It was not (at least not entirely). It was mostly general frustration at the demonisation of lgbt folks and contraception in the past, mostly due to Catholocism. If there wasn’t as much of that, then I think HIV probably wouldn’t be as much of a “thing” as it is nowadays.
I mean pretty much any distro that isn’t locked down will be good for programming. All you really need is a package manager with a selection of at least somewhat modern dev tools, which almost all of them have.