expanding on a point

Sully put a followup asking "what happened in 1990?" and basically comes down as "AIDS". That's when Ryan White died for example, though that had less to do with homosexuals. But what happened in 1991 was AIDS finally became a bigger problem than homosexuals because of Magic's announcement of HIV. It's probable that a movie like "Philadelphia" doesn't get made without this turning point event.

The understanding that this was no longer about some sort of counter-culture revolution is easier to make when the problem is a global one involving not just the homosexual (the supposed counter-culture extraordinaire), but everyone. It becomes a question of responsibilities and a need to learn and understand one another better, if only out of the quiet understanding that there is a fragile time frame of life, rather than a question of religious and traditional condemnation. That sort of mindset, while not always consciously ingrained on the Millennial and Gen X generation, is much more prevalent than it was in the preceding revolutionary generation (baby-boomers). Because that's the generation that grew up watching Magic Johnson play basketball and then have to give that up because of a disease that the public did not really understand or saw a movie with Tom Hanks portray a gay man dying of AIDs, and then over the next 20 years had plenty of time to form opinions on the "rightness" of human sexuality that ended up far different than their parents or grandfathers might have. They're expressing those opinions now in some states by recognising the essential inequalities denied to people of a different sexual orientation. As troubling as this is for traditionalists, there is no danger in it. It is not some sort of response for AIDs itself, but a recognition that these are still people after many years of exposure, despite their differences, and we are only trying to understand one another in the space between those gaps. This bears out in the suggestion that the person who knows someone well who is gay is much more likely to support gay marriage. But I'm not sure that sort of inclusive society happens without the understanding, finally, that AIDs wasn't an exclusive disease. Maybe I just don't have the same level of "faith" in human beings to believe that they'd come around some other way.