What’s the point here? We should never do anything if even one person can come up with some possible hypothetical scenario where it turns out badly?
Instead, how about we don't force that choice on people? How about we offer the option "don't lock up gay people" and also, "don't let mentally ill people murder anyone"? Call me a crazy idealist if you must, but I really think we just might be able to do both things.
Yes. But there is no easy solution. History shows that anything that involves locking up people because they might commit a crime will result in innocent people being locked up and abused.
The only safe choice is to oppose every proposal and offer nothing as an alternative.
I'm pointing out that you must absolutely contend with the fact that marginalized people have historically been labeled mentally ill when they fight for equality, and that asylums have historically been used as a tool for this purpose. If your concern is to address homeless insane people, one of the major causes of insanity is being homeless for more than a few months, and yet our homeless shelters are still under-resourced and we are still creating more homeless people by seeing housing as an investment that must always grow, pricing out more and more people.
If anything, I am pointing out we must address the "false positive" issue, where the population of people who are under threat of being institutionalized as insane even though they are just a marginalized person reasonably reacting to their own oppression might be greater than the insane homeless we want to address. And that "we just won't do that because regulation" is a straight up delusional belief, with zero basis in actual reality, and is more or less saying you hate homeless people more than you care about marginalized people losing their rights.
And I am pointing out that all people, marginalized or not, are currently subject to violence and harassment by the untreated mentally ill, right now. Not historically, currently.
If one party starts telling voters that they care more about hypothetical inconveniences for marginalized people than they do about people getting murdered right now, that party is not going to be in any kind of power for long and they will have no opportunity to protect anyone's rights.
The only reason why the rape of women in asylums is historical is because we no longer have asylums. If you want to bring back asylums, justify how you're not going to also be bringing back raping women in them.