The Endless Purge: OKCupid Executive Discovered to Have Made Contributions to Anti-Gay-Marriage Congressman

But remember: Inquisitors don't necessarily wish to burn you at the stake.

Their real goal is to get you to recant, and promote their favored orthodoxy.

Burning at the stake is the threat, but their actual goal is to compel you to repeat the approved dogmas.

So let's see if they accomplish their goal.

The Daily Caller reported five days ago:

Sam Yagan, who is currently CEO of the Match Group, which controls OkCupid [and was a cofounder of OKCupid -- ace], donated $500 to Barack Obama in 2007 and 2008 back when he still opposed gay marriage.

While president of the tech company Metamachine, Yagan also gave $500 to Republican Utah Rep. Chris Cannon. In 2006 Cannon voted in favor of the Marriage Protection Amendment, which would have defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman in the Constitution.

This story got big play today because it got past the Gatekeepers of the Leftist Information Fortress and was reported in Mother Jones.

See, when the Daily Caller reporter a fact, exclusively, it didn't matter, but now Mother Jones reports it and it officially Matters.

AllahPundit had speculated earlier today about Yagan's next steps vis-a-vis his Inquisitors:

He’s going to say one of two things in his defense (or both) once OkCupid comments on this. One: His donation to Cannon wasn’t about gay issues, it was about something unrelated — tech policy or whatever....

Two: He’ll claim that he’s changed his mind on gay rights, just like Obama but (apparently) unlike Brendan Eich. (Yagan also donated to Obama in 2008, back when O was dutifully posing as a traditional-marriage supporter.) Eich never renounced his donation to Prop 8; Yagan will, presumably, happily renounce his Cannon donation now to avoid the dreaded charge of hypocrisy.

How did AllahPundit do?

Nailed it.

Today, the heretic recants, and affirms his belief in the One True Faith of Gay Marriage.

“A decade ago, I made a contribution to Representative Chris Cannon because he was the ranking Republican on the House subcommittee that oversaw the Internet and Intellectual Property, matters important to my business and our industry. I accept responsibility for not knowing where he stood on gay rights in particular; I unequivocally support marriage equality and I would not make that contribution again today. However, a contribution made to a candidate with views on hundreds of issues has no equivalence to a contribution supporting Prop 8, a single issue that has no purpose other than to affirmatively prohibit gay marriage, which I believe is a basic civil right.”

What a fascinating statement. Forgive me for reading it thus:

I didn't donate to Chris Cannon for his politics, of course. I just donated in order to buy some influence with him.

It is preferable to say, in 2014, that you are merely farming Congressmen for political favors than that you once thought that gay marriage was a little bit weird.

OKCupid

Whatever happens in private between two consenting adults and their political donation is no one else's business.

Two points I think I should make:

The fact that people have to donate to Congressmen for favors (or just to be left alone) isn't really the donors' fault -- it's Congressmen's fault, and voters' fault, for empowering government so much that people are forced to pay a defensive tax just to curry favor with legislators and presidents.

And I don't want Yagan fired, either, for the heresies of his own youth.

Although his cowardly failure to stand up for freedom of belief makes this a closer case than it would otherwise be.

posted by Ace at 03:03 PM

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