Somehow I don't think Eich and supporters of Prop 8 would characterize it that way. You believe that Eich is evil but it is possible that he is on the correct side of the issue and you are on the incorrect side. In any case he was participating in politics just like everybody does and should. He was fired for disagreeing.
The bicyclist was fired because she worked for a government contractor that felt it necessary to do its own kind of virtue signalling, to ward off the potential for lost business.
I never called him evil. I doubt he is, but I don't know him personally.
What he did, though, is he supported something specifically aimed at curtailing someone else's freedoms for no good reason. It's weird that people on Hacker News seem so okay with this, given how angry people seem to get about the abrogation of freedoms in the world of tech and business.
Imagine Eich supported a law that specifically barred you from marrying the person you loved. And by "supported" I mean "financially supported to the tune of $1000." Would you be so easy-going about it?
Should gay people be so easy-going about someone who wishes to rob them of freedoms the rest of us enjoy?
I think that the idea that there is a "correct" and "incorrect" side is a cognitive trap. If we try to break free of this trap, even for the things where there seems so clearly to be a correct side, we can better understand and talk to each other.
The bicyclist was fired because she worked for a government contractor that felt it necessary to do its own kind of virtue signalling, to ward off the potential for lost business.