[yypark]

It's interesting people haven't brought this up on Hacker News: http://paulgraham.com/say.html

Cynically, it's about conforming to the views in your given industry, company, culture, or society.

The lofty way to put it is a Mozilla CEO should represent the organization's ideals of tolerance, diversity, etc.

The cynical way to put it is tribalism. Humans want people with similar beliefs around, because they are good, and believe the other side to be evil (this being one of the strongest issues). One way for ordinary people to enforce their political power is through means like this. There's no need to dress it up in terms of fundamental rights, bigotry, intolerance etc. And in the tech world, gay marriage is one of those "not OK's" to oppose. I'm sure in the Southern Baptist world, donating to Planned Parenthood, will immediately get you called for an ouster as a baby-killer. It's just that the climate in the tech world has already shifted to this point, whereas the climate in Brendan Eich's church probably has not.

It's really about what acceptable opinions. For some opinions, there are silent majorities in some areas, that are silenced in others. I'm just trying to come up with a way to understand this, that can be applied to all situations and all ideologies.