Given that "Giant Flying Spaghetti Monster" is just long words for "Cthulhu", you're welcome to play a Cleric to it but be advised that every other adventuring character you meet - including the other PCs - will almost certainly try to kill you on sight...
In the actual Mythos . . . who/what Cthulhu is isn't common knowledge. So why would random folks want to kill you if you are an out-of-the-closet Cthulhu cultist? Well, until you start mutating or sacrificing innocents . . .
In the amazing D&D-with-serial-numbers-filed-off comic "Rat Queens", one of the main protagonist adventurers, Dee, is a necromancer who comes from a culture that worships the flying squid god N'Rygoth (Cthulhu-with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off). She's got a creepy vibe, a lot of her magic is super tentacally and creepy . . . but you learn over the course of the story that her family cult she left behind isn't evil . . . they are keeping N'Rygoth at bay . . . a not uncommon trope regarding Mythos-deity worshipping folks . . .
And I encourage you to learn more about the Great Flying Spaghetti Monster and his worship! His great noodly appendage is superficially similar to the old one, but is a much more friendly chap. (If you are already aware, I apologize, but . . . FSM is a satirical religion that is very silly).
You selectively ignored the second part of that sentence, which was "...with their real-life issues and agendas"; and people bringing such things with them to the game is indeed bad for the game.
Call 'em by their character names if they're otherwise strangers, say at a con game or something, as odds are that's the only context in which we'll ever interact.
I'd like to respond to a part of the OP that is, perhaps, somewhat different from what both most others in the thread have responded to, and also different from what I myself initially felt drawn to respond to. I do feel that the more-typical part should be addressed, but since it's not my main point, I'll spoilerblock it. Read if you like, ignore if you like, up to you.
To get a few points outta the way: I'm a gay man who has just found my first proper, actual boyfriend. So, when my future life and existence are considered "modern politics", yes, that already raises my hackles a bit. I had to stay in the closet for the vast majority of my life, because I lived with someone who repeatedly talked about things like putting all the "homonoids" in work-camps. My own home was a potential enormous danger to me if my identity were revealed. Hence, because of the choices of certain political groups at present, I literally cannot have an identity that isn't separable from "modern politics". I wish I could. I would love for people to stop making my identity a "modern politics" issue. They have chosen not to.
But I'm also a Pentecostal Christian. Yes, you can be gay and also be Christian. Yes, it is more complicated than if I were straight. No, I don't see it as a rejection of my Savior's words or commands. No, I don't really feel like talking about it that much more than this paragraph. I'm just noting it because, well, being a Christian means I have in fact seen some hostility from folks on the basis of my faith, rather than my orientation (since the vast majority of people I've interacted with did not know I was gay, as I was, as mentioned, deeply closeted.) I genuinely know both sides of this issue, and I can say: the hostility I would have received for my orientation is orders of magnitude greater than anything I've ever received for my faith. Unquestionably so.
But what I actually wanted to talk about was this:
They're like that because that's what the community told WotC they wanted.
WotC designed a genuinely quite excellent roleplaying game. It's called 4th Edition D&D. It actually took seriously, for the first time in the hobby's history--or at least the first time since MAYBE 1e--that D&D is, in fact, a Game experience as well as a Roleplaying experience. In other words, 4e articulated the notion that to roleplay in D&D should be gaming, and to game should be roleplaying. The two need to actually be inseparable from one another.
Both 3e and 5e separate those things--and quite clearly denigrate the "game" portion. Balance is an irrelevancy in 5th Edition--and that's at the best of times. In most cases, it's viewed as an active scourge, something to be destroyed whenever it appears, as soon as it appears, with maximum prejudice. "Balance" is functionally a four-letter word to the people that WotC listened to when they created 5e. That's because the people they listened to were the victorious hardcore edition warriors who made it their mission to destroy 4th edition. And the vast majority of those were people who wanted 4e to just be a carbon copy of 3e, which is notoriously the worst balanced edition of D&D ever created, to the point that the rules in several places don't even function, meaning, you can't actually make sensible USE out of them in the first place. It's one thing for rules to be merely badly-made. It's another for them to actually not work, which is why various how-to guides out there have to make a special place for the Truenamer class from 3.5e: it's literally so broken it doesn't even work, like, you can't actually play one because the rules fail to function at all, not even poorly!
So, why does it seem like people want to jettison the "Game" of this Rolepaying Game?
Because the people who wanted to do that won the edition war, and WotC exclusively favored them over all other voices.
Call 'em by their character names if they're otherwise strangers, say at a con game or something, as odds are that's the only context in which we'll ever interact.
This. Character names are enough, both for con game and for online game with random strangers. Specially if you only interact in game and about game and you don't have need to know them outside of that context. Not everyone is out to make new friends or acquaintances.
I know this is mostly USA centric forum and majority of people here are from USA. But, when it comes to online play, you might get players from all over the world. Pronouns are distinctly USA thing. They/them, as gender neutral, works in english language. It doesn't work in slavic, romance or to some degree in german and some germanic languages. If there is third gender in language, usually is IT, which is used for inanimate objects. Using it for people is dehumanizing and insulting. It's about maping your native language to english and disconnect between those two.
