Their goal is to further marginalize the already-marginalized, and shut down conversations about making the workplace a more inclusive place.
Because somehow "hey let's stop discriminating against $XYZ type of person" is somehow "political".
Usually its a bunch of people advocating for socialism, screaming silence is violence, and saying white people are going to hell
From what I've seen (maybe this is just the bay area) you don't usually know someone is conservative until they trust you lol
You’re not very good at straw man arguments, for what it’s worth.
How do you define what's a fireable homophopic offense. You need to discuss it, you can't shut it down because its political and uncomfortable to discuss. You need to listen to the people that are being made uncomfortable and have these discussions. "stop being political" is making a decision, it's the side of no change.
If you see a homophobic (or racist, or sexist, or inappropriate, etc) offense, you should absolutely report it to your superior and/or HR, and AFAICT Basecamp's changes don't say you shouldn't. It sounds like they're just banning discussions in the open channels with coworkers ("Hey everyone, do you think what Bob did was homophobic?").
Of course, I might be misinformed on 1) whether you're still allowed to report workplace offenses to HR, and/or 2) whether company-wide conversation about your coworkers' potential offenses is actually a positive thing to allow.
So the homophobe is being political, and therefore breaks policy.
Perhaps they would feel better if they let their misapprehensions and hate towards their colleagues go.