The sad part is that most people seem to be happy when businesses fire people for things done on personal time - as long as the person doesn't agree with the thing in question. I remember when Mozilla fired Brendan Eich, a lot of my "liberal" friends were all for it. They didn't care the least bit that it set a dangerous precedent for businesses to fire people for being gay, or being a sex worker in the past, or whatever else. They just were happy that someone they didn't like was being punished, damn the potential for collateral damage.
There’s a bit of a difference when it’s a corporate officer, and the action in question is not their personal freedom but attempting to restrict other people’s freedoms, including many of the people who would report to them. Someone having an OF doesn’t impact anyone else but there’s at least a valid argument that Eich went beyond his personal freedom of speech when it came to materially contributing to the removal of rights from gay people.
I’m not saying there’s no room for disagreement there but simply that the two problems aren’t identical.
In the first case, someone is making decisions in their personal life which do not affect anyone else. They are not asking for special treatment, they are only asking that other people stay out of their private life. They also do not have any authority over other people and are not setting policies.
In the second case, someone is acting publicly to take away freedoms from other people even though their exercise of those freedoms had no impact on them personally. That person is also in a policy-making position over many affected people.
I think it’s reasonable to say that the two cases are different both due to the internal vs. external direction and the distinction and power differential.
