re: Why do churches get so worked up over gays?

The really short answer is a good church treats all mortal sins as sins.

Why you hear more about say chastity/gayness than drunkenness has to do with where we are as a society. Society has tried to tell us that being unchaste is not a sin. Society has not embraced drunkenness. The church fights fires by what are being most "promoted" in society sometimes, not because one sin is worse than the other.