I don't remember everything, but I do know a bit about how fascists sink their teeth into culture wars, so here we go:
When California made the decision to stop discriminating against people who just wanted to get married to their partners, the religio-fascist right wing lost their collective minds. Already reeling from having a black man in the White House, the fascists were reeeeaaallllyyyy upset about those icky consonant people getting married to turtles or whatever BS they were on about. Not exactly where it started, but certainly a turning point in the culture wars. Soon after, more States jumped in on the letting-people-get-married-to-their-same-sex-partner bandwagon, and it eventually got accepted as federal law. Turtles:1, Pedophile youth pastors: 0
This led to wedding cake lawsuits and more crazy-town culture war nonsense. I'm trying to remember when bathroom bans were floated for the first time...I vaguely remember it during the tea bagg era. This is how fascists plant a seed, water it, and watch it grow. A few fascists created the wedge issue with bathrooms at Target or something, and later, the issue of trans athletes in sports became a global crisis. Little bits of it here and there...it's all been building with constant reinforcement on the propaganda networks, and now the fascists are making laws to criminalize people for just existing.
It's all based on hate and fear. Repubicans are terrible, hate-filled people. The only thing liberals did was to accept that people are who they are, and decided that they should be allowed to live their lives without crazy religious zealots taking away their freedom. Repubicans freaked out because those icky consonant people wanted to be free to be themselves, and that's almost as bad as black people wanting to live life without the fear of being shot to death by law enforcement for a broken tail light. Fascists don't like it when non-white, non-straight people have freedom.
Better shut down all the drag clubs, now that we have this damning evidence!