but it's a reason to avoid your personal biases when hiring that can benefit you personally. That also applies to people looking at a company, they can choose not to work for a company because their future manager has a point of view or a race or a gender the potential employee finds distasteful, but if they let those tendencies rule their choices they miss out on things which could be really really good.

An example of that was when I was walking around 'career' day at USC with a fellow engineering student talking to various company recruiters. My companion was adamant about not working for any company where women were put in management roles over engineers. Their reasoning was that women didn't understand engineering and so would be unable to manage well. (this in spite of having women classmates who were excellent engineers!) He could have been trolling, I didn't really know him well enough to say. But I thought at the time that was really sad.

So my points were simply that one data point is a weak place to start drawing conclusions, and writing off a company because of one employee risks robbing you of some excellent experience.

I suspect too many words got in the way of the point.