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That heavily depended on the area you were in - both geographically and topically. Should we let them die from AIDs, discussed in a major metro? You'd likely be shunned, but not by everyone. Should we let them get married, almost anywhere? Debated by a minority, mostly against in all but they must liberal of places. Should we let them around kids, or are they trying to "turn" you? Lots of people had very homophobic takes on that anywhere.
2003 was right in the middle of the tv show Will and Grace's famous culture shifting run, but it absolutely wasn't done yet. Pew's long-running survey showed in '03 only 47% of people saying we should approve of homosexuality. Not domestic partnerships, not gay marriage, literally just "being gay" was minority approved. If you think casual homophobia wasn't totally normal in 03, go watch Friends, the most popular sitcom in America at the time. Go watch Seinfeld's famous "not that there's anything wrong with that" episode... admittedly a few years earlier, but set in one of the most gay-friendly places in America, and little had changed in the intervening years.
Gay rights and acceptance has had a meteoric rise in the last 20 years. I think that's why young people see this new wave of anyi-LGBT stuff so shocking, but for anyone that was around it's only shocking if you have a bad memory. It was bad just yesterday.
Wasn't that episode of Seinfeld pretty revolutionary for it's time and still lauded by the LGBTQ+ community as groundbreaking? You're talking about it as if it mocked gays, but it was and still is seen as a groundbreaking episode of one of the biggest TV shows in history, and it helped normalize homosexuality. Did you just get Seinfeld Effected?
That's...exactly my point. Go watch it today. It's cringey because they don't want to be perceived as gay. Lots of stuff that was very forward thinking at the time doesn't hold up. And the fact that it was groundbreaking further cements that things have changed incredibly from when those attitudes were common.