Easy, continue to eat and drink as expected when in the company of others. If pressed about appetite on any occasion, simply claim to have eaten beforehand.
Aargh, twice as bad that way, what a shitty bunch of jerks. Not quite a crab bucket, I can't quite remember the idiom to suit this scenario, but easy to say that they should have known better than anyone. Let them sleep with the enemy and sow their own oats in spoiled dirt, there are other gaming groups out there.
Aah, the Deep South makes for a whole different kind of animal where these problems are concerned. The best that I can think of it to network with groups operating IRL out of your nearest large city's gay neighbourhood - odds are better to find parties better aligned to your SO's situation, and much, much less tolerant of the kind of abuse which can be expected in the sticks/country outside of urban centers. If the pair of you aren't urban, there may be a way to connect with players & DMs in the same time zone, if not close enough to play around the table.
Characters are typically created after joining a group, as opposed to beforehand. There are uncommon cases where a DM will incorporate a leveled character from another group into their own campaign, but I've yet to hear of this from anyone that I know personally - just that it's happened in the past. You may want to recommend that they hold off on character creation, especially production of core stats, until they're found a new DM.
Tell them to make inquiries to the D&D AL (Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer's League), formerly known as the RPGA (Role Playing Gamer's Association - they may have seen mention of it in promotional materials found alongside D&D 3rd Ed. manuals and other products like Dungeon Magazine, or Dragon Magazine before they stopped publication).
This is assuming that you mean D&D campaigns run online (VOIP, Discord, and/or Foundry), and not the D&D Online MMORPG, of course. Barring that, and taking your unknown geographical location into account, they may also be able to find organized/advertised gaming groups by making the rounds of all of your nearest brick and mortar gaming/comic shops. They're well known as consistent sources for tournament organization for things like Warhammer and Magic: The Gathering as official retailers of said products alongside the D&D content released by Wizards of the Coast.
"Gustave is a man-eating male Nile crocodile that roams the Ruzizi river and the northern shores of Lake Tanganyika in Burundi, Africa. Gustave is rumored to have killed as many as 200–300 people, though one more recent estimate states the true figure is probably 60 people or fewer. He has obtained a mythical status and is greatly feared by the people in the region."
They should, you're right, but it's not going to happen. Imagine my surprise when I discovered decadess ago that the nation which routinely trumpets its defeat of Southern slavers during their grand civil war, has actually contrived to maintain legal slave labour through its prison system. Guess which demographic has been systematically targeted for arrest and persecution by the police and justice system?
It's a laudable philosophical stance, but if you're eligible for conscription in whatever country you call home, you'd better have a fallback plan, a cache of supplies, and place to hide out before fleeing the country in times of war. Armies don't fuck around with that shit, they'll either jail or execute able-bodied people refusing military service. Best of luck to you.
Honestly, that's my feeling too. The good news is that not every single person applying the munitions would need to know how to manufacture them, simply to deploy and arm them. The Russian's use of anti-tank mines against Thrid Reich railway lines comes to mind - the conscripts carrying the mines, locating the rail lines, and planting them to destroy trains and railway infrastructure weren't homebrewing them in a shed at home. They were supplied by the state and trained on how to use them, in a way that maybe similar to how modern army forces know how to use Stingers/MANPADS but not how to build them or the components.
Easy, continue to eat and drink as expected when in the company of others. If pressed about appetite on any occasion, simply claim to have eaten beforehand.