He didn't say that at all. You are reading a whole lot into a simple transfer of money about which Eich has said hardly a word. You have taken something that is barely an identifiable stance — and certainly not a public one — and turned it into a declaration of extremism.
An equally plausible read would be "Eich belongs to a religion that holds marriage as a core tenet and was encouraged by his pastor to donate along with the rest of the congregation. He actually wants gays to have equal rights and believes treating gays well is the right course for any business entity, but his personal religious beliefs — which he keeps strictly separate from his official duties — have certain hooks in the word 'marriage'."
Fun fact: Many churches were actually telling their congregants that without Prop. 8, the state would require their church to perform gay marriages, and that they should vote for Prop. 8 if they wanted their church's religious freedom to remain intact.
He did effectively say that, because that was the practical effect of passing Prop 8, something he helped pay for.
If he was misled on this topic, all he has to do is say, "Hey, I was wrong: I thought this was about free speech, but it turned out that wasn't the case. I had also confused the notions of religious and civil marriage. Mea culpa. I fully support the subsequent court decisions recognizing that all my employees have the right to be married to the partner of their choice."
Instead, he's chosen to stonewall. Which means that the most plausible reading is that he still believes in what Prop 8 was plainly trying to do: strip civil rights from gay people.
Really? I don't see any reason to suspect his intentions were any more sinister than my friends and family members who supported Prop. 8, who generally had much less interest in stripping gay people's rights than they did in protecting a religious institution that is very important to them. A lot of the people I know who supported Prop. 8 have actually spoken out against homophobic rhetoric they've come across, because they sincerely do care about gay people — but they still supported Prop. 8, because they felt more like their religion was under attack than gay people.
I'm not saying that it was all because of the flat-out lies like the state forcing gay marriages on churches, either. I was just giving that as an example of how hard churches worked to tie Prop. 8 with being a good religious person. Not everyone who supported it did so because they personally have it in for gay people.
It seems to me to come down to the same thing. Either Eich was misled, in which case he should apologize. Or he was trying to strip a civil right from gay people for his personal reasons. Whether that's anti-gay animus or just believing that his right to religious freedom trumps other people's civil rights seems irrelevant.
Either way, I think he owes an explanation to the gay people he will soon be managing, and to Mozilla's many gay and gay-allied business partners and donors. Like it or not, the CEO personally represents the organization. His saying, "Gosh, my reasons for oppressing gay people are personal and complex," doesn't wash with me, and it surely won't with a lot of other people.
An equally plausible read would be "Eich belongs to a religion that holds marriage as a core tenet and was encouraged by his pastor to donate along with the rest of the congregation. He actually wants gays to have equal rights and believes treating gays well is the right course for any business entity, but his personal religious beliefs — which he keeps strictly separate from his official duties — have certain hooks in the word 'marriage'."
Fun fact: Many churches were actually telling their congregants that without Prop. 8, the state would require their church to perform gay marriages, and that they should vote for Prop. 8 if they wanted their church's religious freedom to remain intact.