jj - "Because someone has to make a stand to prevent particular cultural "norms" from crushing individual freedom?"
I don;t believe that conforming to cultural acceptances always equates with crushing personal freedoms.
One has to accept that living in a society means that some individual behaviours are curtailed in order to be accepted into that society.
For example - if someone wanted to break wind at will, would that be acceptable to society at large? What about picking one's nose, belching, rubbing oneself up against people, declining to bathe, shouting obscenities at will ... the list goes on.
None of these actions are hazardous to health, but they are all frowned upon as unacceptable behaviour, and proponents could equally claim that their 'freedoms' are being crushed.
Societies evolve their own cultural rules about what is acceptable, and what is not, and people elect for the most part to abide by those rules.
There will always be those who wish to go against such rules, that is part of freedom, but it does not mean that society will, or indeed should be expected to indluge every person who wishes to go against the norm simply because they feel they should be able to.