I don't know the answer and I don't speak for the gay community. I am not a member of their community. But I don't hate them or really disdain what they do, consensually and in private, either.
And what makes you so sure that many of the state laws on the books during the time of the confederacy and up until the early 1800s forbid homosexuality anyway? I don't know the answer, do you?
Someone's views are always going to be legislated.
I wish this viewpoint wasn't so prevalent and pervasive. Mr. Franklin was right, we're have not kept it!
The issue is, whose views are healthier for society (with special attention to raising children) and whose views permit the most constructive freedoms for the most people.
Certainly not the views of the libertarian! Maybe it's the views of the paternalists and the tyrannical which are the healthiest.
You still haven't cited a nation where socially liberal attitudes have led to less overall government, as opposed to more.
Define the word "liberal" properly and I'll tell you that the United States did pretty well for itself for the first eighty possibly one-hundred-forty years (with the most notable exception being the Constitution's condoning [at best an overlooking] of slavery as an institution).
Why do I need to cite countries when none of them are even economically liberalized?
If your reasoning made sense, then Sweden (probably the most socially liberal and "tolerant" place on earth) should be a bastion of low taxes, private gun ownership, limited government, and decentralization. Instead, it's the opposite.
They are not liberal, that's the problem and they're certainly not tolerant of lasseiz-faire.
The more socially liberal and "tolerant" an area becomes, the bigger its government gets, the higher its taxes go, and the more centralized it becomes.
That's because they do not remain economically liberal!
Here’s a good essay you might benefit from reading:
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/004328.html
Pay special attention to the last three paragraphs. The only thing I would add to it is that Mr. Auster’s optimism regarding Britain and America would seem to have faded. The essay was written in 2001 and both nations have deteriorated a lot since then (see Auster’s more recent writings on the death of England).