It’s the path that maximises time, not distance. Technically the path that maximises time could look the same as the path that minimises distance, they could just sit down and wait decades until a minute before they die of natural causes and then get up and head to the end, and that’s assuming that they need to arrive alive.

I think it’s a good attitude to serve as a stepping stone away from bigotry, it appeals to the bigots by offering some common ground while giving them a path to becoming less outwardly bigoted. Social progress takes time, especially with attitudes engrained as much as homophobia used to be.