> To be afraid that gay marriage will somehow sully "traditional" marriage?

How do you know thats why he's against it? Did he tell you that?

The conservative talking point against gay marriage is that it will somehow undermine "traditional" marriage and the culture at large. It comes from a standpoint of quite literally being afraid of homosexuals and homosexuality.

I think it's fair to assume that Brenden Eich's reasoning shares some of those features. (Or he donated that money cynically for some other reason. I suppose that's a option.)

Either way: He gave money to prevent an entire class of Californians from enjoying their rights. Which is a pretty shitty thing to do.

VisualR: what would you suggest people do instead of nonviolent protest like boycotting and public declamation? Tweet about it? Change our profile pictures? This is a serious cultural issue. We are not talking about Baskin Robbins eliminating a flavor. A major force on the Internet was going to be led by a man who clings to the belief that gay people should not have the same civil rights as straight people. That this belief is unacceptable to many should be made clear by them in the most direct and visible way possible.

How does punishing Eich help the cause? Is it trying to scare people in to agreeing with the LGBT cause?

It helps by removing a bigot from a position of great power, showing others that bigotry will not be quietly tolerated, even (perhaps especially) in men and women of great talent and wealth.

Yeah, I agree. But is the boycott activism a proportional response? I think we should leave people jobs out of these things.

If he was against it because of some non-homophobic reason wouldn't he probably have shouted that from the rooftops?

Let's say he was against it because it expanded the institution of marriage (a decent idea, but I wouldn't vote against gay rights because of it). Libertarian with perhaps a misguided set of priorities (equality > smaller government), sure, bigot? No.

So it's probably because of homophobia, because if it was something else, he probably would have made that clear by now.

What if his religion tells him, gays OK, but marriage is only for opposite sex?

So? What if my religion said mangos shouldn't be cut before being eaten? Obviously that shouldn't apply to everyone else, that's my religion.

So at that point he's a bigot justifying it with his religion which still means he's a bigot.

My point is there are degrees of badness. LGBT supporters look like bullies when they don't moderate their response to someone who disagrees with them.

Oh so the degree of badness of supporting institutional oppression (you know, systematically removing (violating) the rights of people based on their identity through laws, etc.) is less than that of telling a company to fire someone (which the company isn't even legally bound to do), got it. /s

This right here is why tech is so white/male/straight/etc. "Oh the other people should stop being bullies and just let themselves be oppressed, the people doing the oppression aren’t the bullies, those are just their opinions, we should just let them continue to oppress people."

Let's put it this way. The LGBT community has been oppressed for basically their whole life. So yea, when given the chance, they are going to try to oppress the people who are continuing to systematically oppress them, where do you think they learned that from. If he was willing to apologize, it probably would have been fine (since when has a gay guy apologizing for being gay gotten him his right to marry someone?), the bully here is Eich, he just got called on it this time.

Revenge never works.

It isn't revenge, it's self defence, this guy still believes this, and is now making more money. It seems likely he'll do something similar again.