Certain communities are more sensitive to certain insults. SF, in particular, is home to many gay people; many of them came to this area of the country in particular to escape persecution. Even now coming out to your parents can be quite hard, but you don't have to travel back more than a few years to regularly hear stories of children summarily kicked out of the house, parents never speaking to children again, etc. This is a community that also welcomes, and to a certain extent prizes, nonconformists; or others that have had really shit experiences in grade school, high school, or the cities they grew up in
All of which says that the community of which mozilla is a part is particularly sensitive to slights against gay people. This should have been, oh, completely unsurprising.
And the ceo is often symbolic in a way that a cto isn't.
And in particular, I wouldn't work for firefox while he was ceo. He made a donation specifically intended to maliciously hurt my friends and neighbors. I can't support that.