Well I hate GNOME personally but it’s just because of its philosophy: Opinionated software. They prefer removing choice and forcing users to “use it as it was meant to be used”. I don’t like that because I have my own opinions and I want my software to adjust to me instead of me adjusting to the software. Other people are more inclined to really embracing a product and its methodology but I don’t work that way. But hating software is not the same as hating people. Software is just a ‘thing’.
I moved away from Mac too because it moved ever more in that direction: Removing choice. But I don’t hate GNOME developers or users <3 Just the product. I use KDE instead and am very happy with it. And I don’t care if anyone hates KDE, that’s their choice. Not every product is for everyone and that is OK.
I also don’t like Systemd but I don’t use it either. So it’s fine, they can do what they want and I do what I want. I’m not a team player and not loyal to anyone or anything, just my own opinions.
But I don’t really understand what all this has to do with LGBTIQ+ (which I’m very much in favour of)
GNOME is perfectly fine if you want minimal tinkering and a polished “just works” DE. If you want customisation beyond GTK4+ theming or GNOME addons, go for KDE.
There are many excellent GTK3/4 themes like Nordic, Qogir, GNOME Professional, Canta and so on, that make it as slick as XFCE or KDE3 or LXQT.
This is not an attempt to convince you, just show off for how GNOME can look if personalised well with nice font, theme and fractional scaling.
I have lived in those BSD/loonix/pozzila/systemf*gd type of chatrooms for a few years and used that luxury to study these teenage specimens that veil their hatred, sugarcoat it and use their hobbyist expertise on Linux ricing to claim how “diversity” has ruined modern software and OSes.