"the gays"
MillCreek, what I've been noticing over the past few years is the way those moral panic artists that have been laughed to scorn for decades have turned out to be more or less correct. People said stuff like "They got the women wearin' pants now, and pretty soon nobody'll know who's a boy and who's a girl," and now such predictions have come true. They said, "That Elvis Presley's shaking hisself around on stage, and pretty soon all them kids'll be a-fornicatin' and havin' babies out o' wedlock." Whether or not Elvis is to blame, fornication has been normalized, and illegitimacy rates have soared.* Twenty years ago, lupinus's comments may not have been so obviously ignorant. It was still an open question whether media messaging would sway public opinion. Now, however, that question has been answered, and very publicly.
This isn't to suggest that entertainment media are the only factors at work. Many other institutions have been pushing the same line.
As for the notion that heterosexism is just a form of "discrimination" that will go away, once all the bad old people die; you've got it backwards. One side of the culture war is engaged in a passing fad, but let's not kid ourselves about which one.
*Soared for some demographics more than others, of course.
