The two-week public fight over the new CEO of Mozilla Corp., Brendan Eich, concluded on Thursday when Eich announced on his blog that he would be resigning from his position. Cue the recriminations.

Eich, as most have undoubtedly heard by now, came up against a lot of resistance, both inside and outside of Mozilla, because of his support in 2008 of California's Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that banned same-sex marriage. At the time, Eich donated $1,000 to the Prop 8 campaign, which successfully passed and outlawed same-sex marriage in California, until being struck down by the courts.

When Eich was chosen as CEO of Mozilla, some members of Mozilla's board resigned, employees protested on Twitter, and dating site OkCupid blocked the Mozilla Firefox browser from its website, posting a message reading, in part, "Mozilla's new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples. We would prefer that our users not user Mozilla software to access OkCupid."

Now that Eich has resigned, some in conservative circles are decrying the pressure put on Mozilla's CEO as a form of McCarthyism, or at least infringing on or intimidating Eich's First Amendment free speech rights.

It should be no surprise that Silicon Valley has a liberal bent, and that the culture of tech workers, companies, and prominent voices in that milieu would be politically against Eich.

But let's straighten a few things out first: calling for a CEO's resignation is not infringing on his First Amendment rights. Remember that the First Amendment protects people from government censorship, and the government didn't stop Eich from donating money to a cause in the first place, and wasn't involved in this public campaign. In fact, the public pressure against Eich was in itself an exercise of free speech -- the speech of a generally liberal and libertarian community that felt Eich had no place in it. No one muzzled Eich, they just reacted to his speech with their own.

CEOs' Bully Pulpit

Constitutional and legalistic canards aside, the question remains, "Is that fair?" Andrew Sullivan puts the case forward that it's not, saying that it's a type of bullying. Add to that another convincing argument, that Eich is being professionally punished for private views.

Mozilla, in its announcement of Eich's early retirement, ham-fistedly tried to address the "freedom of opinion versus equality" balance, and why Eich didn't fit in:

"Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard.

"Our organizational culture reflects diversity and inclusiveness. We welcome contributions from everyone regardless of age, culture, ethnicity, gender, gender-identity, language, race, sexual orientation, geographical location and religious views. Mozilla supports equality for all.

"We have employees with a wide diversity of views. Our culture of openness extends to encouraging staff and community to share their beliefs and opinions in public. This is meant to distinguish Mozilla from most organizations and hold us to a higher standard."

Despite the confused, stepping-on-eggshells logic, Mozilla touches on the right point. And it's this: CEOs are public figures. Just like celebrities and politicians, CEOs of large companies are in the spotlight whether they like it or not, and their personal opinions reflect on the companies they run.

Often, this means great, advantageous, power for these individuals -- the bully pulpit of the new kings of industry. People listen to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg when he says that immigration reform is one of the "biggest civil rights issues of our time." When he calls the President, he gets an answer -- and gets face time to discuss his concerns about the National Security Agency, along with every other major tech leader. HP CEO Meg Whitman even ran for office!

What's the point here? It's that tech CEOs inherently are very public positions and have political sway -- not by law, but by the fact that they're the most visible heads of economically and culturally powerful organizations. And so if they're going to be publically involved in political positions (no wonder many have striven for the opposite), you'd better believe it will be reflected on your company, and vice versa. This is just an obvious rule of common sense: do you think it's a coincidence that immigration reform would also be beneficial to Facebook's long-term hiring practices?

Like it or not, that power of the pulpit goes both ways. And if you're not preaching to the choir in liberal Silicon Valley, expect your voice to be drowned out.