No Stupid Questions

Largely because it's very obviously being used as a political propaganda tool, and any criticism at all is being treated as a horrific crime. Often by the same people who are viciously aggressive in their criticisms of otherwise quite ordinary segments of society.

Unless I am wrong I never heard of one shooting up a school church or whatever.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Nashville_school_shooting

I'm going to get all sorts of fun responses for trying to empathize with those with whom I disagree (instead of just writing "dumb bigots") but here goes:

First, remember that even gay marriage is fairly new to America, it's been around for less time than the MCU.

There are a lot of folks who almost have mental whiplash, gay marriage went from illegal to "you could get fired for being vocally uncomfortable about it" in fairly quick order.

Now, to make things even more wild for those folks, mainstream culture is pretty insistent that gender isn't even a thing anymore. Add in some pretty wild news stories/videos*, worries for their kids and the notion that the Left refuses to say there might be any issues whatsoever and you can kinda see where a backlash could crop up.

• eg: trans women being reassigned to women's prisons and then assaulting the women etc, a 6"2, 220lb woman practically murdering her handball oppoisition, some fairly sketchy research practices by some of the authorities (WPATH) on the subject etc.

Because conservatives are smooth brained and small minded. They need someone to hate in order to make themselves feel superior so they don't feel like complete losers

After it became less acceptable to explicitly hate the gays in public they needed a new target. There's a lot of people who like being riled up with hatred, who are fearful and need a bogeyman, etc. It's either human nature or something deeply embedded in our culture. Eventually they will move on and find a new target to focus their hate on.

Not that it really matters as a legitimate cause to dislike trans people, but the 2023 Nashville shooting at a school was done by a trans person.

some schmucks want to exploit the very basic fear of the unfamiliar, and they pointed it at trans folk to get votes or whatever.

It's strange to them.

When people encounter something that's different from what they are used to, they don't know how to process it. It makes them uncomfortable. Some people, instead of learning how to deal with that feeling like a mature adult, blame the individual for making them feel uncomfortable and resent them for "making them feel that way". Just staying away is not enough, they must be punished for existing.

All because someone felt a little icky when they thought about a girl with a weiner.

Because stirring up hate against vulnerable minorities, by positioning them as a threat is a well tested and effective technique for the power hungry to gain and retain power. And it's effective, because it works by pulling people in and making all of the conversation about whether or not it's right to hate on the group they're targeting.

This video explains it better than me, but mostly a combination of religion being against trans people and bad science.