You're correct that there is a tension here. This is why a few years ago (2012, iirc) Mozilla adopted an explicit policy that beliefs like that must stay outside of the project. See http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/parti... section (i).

This does not say that project participants cannot hold such beliefs; that is an untenable requirement for a project involving people from many countries and cultures. But such beliefs need to stay outside things like project mailing lists workplace conversations, and so forth.

Why not? Religious people get ridiculed all the time, people drink and eat pork around Muslims, and yet somehow they fit in fine.

And being a member of a religion isn't always a choice, being that usually you're born into it and your name identifies you as such.

If people are trying to strip religious people of their rights, as Eich tried to do (and successfully did, for a time), then it would be unreasonable to ask religious people to respect the idea that religious people should not have rights.

Ridiculing is fine. Freedom of speech ensures religious people the right to practice their religion; it ensures non-religious people the right to ridicule and mock religion. It ensures Eich's right to speak out against the civil rights of an oppressed minority. It ensures our right to ridicule him mercilessly for doing so.

Using the phrase "oppressed minority" to effect pathos is pretty weak. I can probably name dozens of "oppressed minorities" that you would certainly condemn.

Wait, are you asserting that the LGBTQ community isn't an oppressed minority?

If not, then I don't see how you could possibly object to me calling a spade a spade.

By implication, are you saying that being homophobic is not a choice?

Disliking things generally isn't a direct choice, though it may be possible to make deliberate choices that will change your tastes over time.

Particular expressions of dislike may be choices, but the underlying feeling is not.

I'm saying that if you're named Mohammed people will make certain assumptions about your beliefs your whole life, and will treat you differently.

Well, some people may do that.

Despite your cynical fatalism, the fact that the public's perception of the issues has been shifting rapidly in recent years suggests that people can change their minds. Just because you have no experience with changing your opinion on something does not mean that nobody else can or does.

Consider how absurd you would sound if you were suggesting that the zeitgeist on racial or gender equality was an unchangeable constant, making discussion of racism and sexism futile.

On the contrary, I have changed my mind on virtually every issue that I can think of. Several times.

But it was never because of random debates on the internet.

That sounds like more of a knock on your own open-mindedness than anything. I'm pretty sure I've probably changed my mind completely on something based directly on interaction via the web. But even if I haven't, I'm absolutely positive that Internet discourse moves my internal needle incrementally on a wide variety issues on a regular basis.

It seems incredibly silly to be biased in such a way against one particular medium.

So if I believe I have the right to drive really fast and I think the laws need to be changed; but you believe I shouldn't have the right to go fast, does that mean that you believe I'm a second class citizen for believing I shouldn't have a right that I believe I should? Seems a bit like a logical fallacy and a strawman. Regardless of where you or anyone stands, let's at least frame the debate right. No one thinks that LGBT people are second-class citizens. To frame the debate like that is an appeal to emotion (also a logical fallacy) and ultimately fruitless, as it avoids the real debate.