>who cares what the bigots use

you'd think so, but people often operate where multiple contexts could be valid.

Just as a thought experiment, if the eggplant emoji was used to denote "ok" in messaging and then people starting appropriating it for a sexual context, would you or the general public think twice about continuing to use it to mean "ok" on the off chance the other side may misinterpret the meaning?

I would say most likely yes.