" if colorful language is the price I have to pay for their contributions to society, that value proposition is still a no brainer."

Except that you're not paying any price at all. It's the Thunderbird community paying that price and there is no reason for them to do so. If your list of his accomplishments included making Thunderbird a great piece of software, we might be having a slightly different conversation. Also, kicking him out of Mozilla's bug system very likely has zero impact on your emacs and core GNU software.

IMO, being a hero on one project does not give you the right to be a bully on another.