As an example, the author/activist bell hooks’ pen name was requested to be stylized in lower case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bell_hooks
In her case, she wanted people to focus on her writing rather than her name. Often times, even at the start of a sentence, you’ll see news articles lowercase her name.
To your latter point, I think the reason given definitely does influence my feelings on the matter - I’m comfortable giving someone “de-emphasis” when requested out of respect, or referring to someone by their preferred pronouns out of general respect as well. However, I do have lines that feel uncomfortable to cross, that I wouldn’t cross, such as a white person preferring to be called “Master”.
Usually when beehaw is down for maintenance they’ll post on mastodon (https://hachyderm.io/@beehaw) - they posted there about preemptively taking it down due to the lemmy world hack.