Are Gay Rights At A Tipping Point?

I get very discouraged at times with the pace of progress toward fully LGBT legal equality and the day when employment non-discrimination protections will be a nationwide phenomenon. On the other hand, if one looks at where we've come from - just seven years ago sex between same sex couples was a felony in Virginia - then things do look far better. An article in today's Washington Post makes the statement that gay rights are at a tipping point where full equality is inevitable eventually. Given the younger generations' much more gay accepting attitudes, the Post is likely correct. That's not to say that the old guard of gay haters like Tony Perkins, Pope Benedict XVI, the Mormon Church leadership, and parasite-like opportunists like Maggie Gallagher will slink off quietly. Indeed, the shrillness of their hysteria will likely get louder before it begins to fade away. Here are some article highlights:
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Thirty years ago, a vote like the one just decided in this university town [Bowling Green, Ohio] wouldn't have happened; gay-rights activism hadn't taken root across most of America. Thirty years hence, such votes may seem a historical curiosity in a time of equality for gays.
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Right now, though, the gay rights movement is at a tipping point, as epitomized by Bowling Green's divisive referendum on extending anti-discrimination protections to gays. The vote was so close that it took three extra weeks to determine whether the two measures passed.
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Nationally, gay-rights supporters and their conservative opponents are trading victories and setbacks, and the public is deeply divided on same-sex marriage. Could the push for full equality be stalled or reversed? Probably not, if public opinion evolves at its current pace. "All you have to do is look at the demographics and you can see this is as inevitable as anything," said Michael Klarman, a Harvard Law School professor who has studied the civil rights and gay rights movements.
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A Gallup poll earlier this year showed, for the first time, a majority of Americans saying same-sex relations were morally acceptable. Increasing numbers of Americans personally know gays and lesbians, and positive portrayals of them abound on TV and in films. "The more gay-friendly an environment you create, the more people come out as gay," Klarman said. "When people know other people are gay - family, co-workers - they find it harder and harder to dislike them and deny them equal
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An ever-growing number of actors and singers remain popular after coming out of the closet; hit TV shows such as "Glee" and the Emmy-winning "Modern Family" portray gays prominently and empathetically. Openly gay politicians are taking office in ever-wider swaths of America - Nov. 2 victories included the mayoral election in Lexington, Ky., and a legislative seat in North Carolina.
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There's a widely held belief that [DADT] repeal could prove to be a turning point for gay rights comparable to the racial integration of the military after World War II. "That was a stepping stone for a lot of other rights that followed," said Sara Benson, a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law.
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Evangelical Christians - you can tell them it's inevitable and some of them might agree," he said. "But that doesn't mean they will stop fighting."
. . . . dire warnings emerging from the No camp in speeches and fliers - that passing the ordinances might fuel the spread of AIDS or enable men dressed as women to make menacing forays into women's restrooms on the premise that they were transgender.
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Leave it to the modern Pharisee Christians to trot out the same tired lies and derogatory stereotypes time and time again all across the country.