Brendan Eich's support for California's
ban on gay marriage was rare for Silicon Valley.
Eich lasted less than two weeks as CEO
of Mozilla, stepping down Thursday over a $1,000 donation to the
campaign to approve Proposition 8, California's 2008 voter-approved
constitutional amendment restricting marriage to heterosexual
couples. Proposition 8 stood until last year, when the Supreme Court
left in place a lower court ruling knocking it down.
(Related: Brendan
Eich steps down as Mozilla CEO over past support for Proposition 8.)
According to an analysis at
FiveThirtyEight.com,
a small percentage of Silicon Valley donors who weighed in on the
campaign sided with Eich.
Eighty-three percent of the employee
donations from eleven Silicon Valley companies gave money to the
campaign working to derail Proposition 8.
“So Eich was in a 17 percent minority
relative to the top companies in Silicon Valley,” Nate Silver
wrote.
“However, there was quite a bit of
variation from business to business,” he added. “At Intel, 60
percent of employee donations were in support of Proposition 8. By
contrast, at Apple, 94 percent of employee donations were made in
opposition to Proposition 8. The opposition was even higher at
Google, where 96 percent of employee donations were against it,
including $100,000 from co-founder Sergey Brin.”