There is a large amount of stigma associated with homosexuality. You are incorrectly assuming that the rest of the population has the same world view as you do. For example, being outwardly homosexual is a great way to lose the muslim vote - a sizeable portion of the Canadian population.
There are some places in the U.S. where it's still a big deal, parts of Utah come to mind as places where I know people have been mistreated routinely, and in some cases, been in serious danger.
And of course there are individuals who would rather not make that preference public because they have business elsewhere.
If you had intended to do business in the middle east, it is a real material loss to be outed, or to be selectively/privately outed with just the right people to make your life difficult.
Of course, activists tend to choose the most useless and counterproductive ways to promote safety and tolerance for homosexuals, so something tells me things will tend to get worse when they could've gotten better. You could expect things to get worse, especially as the zoomers are exposed to these activists rather than to the truth.
Seems like a big scandal happens every few years. This is career-ruining if you’ve built your career on hypocrisy and self-hate, as at least a handful of politicians have.
Any information that someone is afraid of becoming exposed about them to someone else - the public, their religious organization, their employer, their family is good for blackmail.
https://www.metroweekly.com/2019/04/former-anti-gay-gop-rep-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Craig_scandal