In the past year, despite an incredible expansion of LGBT rights, American parochial school teachers and administrators have been fired for marrying people of the same sex. Here's one such story. Here's another.

I don't really understand what one's marriage status has to do with his ability to teach English, but apparently most conservatives do, because I don't think I've seen a single article by a prominent conservative expressing outrage on Ken Bencomo's behalf. In his case, they would presumably argue that the religious rights of the employer trumps his civil rights, but more to the point, few of them would argue that his employer was wrong to fire him.

At the same time they do believe Mozilla's board of directors was wrong to run deposed CEO Brendan Eich out of his job. That's not necessarily inconsistent, but it becomes inconsistent when the principles they claim are at stake change so that they can avoid making normative claims about the views and actions of the people who lost their jobs.

Here's another way to put it: when shared rights come into conflict in a way that pits an anti-same sex marriage individual or group against another individual or group, many conservatives will rally to the side of the anti-same sex marriage party no matter the circumstances. That's fine, I suppose. But they shouldn't pretend in one case that they're taking a principled stand for the liberty of employers, and then in another case that they're taking a principled stand for the liberty of employees. They should just say they align with anti-SSMers, and want to make sure their views aren't rendered anathema or their livelihoods challenged as the cultural ground shifts beneath them.

And that's what I take Ramesh Ponnuru to be doing in response to my inaugural column here. He believes that Mozilla was within its rights to fire Eich, but that Eich shouldn't have been fired, because he doesn't believe opposing same sex marriage in the way Eich does is a practice any employer should discriminate against, including when we're talking about the CEO of a company like Mozilla: "A lot of people don’t think that religious conservatives… should be treated the way we treat white supremacists. Of course that’s something that large numbers of people will, quite rightly, protest."