Mike Arrington Says OkCupid's 'Hypocritical' CEO Uses 'Explicitly Evil' PR Stunts
That's because Eich opposed gay marriage back in 2008 by donating $1,000 in support of Proposition 8, a California referendum to ban gay marriage in that state.
Eich has since resigned, but investor and Techcrunch founder Mike Arrington believes that OkCupid's stated intentions - to protest the Mozilla CEO's anti-gay marriage views - are "hypocritical."
"I believe that it was a PR stunt by OkCupid, that the company isn't really committed to gay rights at all, and that OkCupid co-founder Sam Yagan was particularly hypocritical in this," Arrington writes on Uncrunched.
According to federal election records, Yagan donated $500 in 2004 to U.S. Congressman Chris Cannon who has a "special kind of hate for gays," Arrington writes. Cannon received a 0% rating on supporting gay rights from the Human Rights Campaign. He also voted for a ban on gay adoptions, and supported a constitutional amendment defining marriage as only between a man and a woman, Arrington writes.
"Is it absurd to judge Yagan as a person based on a single donation, years ago, to a politician well known for waging war on gays?" Arrington says on his blog. "Yup. But that is precisely what Yagan and OkCupid did to Eich."
"To go further, I think that a person and/or a company who deliberately destroy a man's reputation and career under false pretenses just to get a PR bump is being explicitly evil," Arrington says.
Business Insider has reached out to Yagan and will update this story if we hear back.