
You don’t remember them well then. Or your area went from blue/purple to red. Once it became clear that Trump was here to stay, the bigots stayed loud. Yeah there’s been an uptick in homophobia lately (but waaaaay more for transphobia) but it’s not unprecedented or new. Conservatives are just more comfortable being louder and more public with their conservatism than they were in the Obama years.
I remember there was this homophobic joke by one of my Democrat colleagues in work saying “LGBTQ should be called IEWA” and another claiming “Genders were made up by bathroom companies to sell more bathrooms” I’m stunned at how these are even socially acceptable when they wouldn’t have been in 2019