I want to be respectful but if they say they don’t care what pronouns I use for them, that feels like it puts the decision on me to choose what to call them and I guess I would probably default to “they” because choosing a gender for them feels weird… am I wrong?
Exactly. I was taught as a kid that saying he/him or she/her while the person is in the room with you is rude. That's why I use their name and find all this fuss bizarre.