April 8, 2014
Report: OkCupid Co-Founder Donated to Anti-Gay Lawmaker
Jason St. Amand READ TIME: 2 MIN.
Do as I say, not as I do.
A new report from Mother Jones says that the co-founder and CEO of the popular dating website OkCupid donated $500 to a campaign supporting Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah), who has a history of anti-gay and ultra conservative voting. The discovery comes just days after Brendan Eich resigned as CEO of Mozilla after he drew ire for donating $1,000 to a Proposition 8 campaign in 2008.
During the peak of Eich's controversy, OkCupid officials changed its homepage for people who accessed the site via Mozilla's Firefox web browser so they would get a message that called Eich an opponent of equal rights and urged users to switch to a different browser in order to boycott the software company. Soon after Eich stepped down as CEO, OkCupid removed the message and issued the following statement:
"We are pleased that OkCupid's boycott has brought tremendous awareness to the critical matter of equal rights for all individuals and partnerships; today's decision reaffirms Mozilla's commitment to that cause. We are satisfied that Mozilla will be taking a number of further affirmative steps to support the equality of all relationships."
Despite's OkCupid's call for inclusiveness and condemnation of Eich, Mother Jones reported Monday (via Uncrunched) that in 2004, the dating website's co-founder and CEO Sam Yagan. Yagan is also the CEO of Match.com, gave $500 to Rep. Chris Cannon of Utah, a Mormon who was an active member in Congress from 1997 to 2009 and voted for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, voted against a measure that would ban job discrimination based on sexual orientation, and voted for prohibition of same-sex adoption.
Cannon voted for a number of anti-choice measures as well, and earned a 0 percent from NARAL Pro Choice America and a 7 percent from the ACLU for his poor civil rights voting record, Mother Jones' report reads.
Yagan has yet to comment on his financial support for Cannon and whether or not he currently backs gay marriage and LGBT rights - after all, it has been a decade since he made the donation.
Mother Jones reports that he also donated to President Barack Obama's 2007 and 2008 campaign.
