Mr. Eich could have done more to explain himself, but he stuck at citing the privacy of his political and religious beliefs, while acknowledging that his stance discomfited friends and colleagues whose good opinion he values.

Mozilla could have been braver—although we don’t expect political courage from businesses, even nonprofit ones, which loathe to be judged on anything other than how their products work for customers.

All this is complicated, which the priggish posturing of OkCupid was not. It’s a cliché to observe that cowards and bullies are often the same, a wisdom learned from the Andy Griffith Show. And the worst kind of cowardly bully is the one who clothes his aggression toward others in sanctimony—though, until last week, we would have put gay-marriage advocates at the very bottom of any list of issue advocates who exhibit this tendency. Gay marriage has made remarkably swift progress by proposing to increase the world’s stock of happiness rather than reduce it.

Will the gay-rights lobby continue to do so? Or will it, like some in the civil-rights community, who once found racists in the South and now find them everywhere, turn to fomenting discord to secure a permanent place in the political marketplace?