Think about yourself, if you are a programmer: would you take on the task to develop a new web site for holocaust deniers? It's just business, after all... If you lose the freedom to pick your jobs, what is the point, really? I'd rather close down my company (but I think you can't do that as a publicly traded company, either).
One of the real reasons I am second-guessing whether to look for VC money is that I am afraid of what happens when we have shareholders, and even more worried about what happens when there is public ownership of stock.
The problem here is that maximizing shareholder value means to some extent working on elevating stock prices. So you can't do anything that might threaten stock prices once you go public.
WL Gore, IIRC, went public, then put 15% of their profits into a buyback program on behalf of employees and eventually bought all their stock back, and then delisted themselves from the stock exchanges. I really admire that they did this. Now they still have stockholders: employees.....
Someone said "This makes business sense for Google". I said "Well, it might, but you forgot to take into account the downsides, e.g. X, Y, and Z".
This has nothing to do with whether Google should or shouldn't do it.
"If we're discussing whether it makes business sense, IMO you're only looking at the upside for Google."
I didn't comment at all on the morality issue and whether Google should do this or not.
Some employees of theirs are against Gay Marriage. Some contractors are against Gay Marriage. Some future employees are against Gay Marriage. Some potential business partners are against Gay Marriage. Some politicians, which Google is trying to lobby, will now no longer be receptive to them because their constituents are anti-Gay Marriage.
Is the overall effect positive or negative? I'm not sure. But try to separate the issue at hand from whether it is smart for Google to support it. Is it possible you're just rationalizing because you want them to support Gay Marriage?
P.S. An easy test to see if it's the issue itself clouding our judgement - what if Google had come out, say, against Medicare in the U.S., on the basis that it would be better for them in the long-term, and economists as a whole agree that it is better for the economy? What if they had come out on the other side of some issue that you care about. Would you still argue it makes business sense to do so?