The experience you described doesn’t seem to me that it justifies saying the south is worse or better than other regions.
The reason why you see people jump in the defend the south is that you are making a general statement about an entire region.
Here’s what I mean. Someone said that midwesterners are nice to people if they are white. Downthread you share that part of the reason you left the south is because of discrimination you experienced and I think you were pointing out that it was odd that people jumped in to defend the south.
It seems reasonable that people would try to more accurately describe the south and share their experiences as well.
Saying people are triggered seems to belittle their input. If I want more input I don’t call you triggered for feeling compelled to share info.
This is totally different if you think that there actually is some higher level of discrimination in the south or midwest or wherever. But I don’t think your anecdote isn’t really that helpful for tarring or exonerating a region. Despite how true or honest it may be.
If I'm actually making general statements, I would say that big cities in the South are more gay friendly, though they're still impacted by state politics and as you enter the suburbs and especially rural areas you encounter much more bias. Two hours north of Atlanta is much worse than two hours north of San Francisco. If push came to shove, I'd feel more welcomed in Atlanta ITP than in many parts of the Central Valley; but I'm also not particularly interested in grading on a curve. But everyone's mileage will vary, and all the tradeoffs involved are complicated and will differ between different people and even in the same person at different times in their life.
These subtleties are lost, though, because my comment wasn't intended to provide a comprehensive overview of life as an LGBT person in the South, but to counter someone who was writing off someone else's experience as merely a way to feel virtuous about their self instead of anything real. It's a common response to many negative experiences from marginalized groups, so I see it as perfectly natural that I drew on my own experiences to call it out.
There must be some sort of logical block that prevents people from understanding the nuance in these comments, and rushing to defend against absolutes that no one implied existed. I blame a lack of understanding of statistics and probability.