I recall being on a fairly "normie" (or at least not one-sided politically) message board in the '00s, and it could be seen as "bigoted" to even question homosexuality.
I think it's a very interesting question I ponder about sometimes.
Homosexuality was fully tolerated but not fully accepted. At the time, and more specifically, during the George W. Bush years, the so-called Religious Right still existed, and being openly gay at HS, or in some states, wouldn't have been exactly 'safe', but the truth is that in adult society, and in polite society (that is, not in redneckville, mormontown or evangelical city) there was a 'bless your heart attitude' towards it by christians or whatever. They would at best just avoid the topic and, at worst, disengage with the person and that was it.
The internet was entirely populated by social rejects or unusual people at some level, so, unless the community in question was ideologically or religiously focused, there was a non-written rule about going personal on people. The cynical, dark, politically incorrect humour of the era was more a reaction to the leftovers of hyper-sanitized media and education in the 80s and 90s than people actually meaning it.
The Atheism shit movement was at his height in response of a supposedly at his height (actually dying) Religious Right so this helped since many people had rejected christian morals.
Politics were dreaded at forums since arguments could get ugly, and a lot of place banned political talk altogether, but I would happily take 2003 political division over 2023 political division. The scale is so insanely off that it looks ridiculous now.
The LGBT movement was galvanised over gay marriage. That's literally all they focused on and all they talked about. They played a lot of respectability politics, and most people felt, in some way or another, their demands were fair. Once the frontier was closed (i.e. The US had effectively made gay marriage legal) things got crazy, because that was accomplished. The USA legalising gay marriage just means that all its allies be required to do so, and, one by one, all of them, even really conservative countries like those found in South America, went on to legalise it and those who don't receive regular calls and pressure from the US Embassy.
The moment the US legalised gay marriage, the US became the largest LGBT activist group in the world campaigning for gay marriage, rendering all the other NGOs irrelevant, and that does have an effect.
