I didn’t read it that way. The op ed spends most of the text criticizing christian, anti-LGBTQ legislation. He blames the bigots.

”… instead of heaping buckets of condemnation on a man for a victimless alternate lifestyle that you happen to find icky. But, boy, we’re good at that around here, aren’t we?”

“From trying to remove LGBTQ+ books from libraries to essentially banning transgender kids from existence to forcing children to have children, the state of Alabama, under conservative rule, has cornered the market on religious governance.”

”Yet, we continue to push these distorted Christian beliefs as actual policy and law. And in the process, we have fostered an environment in which a man who has apparently committed no crimes or harmed anyone is shamed into ending his own life.”

”There is no telling how many Bubba Copelands there are out there – kids and adults who have been crushed by the hateful, ill-informed, religious-based environment fostered by this sort of ignorance and intolerance. People who have been used as pawns by politicians to spread ignorance and fear.”

There’s a lot more in the article, but I don’t want to quote too much and run afoul of site rules.

I thought i read that he didn’t really have a public stance other than just an “R”.

It’s an opinion piece, not a news article. They’re usually something like this.