This is true and has been. It's not illegal to hold certain opinions, but you aren't legally protected from subcultures or even large swaths of society deciding

This is true and has been. It's not illegal to hold certain opinions, but you aren't legally protected from subcultures or even large swaths of society deciding not to do business with you. Collectively through some ad hoc process, social groups decide what will and won't be tolerated in discourse within their sphere. In society at large, that tends to mean that for controversial topics, some groups will absolutely back you while others will shun you. If the state is supposed to fix it, the state will have to pick a side. The result tends to be authoritarian toward one side or another. The compromise we seem to have reached is that people taking specific actions to cause you physical harm or to induce some sort of trauma or concern for your own safety are illegal regardless of why. There may have been local fluctuations over time, but this trend has lead to now being one of the safest times in history to have and express a variety of views in many societies.