So how do we determine if a question is nonsense? I didn’t realise the questions had to be necessarily important

Who said fears need to be rational? I think people can be afraid/terrified of anything. Anatidaephobia (the fear of being watched by a duck or goose), for example.

I appreciate what you’re saying, certainly someone could claim to be just afraid of homosexuality while using that as a cover for actually hating it or being prejudiced against it or homosexual people. But I think bigotry, meaning “obstinate or unreasonable attachment to a belief, opinion, or faction, in particular prejudice against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group”, doesn’t exactly fit the hypothetical I described of a person who’s just afraid of the concept without harboring any hateful feelings or displaying any discriminatory behaviors toward it. Shouldn’t we help that person come to terms with their fear and be understanding, while certainly helping them to tackle that fear (without accusing them of doing something wrong, presuming that they weren’t hypothetically)?

In order words, why is voting mandatory in Australia, but not UK, US, Canada or New Zealand?

Yeah I understand, and that does probably happen a lot. But we also seem to live in an age where we assume the worst of people… so even though it’s possible to partly agree with someone while genuinely condemning other aspects of that person, people are somehow certain that others are using that as a gateway to awful shit, as you say. (Not talking about you, of course.)

For example someone says “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” and you might say “that’s a questionable phrase.” or “I doubt the validity of that platitude”. But is there something specific to label it as, i.e. “That’s a [insert word]”