Nationalism is about the nation - the tribe.
Patriotism is about the country, the homeland where you live - its laws, its customs, its values.
Ethnonationalism is a nationalism that holds that only blood membership in the tribe is acceptable.
Nationalism and patriotism differ in kind, not degree.
Fascist societies were conservative insofar as they didn't tolerate feminism, homosexuality, etc. The fact that some of their leaders were secretly homosexual doesn't change this
It hasn't been a secret.
It is not a coincidence that so many fascist leaders have been open deviants.
A constant and recurring theme in Fascist literature is the creation of a "new man" who is not bound by the constraints of Christian morality.
This is part and parcel of the Nietzschean aspect of Fascism - that Christianity was founded by ethnically suspect individuals and is a religion for slaves, cowards and weaklings.
Rejection of traditional morality was a main part of the program and a strong selling point.
Again, Fascism was about forging an all-powerful centralized state controlled by a strong leader whose rule was reinforced by myth and by forging the ruled into a unified, homogenized, obedient mass.
Nationalism, anticlericalism, and amoralism are really good tools to use, because it makes the leader/party the source of all social values.
Moreover, ethno-nationalism is by its very nature conservative because it makes the claim that the culture and customs are a nation are often inseparable from the people who originated them.
It is not a coincidence that so many fascist leaders have been open deviants.
The only prominent Nazi who was more or less openly homosexual (or rather, more like an open secret) was Ernst Roehm, who was eliminated in 1934. Under Hitler, male homosexuality was illegal (i.e. he reversed Weimar Republic decriminalization of homosexual acts). I'm not sure whether the same was true in Mussolini's Italy, though one thing Mussolini did do (as part of his agreement with an independent Vatican) was to reverse the secularization of Italy's schools and to allow religious instruction back into curricula (contra the mandatory secularization that took place under his liberal-democratic predecessors). Again, the fact that Mussolini was himself not religious is irrelevant, what matters for the purpose of this discussion is what policies he enacted.