I’m not sure whether the fact you knew which person might take offence, (or the fact that the one that did had not been friended at the time), makes all that much difference, though, to the fact that polarising views - which I think we all agree do seem to what we are dealing with for whatever reason - will cause people to take umbrage, and that that isn’t so hard to foresee.
I think if you want to post them, you have to accept some people will wish to withdraw from those sorts of conversations. It’s not that unpredictable, and so it’s the “surprise” that I took to be disingenuous - albeit that I can appreciate that the disappointment can still be very real nonetheless.
You are right that a lot of other posters were saying their experience of this issue was that it was a non- tolerance one, however, perhaps as a result of that, I did take your comments in a later post ( I did read them all) about “ the irony” of their movement in the same vein. Perhaps, in hindsight, that comment was both fuelled and coloured by the comments of the other pp to some degree.
However, I nonetheless think if you are posting about these issues, you need to understand the extent to which many people find them something they don’t want to engage with - and I’m not sure disengaging is any more unreasonable than wanting to speak out. If choices around debate are allowed, they need to be allowed in both directions.