Perfectly acceptable? Certainly not, but it was provably better than what we're dealing with currently. To be maybe a little clearer I'm asserting that the culture wars writ large, especially as they're framed today, are (soup to nuts) complete bullshit designed specifically to distract the voter base and atomize society. Understand hassling people generally isn't legal, regardless of the root cause, so loudly proclaiming <victim group du jour> shouldn't be hassled is a waste of column inches and everyone's time unless or until someone decides to actually pass legislation based on a demonstrable loophole in current anti-hassle legislation. It's also instructive to note how political organizations that make bitching about people notionally being hassled conveniently let party majority opportunities to actually pass new or update existing legislation quietly slide with no meaningful action taken. This recommends to suspicion that the stated goal and the actual goal are not the same.

As to what constitutes a manufactured disagreement, that seems somewhat self-evident. A more familiar term might be "wedge issue". You correctly mention upthread how disagreements on even the most contentious social issues was handled peacefully and arguably with some tact. This is demonstrably no longer the case so my question to you is this: what changed, who changed it, and who's benefiting from the change?