If calling out homophobia is a liability, then I'm happy to be guilty as charged.
And this isn't about a church refusing to marry someone because of their sexuality. This is about governmental rights and legal rights conferred to married couples.
Or on a more dour note: What happens if a homosexual couple moves to a state that bans that practice, and they choose to divorce?
That's why this stuff is important.
The supreme court has equated financial contribution with speech, and many of us agree with that position.
Therefore, we can only see this as an attempt to ostracize and attack anyone who speaks to the opposite side. This action is chilling on speech, which is exactly what the OP was talking about. Just because you don't see it that way, doesn't mean it isn't, and won't be perceived by others that way.
I think proposition 8 was the wrong thing, promoted for bad reasons and on the wrong side of where society needs to be, but I also happen to feel that this attempt to quash any possibility of opposing free speech by ensuring to mob anyone who rises to the top having once taken a view we don't agree with as far more dangerous and harmful for our society than prop 8 could ever have been. It enforces positions without the liberty of allowing speech, and without the ability to challenge in court, as bad laws do.
I think this is the root issue here. SCOTUS declared by fiat that financial contribution is speech. According to our law, it is now.
The people do not see that the same way. Giving lip service is speech, while money is altogether something different. What it is, I do not know.
And it seems much more akin to "buying laws", which I think many people find something terribly wrong in our government today.
There is almost always some harm done by liberty, that is the pain of humanity. There is much further harm done when we restrict liberty to protect the senses. That is my opinion, and I am as surely unlikely to be swayed from it as you are yours.
After having slept on why money in politics bothers me, I think I can better explain why it does.
Normally, a vote from me counts as the same as a vote from any resident in Indiana. And I can extrapolate that to show that my vote is pretty much equal to any citizen in the US. When we add money, it changes that "1 person, 1 vote" to "1 rich person, lots of votes: 1 poor person, 1 vote"
When we distill that down, we are saying that a rich person is much more important than an average income person, or even that homeless indigent voters are worthless. That doesn't sit right with me.
People have died for the right to speak their minds so don't live in fear of what may or may not happen.
If you have an opinion, voice it. If somebody is going to discriminate against you because of your opinion, then they are the bigot.
Don't let political correctness silence you.
I think it's easy to predict where things are going with this topic: no discrimination and equal rights for all. That has been the steady march of progress for a very long time, and it will continue onward. Of course it doesn't happen without setbacks, but we all know where things will end up eventually, simply because it's the right thing to do.
The desire to have always had the currently approved opinion is bad enough as it is, but the need to have it to comply with political correctness, or face a "liability", is worse.
Sure, it is a charged issue. But if the zeitgeist changes in twenty years to march further toward theocracy then I think I will be voicing opposition against that. :)