When the opinion piece wraps it up in the glorification of an idealized version of 1950s US, when the social consensus in many places was to treat non-white people as those with inferior civil rights and as undesirables in the neighborhood, it is not surprising that it got the (over?)reaction that it got. Indeed, it may have been the intent to bait such a(n over?)reaction.
Not so much when you just look at the isolated quotation in post #0. But the rest of the opinion, glorifying an idealized version of the 1950s, is much less attractive to someone who would not want to bring back the more racist, sexist, anti-LGBT social consensuses of the time.