"it goes entirely against Linux-Libre's goal."
No it doesn't. Linux-libre has *never* had the goal to stop people from running non-free software - sorry if you or anyone else has thought that this was so. The fact that the kernel doesn't load firmware is only a side effect of the work that was done to not have it *recommend* the firmware, but it is only a side effect - There was never the intention to have it stop loading firmware. This has been a bug ever since Linux-libre was started, albeit one considered a low priority but it's slowly being fixed.
