I think it’s perfectly understandable that some people are homophobes
No it's not. It's not a justifiable position. It's not unexpected sadly, but it is not understandable because it's not a position based on anything other than ingrained hatred and fear
So a year and a half? That's not all that bad really. And that time it was a (admittedly bloody stupid) cock up involving the SSL certificate of their website not of the distro itself