and that violence can only be done if it is defensive and meant to protect the innocent.
Right but every possible group that advocates for violence of course claims that their violence is defensive and meant to protect the innocent. The violent far-right neo-nazi white supremacist claims they only want to use violence to "protect their white children and their people from white genocide". Far-left antifascist militants claim they only want to use violence to "defend their community from fascists using violence against them". Anti-trans militants claim they only want to use violence against trans people to "protect children from getting abused and child trafficked". And my guess is that pretty soon, we will start to see violent environmental activists who claim they only use violence to protect the environment from destruction. And the state/police/military of course claims it's using violence "to maintain peace, order and stability".
Nobody claims that they want to use violence just because, they always claim it's defensive.
By a very very very small amount of people maybe, those who were considered to be radicals. Not only did a majority of people believe that homosexuality should not be accepted or tolerated, this was a time where at least half of the population believed that homosexual relations should be illegal.. And this didn't change until quite recently.
The "hippie revolution" was pretty much dead at that point. And of course, "normies" always hated the hippies. They were considered to be radicals, they were probably seen in a less favourable way than people see "antifa" today. And at that time, the hippies were associated with murderers and cults (Jim Jones, Charles Manson).
Compared to how things were before the 60s, yes. But that's just because before the 60s, "free love" was unthinkable and recreational drugs simply did not exist in the eyes of the general public (outside of alcohol and tabacco). But we also shouldn't forget that those things happened in very specific metropolian areas.
Again, by a very very specific subsection of people. It's as if you said that today, it's considered normal to have a "gender-fluid pan-sexual furry who identifies as a fox" as a friend. But for 99% of people, it just isn't.
And it's not until the 90s that views on homosexuality slowly started to change. In 1997, it was still more people who believed that homosexuality should be illegal compared to those who believed it should be legal. Views on homosexuality only really started to radically change in the 2000s and 2010s. In 2008, while most people believed that homosexuality should not be punished by a law, it was still half of the population that believed that homosexuality is immoral and should be discouraged. In 2023, 64% believe that homosexuality is morally acceptable while 33% belive it's not. So there has definitely been a radical change of attitude towards homosexuality that is still going on, but this only happened relatively recently.
And of course people who are still opposed to homosexuality have noticed this shift too, which is why politicians have shifted focus away from scapegoating homosexual men towards scapegoating trans people (who are still a lot less tolerated today than gay men). The same talking points which are today used against trans people ("they are crazy and mentally unstable", "they are pedophiles") were traditionally used against homosexual men.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/4045/Some-Change-Over-Time-American-Attitudes-towards-Homosexuality.aspx
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1651/gay-lesbian-rights.aspx
In my admittedly biased view, to a majority of people on the right, provocation is an elemental part of their behaviour. It seems that some people orient their entire identity based on "triggering the libs/triggering the left" and then complain when they actually succeed..
I had a discussion the other day with a user here who had the username "Ihatretroons" who was complaining that people would unfairly accuse him of, well, "hating troons". To me, this is absurd. Everyone should know by now that people on the internet form their opinions based on the smallest amount of information, when you choose the username "ihatetroons", most people will obviously think you hate trans people..