Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
At the trivial level, it's something that's immediate, either in firsthand matters or in terms of someone they know. Yes, ostensibly these countries usually focus most enforcement on places where other legal jeopardy turns on less objectionable focuses (and actually avoid getting international tourists involved), but it's somewhat sobering to pack for a trip and put back the sex toy or leave behind a fanfic-in-progress after realizing that you'd be depending on that enforcement 'prioritization' to avoid serious jail time or worse.
And while the various polls about progressives thinking everyone in the political party is gay are kinda hilarious, they're downstream of enough of that one-in-twenty-ish that everyone knows a good few pretty closely.
At the more intermediate level, it's something that ends up with epicycles built around it. Russia doesn't just ban The Gays or pride parades, it bans 'propaganda' about The Gays, has a whole bunch of cultural stuff about stuff that hints of gayishness, and then there's an unofficial brigade of people with a lot of practical support among the police that don't mind if individual gays have Particularly Bad Safety Incidents.
It's a bit like how some rightwingers get really focused on HBD or religious freedom or (in my example) gun rights, even if they're not personally in the pinch point, because the support and actions for these policies end up fractally wrong, too. This usually runs into limitations sooner than liberals expect -- Qatar Airlines isn't cutting scenes out of Mitchels v. The Machines, since even if they cared that much they wouldn't see a lot of the subtext or short-of-bright-flashing-lights text -- but it doesn't stop at don't ask don't tell, either.
The deeper issue is that it's something that a) has basically zero organized internal opposition within the progressive movement, with only a tiny fragment of often-nutty people willing to tolerate disagreement with mainstream progressive pro-LGBT matters, and b) has external domestic opposition, of which the behaviors of external opponents becomes a useful banner. If Uganda has the death penalty for homosexuality (kinda, insert thirty asterisks here), and American social conservatives can be linked to these positions in general (again, asterisks), you don't have to limit your focus on what domestic policies those social conservatives might actually be trying to implement; you can tell everyone What They Really Want To Do To You (asterisk).
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