There's a big difference between "cause I don't agree with" and "cause that believes some people are more equal than others". In particular, this donation calls into question his ability to be fair and accepting regarding people who he will encounter in the workplace.
If Eich's donation was about his taxes being too high, or that weed should or shouldn't be legal, that's fine. But his donation is implying that one group of people, some of whom are his employees, deserve less standing in society than another group of people. This is a problem.
I think that him wishing to write off a class of people as of lesser standing is a bit disingenuous. Unfortunately, marriage has become a mix of religious, economic, and legal meanings. In my experience, it isn't so much hating another group so much as feeling like something sacred to them is being coopted and horribly distorted. Having something with the same economic and legal standings but not called marriage generally seems fine by them. That's at least been my experience talking to friends/family/etc. I live in South Carolina for reference.
At the end of the day, we really don't know Eich's personal politics and shouldn't pretend to. Unless he starts on z crusade to "hate the gays" or something equally horrible under the banner of Mozilla, what does it matter?
I hope you wouldn't be surprised that there is some group of people that feel this way over almost any political issue. Legalization is one thing, but some people really do feel that taxation is fundamentally theft.
Abortion is another big one, of course. I'm surprised many conservatives can live in a civil society at all when from their perspective abortion is state-sanctioned mass murder. In that case, I could certainly see people calling someone so morally bankrupt as to donate to Planned Parenthood unfit to be the "public persona" of Mozilla, and I would imagine the tide on HN would be going the other way, that a donation like that shouldn't have any bearing on his performance in his role as CEO.
How about instead of guessing at how he might treat people from a single data point, we treat it as only that, a single data point, and given the evidence seen in places like this submission, see how it actually works in practice? Brendan Eich has obviously been involved in Mozilla and the web community since the beginning, and he's committed himself to things like the code of conduct, which already exists to allow people with different ideas of what constitutes "a problem" to live and work together. I think it's likely that, with vigilance, things will continue to work at Mozilla.
I'm not guessing as to how Eich might treat people. I'm saying how, with his cash, he has stated how the state of California should treat people. If he believes otherwise, he should say/fund otherwise.
I would agree with you if his employees were speaking about how he brings these views to the workplace. However, this very article is from someone who is saying that his decision to make the donation does not bleed into work and she feels very comfortable with Brendan's ability to lead.
That is proof enough for me, and encouraging bc he is able to hold his beliefs and still not let it effect the way he treats his staff.
If Eich's donation was about his taxes being too high, or that weed should or shouldn't be legal, that's fine. But his donation is implying that one group of people, some of whom are his employees, deserve less standing in society than another group of people. This is a problem.