I’m not the person you were responding to but if I had to guess it would be something to do with school policies: attempts to ban discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in classrooms, and/or attempts to ban books with queer content from libraries and/or curricula are seeing an uptick currently.

Personally I lived 10+ years in a small town in a more rural part of the state. Our immediate neighbors were always friendly, though all were clearly not accepting, and we found specific social circles that were accepting. It’s also notable over our years there certainly the community as a whole became more visibly welcoming. When we moved there we were cautious about hanging a rainbow flag in front of our house but did do it - it was the only one in town at least that I saw. By the time we moved away last year there were a few Pride flags to be seen in the neighborhoods (some from allies), including at least 2 just in our neighborhood, and after a long process one of the local churches had declared itself open and affirming.

At the same time, by the time we moved the area was also was more visibly hateful-to-hostile - more Confederate flags and the like. Hostile symbolism representing social views that are not typically pro-LGBTQ easily outnumbered accepting by at least 2:1 by my reckoning, and you would sometimes catch even more glimpses of more private displays behind an open garage door or through a window hanging on a wall.

Arguably my worst personal experience while living there was walking in our neighborhood one evening with my husband and hearing a preteen girl who was playing in the street with her friends call us faggots. Yes, it was just an “insult” - I wasn’t afraid of her and in fact I read her the riot act about basic respect. But the bigger issue is: she didn’t just come up with it herself. The way she said it it was clearly normalized for her in her home and/or in school via peers (which still points to how children in the community are being socialized at home). Based on reports we heard about the state of LGBTQ issues in local schools, that was pretty certainly a factor.

We had a housemate for our last few years there who would sit on the front porch a lot, and regularly reported that people would shout something about faggots while driving by (because of the aforementioned rainbow flag). Being vigilant about our surroundings whenever we were walking around town was a necessity, especially at night.

So would I describe that town as LGBT “friendly” to someone who asked? No. Would I tell them there are friendly people and groups in the town? Absolutely. But it’s a situation where I could never in good conscience recommend an LGBTQ person live there, even if I would be happy to help them have the best experience living there if they had to or chose to.