I think youre right for a lot of people, but conservative values require an out group. If it’s not immigrants and transfolk, it’s gonna be whomever else they can get people frothing at mouth over. Homeless people, mentally ill, it could be fucking left-handed folk. It’s only the othering that matters.

Not every conservative that says you can choose your sexual orientation is gay, but that argument was started by a closeted gay conservative and was popularized by closeted gay conservatives. And that’s the exact same story for most conservative bullshit. They all think they are the Standard Human™ and they feel some shame about part of themselves (because they aren’t the Standard Human™) so they force that insecurity on everyone else. The rest of them follow suit as long as a line is already popular enough.