People always talk about importance of patriarchy for social replication of capitalism, about how capitalism is always going to buck against any attempts at social progress. But I dunno, neoliberalism has been pretty effective at integrating some forms of feminism and gay rights into its polite society, so I feel at some point a lot of bigotry isn't so much material relations, but just a thing of habit...
So I guess my question is, what exactly are those material conditions and why are they making people reactionary on social issues?
The phenomenon here is another face of fascism, the kind that's a normalized part of liberalism. Exactly as you said: scapegoats to distract from the elephant in the room, the decay of capitalism.