Presumably you are not gay so how can you know whether you would care or not?

Not at all - I'm sure you know your own personality very well. My question is how can you know that you would react in exactly the same way whether you were gay or not? Surely your current reaction is based on your current situation?

Just to address this particular point, I would disagree that "intent is everything."

One way to look at this is through the eyes of the gay community. Seems only fair, since the OP is asking us to do just that. It's up to us all to decide whether he has a fair point. And one way to make that determination is to ask, "What if it were me?"

So, I think it's worth extrapolating; finding a different cause, for example - one that hits closer to home. What if you lost a member of your family to suicide? What if your little sister has Downs Syndrome? What if your brother is transgender? What if your family has had to deal with the tragedy of losing a family member to Alzheimers disease recently? There are lots of what-ifs, and lots of people in this world who are marginalized or dealing with disadvantage.

Now, imagine that just after you lost your family member to suicide there was a chant aimed at, say, Leeds United because Gary Speed killed himself? The justification might be, "Well, it's not aimed at Gary Speed. It's just a wind-up. Besides, intent is everything." Imagine how you would feel as the crowd around you made a joke about something that your family just experienced. I would imagine you'd be fairly upset, and unwilling to sing along.

That's how the gay community feels when they hear homophobic chants.

Stealing their women and eating their food since 1987.

This is very much like the concern shown when black players came onto the scene. There were ranks of Liverpool fans barracking Vince Hillaire for being whatever, but their best and most loved player was John Barnes. There is a sort of humour here. There have been some suspected gays in Palace teams over the years and rumour has it one was transferred out as he caused problems in the dressing room. A good player too. But what reason do you give to the buying team as a reason to ofr-load the player? He went on to better things.
A player at Reading almost gave the game up because of the remarks concerning his ginger hair. Another good player. Quite a handy tool to have is an element that can make a player not want to perform on the other side. According to Ian Wright Jim Cannon made his life hell on the training ground with racist banter. The toughening-up process. Did John Terry really hate Fernandez? Believe that and be gullible.

BHA abuse? ABUSE THEM ALL YOU CAN!

Sing up ya bums

Its admirable that you are able to ignore personal jibes and realise the opinions of your loved ones are far more important. But we need to draw the line somewhere on this. Imagine you are passing a person in the street who is being roundly verbally abused on a personal level by another, causing that person to wilt. Would you really just ignore it and say its nothing to do with me as i can take that kind of abuse anyway?
I'm no brave hero but I would find it hard to one intervene. So when I'm sitting next to someone at a football match who is behaving in that abusive manner at the club I love and have supported for a long time, should I not feel responsible for taking some kind of control?