In 2014, Mozilla founder and former CEO Brendan Eich was forced to resign from the company and the board of the nonprofit foundation that owns it. The reason? In 2008, he donated $1,000 to support Proposition 8, which stated that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Despite the fact that Eich kept his personal beliefs to himself, Mozilla Executive Chairwoman Mitchell Baker insisted Eich “cannot lead Mozilla in this setting.” What “setting” is that? The one that brooks no deviation whatsoever from progressive orthodoxy — unless one happens to be an MSNBC news host named Joy Reid.

Reid wrote a slew of anti-homosexual blog posts in 2006. The archives of those posts were initially discovered by Twitter user @Jamie_Maz who noted they were “far worse than 1st reported” and “had nothing to do with Republican hypocrisy on gay marriage.” Maz further revealed that Reid “gleefully accused people of being gay and posted a number of questionable things.”

That Twitter thread appeared on April 19. Five months prior, on Dec. 3, Reid had apologized for other anti-homosexual posts she had written, and given her stature as a reliable purveyor of the progressive agenda, it is likely another apology would have been more than enough to put this refueled controversy behind her. Or she could have done what many people do, (such as Barack Obama who opposed same-sex marriage before he approved of it), and simply said her views had “evolved.”

Instead, Reid released a statement to the leftist website Mediate on April 23, declaring the additional posts had been written by an “external party” that “manipulated material from my now-defunct blog.” Reid further insisted she had discovered the hacking in December, and that she “began working with a cyber-security expert who first identified the unauthorized activity, and we notified federal law enforcement officials of the breach.”

The following day, NBC released two letters from Reid’s attorney, dated Dec. 19 and Dec. 22. The former letter was sent to the Internet Archive and the latter one was sent to Alphabet, which owns Google. Both demanded the companies remove the “hacked” archives of Reid’s blog. The network also released a statement from Reid’s “security consultant,” Jonathan Nichols, who purported to have “significant evidence” of the hacking.

Unfortunately for Reid, such an absurd assertion was a bridge too far, even for some on the same side of the ideological divide. The Daily Beast suspended Reid’s column “amid mounting scrutiny of the MSNBC host’s claims that she was the victim of a cyberattack that posted dozens of homophobic statements on her former blog,” the Huffington Post reported April 26. That same day, Daily Beast columnist Kevin Poulsen explained why, noting that Reid’s consultant “had trouble producing the promised evidence. And what he did produce failed to withstand scrutiny, according to a Daily Beast analysis. Blog posts that Nichols claimed do not appear on the Internet Archive are, in fact, there. The indicators of hacked posts don’t bear out.”

Again on April 26, Reid backed off her original claim. “I hired cybersecurity experts to see if somebody had manipulated my words, or my former blog,” Reid said. “And the reality is they have not been able to prove it. But here’s what I know: I genuinely do not believe I wrote those hateful things because they are completely alien to me. But I can definitely understand based on things I have tweeted and have written in the past why some people don’t believe me.”

So why isn’t Reid being held to the same standard that applied to Brendan Eich? Or the one applied to former CNN commentator Jeffrey Lord, who was fired for using the Nazi slogan “Seig Heil” in a sarcasm-laden Twitter exchange with Media Matters president Angelo Carusone, whom Lord had accused of using fascist tactics to organize a sponsor boycott of Fox News commentator Sean Hannity?

A Feb. 10, 2018, New York Times headline says it all: “How Joe Reid Became a Heroine of the Resistance.” The article mentions her apology to Crist — along with the need for it, which Reid attributes to the nation’s “polarized” political climate. “People don’t just want to disagree with the people they disagree with,” she asserted. “They want to destroy them.”

Reid should know. In an effort to deflect the spotlight away from her own past positions, she brought supporters from the radical homosexual Left onto her show. One of them, Brandon Wolf of the Dru Project, declared that America has “homophobic psychopaths running the United States government today,” and that if Vice President Mike Pence were in the White House, “he would have us all in concentration camps hoping to pray away the gay!” In response, Reid expressed appreciation Wolf was “bringing that up.”

Thus, some efforts to destroy people one disagrees with are “more equal” than others.

In stark contrast to CNN and Lord, NBC has circled the wagons around Reid. An NBC spokesperson who declined to be identified told Politico that Reid would remain on the air while the investigation into her claims is conducted. The spokesperson declined to say whether the network itself will conduct its own investigation.

Last Wednesday, Reid’s lawyer, John H. Reichman, released a statement through MSNBC, confirming that the FBI “has opened an investigation into potential criminal activities surrounding several online accounts, including personal email and blog accounts, belonging to Joy-Ann Reid.”

Americans might be forgiven for wondering why the same FBI that demonstrated an appalling lack of curiosity regarding possible felonies committed by Hillary Clinton would enmesh itself in an investigation of a TV host’s 12-year-old blog entries. They might also be forgiven for wondering if ordinary Americans would enjoy similar efforts conducted on their behalf by the nation’s foremost law enforcement agency, or whether such efforts are undertaken only for the powerful and privileged.

Regardless of what the FBI finds, Reid will likely remain on the air. In an appearance last week on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Boston Herald columnist Michael Graham offered great insight as to why. He revealed he was sent a series of tweets by people who stated that while they are homosexual and liberal, as long as Reid hated Trump, all else is forgivable.

That “standard” speaks volumes about the progressive mindset. Moreover, when one adds to the mix the Left’s infatuation with “intersectionality” — as in “overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage,” as blog ywboston.org puts it — it’s easy to see why protecting black, female progressive Joy Reid is far more palatable than protecting Caucasian, male progressive Brendan Eich. As for Lord, simply being conservative is tantamount to having two strikes before stepping up to bat.

Some “sinners” are also more equal than others.

“It’s possible that in the end Reid will discover her adversary isn’t a determined hacker, but a far more dogged foe: The Joy-Ann Reid of years past, writing in a voice she can no longer recognize as her own,” concludes Poulsen.

The bet here is most Americans recognize that if “progressives” didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.