If you want to, you can find coastal elites that dislike anything, even say electric stoves. So what, why do people have all these grievances because of a sense that someone somewhere doesn't like their choices? I'm from the south, I'm positive people there don't like some of my my life choices, I don't go around feeling mad about it. Blaming coastal elites just seems like an excuse to ignore evidence of problematic choices - yet that view also probably doesn't help.
It's a persecution complex. That's how how get members of a majority religion absurdly claiming they are "being persecuted" when reminded that other religions exist.
This contempt is the flip side of the freedoms granted by the constitution. The government is not allowed to enforce certain behaviors. That social control is left to the public itself.
The bizarrely irrational behavior from the red states doesn't even make sense in its own terms. If this doesn't merit contempt, nothing does.
They have been told explicitly in prime time TV that they are held in contempt. It’s not an issue of perception on this front.