Is there a lot of homophobic trolling in this section?

There's an amount of it. You can't be guaranteed that everyone will hold your hand and give you a cup of tea. On the other hand, trolls get reported pretty regularly and people do refute them... and bear in mind that you're anonymous, so it's very limited exposure. We get our share of fakers, too - the kind who give us a sad story about their mean homophobic parents in one post, and a day or two later are talking about beating up their gay kid.

This is the internet, where idiots aren't accountable. Take everything with a healthy dose of skepticism.

"full of hateful trolls." Yes.

"or are people quite sympathetic here?" Some.

"hesitant to expose myself" I say very little about me personally because of this.

A few wander here from the religious and spirituality section, but not much. However when LGBT activists win something like gay marriage in a state or a homophobic law gets scraped they swarm here but so do the LGBT activists to fend them off

Obviously there are a lot of trolls, this is the internet. If someone comments and it hurts your feelings then just ignore it or report it.

We are mostly pretty friendly and the trolls are easy to spot and even easier to ignore

There is lots but there are more gays on here than homo phobic's so it keeps us busy with all their filthy sexual talk probably not a good place for you to come and expose yourself.

once and a while we get a few trolls in this section

A few wander in from R&S, but not often.

Not really