I had three teachers who were fired for being gay, and a former co-worker who was probably passed up for promotions because he is transgender.

It's not since very recently -- and to some extent still only in certain geographies -- that being gay in the workplace is apolitical.

I'm actually generally a fan of "no politics / no religion" cultures (IME: actual literal rules indicate the culture is broken... not opposed to rules, but I prefer places where it doesn't even need to be said out loud!). But there absolutely are workplaces where being gay is political. And prior to the 1990s being out at work was very much not a good idea in most of the country.

We're not talking about ancient history here...

Isn’t it back to being unacceptable to be transgender and in the military because of the previous administration right now?

That memo was repealed when Biden took office, but excellent example -- one of the largest employers in the country, too.

No, I think you're missing the sense of the phrase. Gay people don't consider their existence political, but unfortunately others (through desired public/social policy) have politicized the existence of gay people.

As in, "let's pretend they don't exist, ban them from anything that straight couples can do, and push them to get conversion therapy so they behave like us 'normal' folks".

Interestingly I once hired a trans person who, had converted to the other gender, sorry I don't really know the terminology. She was extremely proficient at her job (CSS/JS/Frontend) and so we were really impressed in the interview and seemed to have realistic expectations and views about workplace, workload and all sorts of other cultural ideas that matched nicely with ours.

Her big question to use was "is there going to be a problem with me working here". As in "are people going to treat me like shit because I am transgender".

It was an extremely professional environment and I and my boss unequivocally said - we don't care what you are as long as you do your job and do it well.

I worked with her for probably near a year and I did not see people overtly treating her badly, making comments of any sort at all. People called her by a name that she chose and used the pronouns she wanted.

Of course I don't know her experience but I can't express how it was a 'professional' environment enough. I have never worked somewhere that was so damn... professional. This included old dudes, old women, young men and women, people from all sorts of cultures and backgrounds (UK, India, Ukraine, and all over the US, and probably more places).

People minded their own business, were polite, did not intrude upon personal matters, and while there was some jockying around sports teams - it was a place where all sorts of people and backgrounds worked. There was an extremely competent HR department, and middle management and C levels who were very serious about being professional.

I don't know - kind of a rant - hopefully her experience at my workplace was one of her better ones.

Terminologically, she didn't change gender, she transitioned. Her gender was female all along.

Yes - sorry to be clear she had already transitioned before working at the company

mkl's point is that in the "woke religion" (for lack of a better term), a person who has transitioned is considered to have always been the gender they transitioned to, even before they began the transition (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliot_Page, where he is referred to as a "he" even in events before the transition).