There has been a surprising amount of boycotting as a result of this law. I'm surprised. Where was this during the gay rights fight? Was I just not paying attention?

Possibly it wasn't focused enough. Easy to boycott NC, hard to boycott 31 separate states. But transgender rights seems like an odd place for a lot of random businesses to suddenly make a stand. I was honestly under the impression that mainstream activists of the sort who ballooned the gay rights movement hadn't really "heard of" transgender rights yet.