This is a very unfortunate situation and the tweets Brantly made 6 years ago are shocking and do not add up with how he has so far behaved in his role in ENS.
It’s needless to say that bigotry and hate should not be part of this or any other community. I have already stated my views on this in CT: https://twitter.com/LefterisJP/status/1490282927770550272
But I believe we should cool our heads a bit and not make rash decisions while blood is boiling.
What I would like to see at this point is some public clarification from Brantly about these past comments and explain if he truly believes that homosexuality is evil, and that transgender people do not have a right to exist. As those comments do not reconcile with what he recently posted on discord: https://twitter.com/nicksdjohnson/status/1490398146077540352
I want to give him the benefit of the doubt as should be the right of everyone to defend themselves and explain their actions. His track record in the ENS project so far has been spotless and, to my knowledge, he has never discriminated against any single person while performing his duties.
And frankly I am apalled at how quickly people are jumping on the bandwagon to pile on someone without talking to him or giving him a chance to at least explain those past comments.
That said. If indeed he still truly holds the belief that a group of people should not have the right to exist, or harbors hate towards them I don’t believe that being part of the leadership of this project is appropriate.
The reasons for this are:
- Hate and biases could lead to decisions that discriminate against that group in leadership roles such as hiring.
- Outsiders curious to join the project or web3 in general, as ENS is a core part of it, who belong to the hated group would see it’s lead by someone who harbors hate towards them and would never touch it. May even go so far as hating on crypto and web3 because of it.
- Really bad for PR and looks for the project. Plus we would probably end up losing all our LGBT members, which are quite a lot.
In closing I want to say I saw lots of shitty behavior in CT today. Above all, in all our discussions, in all our debating let’s please be human and try to show respect for one another. Remember in the other side of that screen is another human with different beliefs, different upbringing and feelings.