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We can't be friends.

It's like, the anti-sci-fi novel.

Psychology counts as science.

What psychological ideas does it have?

For one thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrafreeloading

For another thing: “Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy - in fact, they are almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other.”

I don't understand what you're trying to say with your first point. And as to the second: What does some vague philosophy have to do with psychology or science in general. Sure it sounds nice, but it has nothing to do with the genre.

And I think that almost gets to the heart of my idea, in that the book works as fantasy. But treating it as any type of science fiction completely fails and that's why it bugged me, because it was absolutely presented like it was.

Science fiction (in the hard sense) always follows one of two trends: It props up new ideas and possibilities (Asimov, Herbert) or it uses the elements in a hyperbolic manner to comment on the modern day.

Stranger in a Strange Land has no ideas. The author is tired of his society and instead of offering criticism or solutions, he just keeps asking, "why?" Why is marriage this way. Why is religion this way? Why anything? He has no ideas of his own and he has no critique. He just wants to hold up society and ask why with no attempt to answer the question or even offer an answer as to what's wrong.

It's borderline nihilistic.

The solution/idea is what today we call polyamory. Heinlein wrote about it well before the word was coined. As someone who is polyamorous myself, it is quite the opposite of nihilistic.

But here's the thing. No. I never read it as advocating or making a judgement call in any way. On poly or anything. And I went ahead and read up after what Heinlin has said on his novel, and it's exactly what I thought it was. Heinlin in no way endorsed or intended his book to advocate. He is on record saying that it written solely to question norms.

Not to advocate for new ones or even that what he posited was reasonable or good.