I don't know about the statistics, but I know that visibility as someone who's LGBTQ in Japan is really, really shitty. It's also considered to be less of an orientation and more of a fetish, so there are a lot of issues that come with that. I think as a foreigner in Japan, it's easy to feel like that kind of sentiment has less weight because you may have friends and acquaintances who feel that way, but it's not your family, either. And foreigners also get a certain degree of leeway when it comes to not totally fitting the social expectations that someone who's been born and raised there wouldn't be privy to. I can actually get why people would say that they'd rather be considered weird than be told they're going to hell. They both suck, but the whole going to hell thing implies that you're an all around terrible person and deserved to be punished because part of you is wrong, which can be a lot more hurtful than people just thinking you're weird. But at the end of the day, people thinking you're weird and judging you for your sexuality still sucks balls.

So, yeah, it really is a case of it being "better" in certain ways, depending on how you look at it, but I think sometimes people (not the anon above's friend - but a lot of people in anime and Japanese fandoms in general) mistake the "better" and the fact that it's a different kind of problematic for meaning it's not at all bad. Which, yeah, isn't really the case. :/